Bathrooms

I’ve only been in two kinds of bathrooms so far within the hotel – my room, and the public lobby ones. There are a few noteworthy differences…

First off, the urinals in the lobby “loo” have urinal balls instead of urinal cakes. They come beaded in pairs and the two yellow balls are about half the size of ping-pong balls. They automatically flush here, but seem hyper-sensitive; they went off in sequence when I walked past the sinks about five feet away.

Those sinks were normal enough; a small, thin bar of pungent hotel soap was next to each basin. A handle with a thin metal arm stiffly adjusted the water temperature. The room sinks are a whole other story though – there are two faucets. One is dedicated to hot water and the other is for cold. The cold is much too freezing to use for washing hands, and the hot water scalds you if you keep it under for too long. It is awful difficult to alternate between the two – the drastic temperature changes seem much too extreme to switch between ice cold and near-boiling levels. It is possible to fill the sink with the rubber stopper, but there really should an easier way.

The toilets here are extremely powerful; it seems as if gallons of water forcefully flush away all remaining waste. The pressure and loud noise was startling at first. But the most startling sight of all turned out to be myself: reflected in a mirror above the toilet in the lobby stall. I understand that the stalls are not meant for a urinal treatment, but they were farther away, and I just happened to walk in… but still. I was watching myself pee. Why the mirror?! Why can’t someone using the bathroom just wait another three minutes before they wash their hands to look at their face? Unless of course…no one does wash their hands…

I plan on sampling other bathrooms, so will probably update this later...