After a long, exhausting day of travel which included leaving for Taipei Airport at 6:30 am to catch a 3 hour flight, another 3 1/2 hour, 40 km/hour ride along Vietnamese roads, of uneven quality, in a van no doubt assembled in a Communist nation (“Mercedes Benz — bringing you vehicles built by Socialist labor — and definitely free of German-engineering, too.”), to directly board a 3 hour boat tour of scenic Ha Long Bay, we arrived at our home away from home, the local Novotel, to find a bath tub, rising gracefully from the floor of the bath room. I looked for the shower stall. Sometimes, they’re separate.
No shower. Whaat?
There was, thoughtfully, a shower attachment, which was stored in the side of the bathtub. And, thoughtfully again, a surrounding shower rod and curtain, hanging beautifully nearly a foot away from the edges of the tub, designed in such a way as to in no way hinder shower water from flowing directly onto the bathroom floor. That probably explains why the designer had intelligently omitted to provide a way to attach the shower head anywhere above the level of the tub.
Always a good idea to leave lots of space between shower curtain and tub to allow the free flow of water onto the floor.
The only way to have a shower was to kneel, hunched over in a tub, knee cartilage crackling against the cold, unforgiving porcelain, with the handheld shower held, well, in one hand. Which left but one other hand with which to hold the soap, lather up and attempt to get oneself clean. One couldn’t place the handheld shower attachment back in its place to have both hands handy, as it was stored in an upright position in the side of the tub — meaning, if the water was running, and you put it in its cradle, you would potentially shoot the water directly out of the tub, or straight into your face. That is, unless you adjusted the water pressure to a mere trickle, to minimize rinsing efficacy and maximize the amount of time one’s kneecaps were in agony.
When it came time to shampoo, in order to unscrew the shampoo bottle, one had to clench the shower attachment between one’s knees unless it didn’t bother you to leave it writhing at the bottom of the tub, randomly spraying gushes of water at you and around the room.
On top of all that, it took two of us to figure out which of the bottles was actually shampoo. While the ‘Novotel’ name was emblazoned identically on the bottles, the distinguishing labels of ‘shampoo’ and ‘shower gel’ were craftily placed on neither the front or back of the bottle, but rather, the side, running up and down the bottle, in font-size that requires anyone over the age of 40 to have their reading glasses ready in order to bathe.
When we complained about the lack of shower facilities in our room, it was matter-of-factly explained to us that only half of the rooms in the Ha Long Bay Novotel offered showers. As if that was an explanation. Did the hotel people think that only 50% of hotel guests would want to shower?
Yes, I know that Novotel is a French chain. Am working very hard to refrain from making any snarky comments about the French and bathing — it would just be too easy.
In my 46+ years of international traveling, I have, if memory serves, only once encountered a hotel room which didn’t have a shower. And that was in, uhh… Paris.
Never mind.
Zoo Koo 