Showers

The Universal Problems With Showers
By Guylaine Spencer, Freelance Writer

November 2007

I love to travel. If I could, I’d travel to foreign countries constantly. But I’d always come home eventually for one thing: my shower.

You’d think showering, unlike food, language, or clothing, would be fairly universal. It seems so simple. How many variations could there be? The answer: more than you’d imagine.

Consider the various elements: plumbing, setting, temperature, interior design … “fauna”.

I had my first taste of unique plumbing in Ireland. In the hostels where I was staying, the shower heads had no cold or hot taps, just one big knob. If you turned it to the left, you got more water pressure, but the temperature dropped dramatically. If you turned it to the right, you got heat, but the pressure turned into a trickle. In the middle you got nothing. Even at its best, the water didn’t penetrate the first layer of my hair. I had two choices: freeze to death, or walk around all day scratching the shampoo out of my scalp.

This plumbing challenge, however, paled in comparison to one that my friend Terese encountered in Bolivia. “It was like something in a Frankenstein movie,” she said, clasping her hands together and reaching up to pull down an imaginary lever. Apparently this lever turned on the electricity to heat the shower water. It was on the wall about a foot away from the shower head. The two were linked by a metal pipe. Terese had always been warned that water and electricity don’t mix, so she was nervous. Nevertheless, she got into the shower stall, turned on the water, and then …. all the power in the house went off! She later learned there was only enough power to heat a tiny trickle of water, and turning the volume any further blew the fuses. Terese never did discover the maximum level.

Then there was the rustic shower she found on a beach in Mexico. On the roof of a shack about the size of an outhouse, with a sand floor, someone had rigged up a barrel and bucket. When you wanted to shower, you pulled on a cord and the bucket of water fell over you in a gush. You had to wet, lather and rinse with one hand. The water was cold.

North Americans expect hot water in showers, but in Malaysia, I discovered that only cold water was on tap in YWCAs, hostels and even many middle-class homes. The temperature, however, wasn’t my only problem. The showers in many bathrooms in Malaysia weren’t contained in stalls. They were just on the wall beside the toilet. No curtain. Nothing to retain the water. So when I took a shower, the room, including the floors, got soaked. One place was particularly memorable. When you flushed the toilet, smelly yellow water came gushing out of the bottom of the bowl onto the floor—the same floor you stood on to take your shower.

Singapore is a country known for its cleanliness, so I was surprised when I discovered a bug about an inch long in my shower at the YMCA. Exhausted from an 11-hour flight from London, I probably overreacted to the sight. I screamed—and called the management. A few moments later, a desk clerk and three cleaning women arrived to investigate. When I pointed out the creepy crawly that was by then sauntering along the floor of the bathroom, the desk clerk nodded knowingly. He then explained to me that it was not, in fact, a bug at all; it was an “insect”. I am still trying to understand the distinction.

Since that encounter, I have learned from my friend Terese how to prepare for shower fauna and filth.

“Always bring flip-flops,” she says. “Wear these in the shower to avoid bacteria, slime and creepy-crawlies. And block the drain at night.”

Can you guess where she learned this? It was right here in North America. When she was a young, starving secretary sharing a basement apartment in Toronto, she discovered bugs and slimy, algae-mildewed floors in the shower. She and her roommates wore flip-flops to protect themselves.

It turns out that some aspects of showering may be universal after all.