We’ve been traveling for 5 1/2 months so far and have stayed in hotels and apartments, as well as with friends. You’d think bathrooms are pretty standard, right??
Cool tub and artwork at Gibb’s Farm in Tanzania
This property in the Seychelles has an open shower in the middle of the room. You’d better be comfortable with your roommate!
We used Starwood points to book a room in Koh Samui with a private pool. Little did we know the toilet, shower, sink are all by the pool and separated from the bedroom by a door and a few steps/walkway next to the pool. Let’s just say it was interesting at night finding the toilet!
Let’s start with electricity … In the UK or any country with historical ties to the UK, light switches are OUTSIDE the bathroom – for safety’s sake, of course. This is despite the rest of the world turning on light from switches INSIDE the bathroom and not dying.
Don’t even think of plugging in a hairdryer or a curling iron in the bathroom, either, in UK countries – too close to the water. This makes for interesting times every morning trying to find an outlet for the curling iron and hair dryer in a location that I have some hope of looking in a mirror. I’m pretty sure that GFI outlets would work in the UK bathrooms!
Then there’s the lighting … some have bright lights … some not so bright. It’s always a toss up to see if makeup can be put on in the bathroom.
Oh, sink handles. You’d think there is universal agreement on HOT and COLD – Hot on the left, Cold on the right. Most of the time yes, but not always. Two sink handles in one sink should turn on and off the same direction, right? They both turn water on clockwise and turn water off in the counter clockwise direction. Not so much! I gave up counting all the various combinations of how sink handles turn.
These 2 faucets turned opposite directions for on and off..
Water pressure in showers?? Most of the time, the water pressure has been OK. Then we reached India and at least 2 showers had such low water pressure I wasn’t sure I could get the shampoo out of my hair. Seriously, the camp showers in Africa had better pressure and it was just gravity fed.
The tiles are old Victorian tiles. This is the shower that sort of dribbled our of the faucet.
Where do you, logically, place a toilet paper dispenser? Close to the toilet, right? Someone needs to reach the toilet paper when sitting on the toilet, right? We’ve had TP holders to the rear about even with the tank. My arms need to be longer to reach those! Others have been placed down low or up high, relative to the toilet. A few were in the front of the toilet requiring the user to stand up to reach the TP. The current one in Bangkok is hung upside down so the roll of toilet paper slides off.
Rolls of toilet paper in India are not exactly large even if the paper is thin. I used a pen to show the relative thickness of a new roll of TP.
So far, every hotel/apartment has supplied a hair dryer which is good! Of course, two of them didn’t work – one in Germany and one in India. The India one was replaced right away; the German one wasn’t replaced before we left so I had wet hair at the airport! Some dryers have very little power, one blew the air so hard it knotted my hair up, and others were just right!