bathrooms

I feel like there needs to be some explanation to the bathroom pictures I have sent. The first one was not in Perak cave or in some seedy part of town or a convenience store. It was in a mall. Yep, a mall. It was between the Guess store and the Estee Lauder counter. A very nice mall. A very western mall.

The second potty post was in one of the nicest restaurants we have been in all week. I was told that it was dressy. I was in high heels (the only pair I brought and have only worn once) and the only nice outfit I brought. My pants were very, very long. This is a normal bathroom. Tim called it a squat hole. I must comment on the stamina necessary in your quads to make a maneuver possible. And for those of you that heard me say before I left "I don't travel well mostly because of public restrooms", this is my worst nightmare.

Another curious fact about Malaysian bathrooms is the absence of the paper towel. There are no hand dryers or paper towels. It is not that the dispensers are empty, there are no dispensers. I asked my cousin Kin Kin about this and he says that is the custom, that is normal. You just let your hands air dry. Hmmmmmm, that will take some getting used to.

Now to talk about the bathrooms in homes. They have toilets (hooray!) And interesting thing about the bathrooms in homes is the entire room is the shower. There is no separate shower stall. You step down into bathrooms and there is a shower head on the wall, a toilet with toilet paper, a sink and a mirror. There is a drain in the floor and you shower right there inside the bathroom. I am, of course, concerned about the fate of the toilet paper. How does it not get wet? I must be careful. My particular restroom has two doors (it is a jack and jill style bathroom). i worry about getting the doors soaking wet, because I do. The knobs, the doors, the toilet all get soaking wet. So when you get up in the middle of the night to pee the floor is wet under your feet and sometimes the toilet seat is wet from the last shower. There are rugs outside each door for you to dry your feet on as you leave the bathroom.The first night here I was sleeping in socks and got up to use the bathroom and found myself peeling off wet socks.

And now on to feet. Everyone wears slip on shoes and they leave them at the door of every house. They have impeccably clean floors. I could eat off them they are so clean. I love this custom and I think we should adopt it in the US. It would eliminate our children bringing in every rock from the playground at their school.

In conclusion, I am obviously outside my comfort zone. And as most of you know my comfort zone was pretty small anyway. It could use a little more square yardage.
Em