You go into the toilets at airport, hotels, restaurants and you need a degree in toilet design to find the toilets, lock the cubicle door, locate the soap, turn on the water to wash your hands.
1 First, where's the toilet?
2 You want to wash. How do you turn on the tap?
3 If the tap is hand operated, now that you've washed your hands, how do you turn off the tap without putting germs back on your fingers?
4 Where is the soap? How do you extract it?
5 Where have they hidden the towels? How do you get the hand dryer to start?
6 Where is the exit?
7 You have forgotten your comb. Or can't find it. What can you do?
8 No toothpick. No toothbrush.
FINDING THE TOILET - PROBLEMS
You are in a restaurant in Singapore. The toilet is down the corridor somewhere else in the mall. How do you find it?
You are in a Community Centre. Where's the toilet?
You are in a hotel. Where's the toilet?
You want an elegant and safe rest room in a foreign city. Where can you find one?
Here are some answers.
LOCATING TOILETS
1 Where is the toilet?
The first thing a traveller in a foreign country needs is the sign for the toilet.
Mostly toilets have signs. If you are lucky they have symbols.
CHINA
I once made a mistake in China. I copied down what I thought was the sign for Ladies. Next time I saw the sign I walked in confidently and quickly realised I was in the Gents. I had copied down the sign for toilets.
SINGAPORE
Go to the toilet first, everywhere. If you try to go to the toilet at the end of the break, you might get locked out of the conference room.
Community Centres for Community Clubs
I got locked out once at Yuhua Community Centre in Singapore. The toilets were one or two floors below. (Some places have gents on one level and ladies on the next alternating.)
The conference room was locked during contests and had a self-locking door which closed behind the last person. The contest organiser had the key and door was propped open or held open or opened from the inside.
In Singapore nowadays in community centres the ladies and gents are adjacent and the washbasins are shared. At a community centre in Singapore I was able to spot the toilets from afar by seeing the bucket and mop outside the door. On another occasion I just ran anti clockwise around the building until I found the toilets.
Trail and Trial
Yesterday, yet again, I was temporarily baffled in a shopping mall. But at least after much trail and error I can solve the problem. That funny pun on trial and trail came by accident from auto correct. I typed trial and error. Auto correct inserted trail and error.
If you are lucky, a building has toilets on every floor, gents near ladies, same location on each floor with ground floor busy with a queue and more space and cleanliness upstairs.
Some shopping centres have toilet in the basement food court and the top floor restaurant area. In Singapore many office buildings have toilets only accessible with a key.
If you are running a meeting, tell people where to find the toilets, the length of the meeting and when their will be an interval or when the audience can slip out to the toilet (eg between speakers). You don't want people leaving and disappearing forever.
In Singapore went to a property seminar in a tower block. At the end I rushed off to the toilet, 10th floor locked. So I went to the ground floor, also locked. So I ran next door to the Sheraton hotel.
By the time I got back I had lost the opportunity to network and exchange contacts. Similarly, so had the organisers lost me.
ASK OR COPY
TAP TRIALS
If all else fails, ask somebody else. Or watch what they do and copy it. If they are turning a tap clockwise and your tap is not turning, then your tap may be malfunctioning. After they finish, use the tap they used.
If they are turning the tap clockwise and it's working, whilst you are trying to push it in, downwards, with no success, you are malfunctioning.
There are a limited number of ways water spray can operate. You turn the tap clockwise. You move the lever or knob up and down. You push it left or right.
You move your hand up to operate a sensor below the tap. You move your hand down to operate a sensor lower down the basin.
You tread on a pedal under the basin. This system means you are not touching anything with your dirt hands. You cannot break the handle by pushing it the wrong way, nor wear off the pretty gold or silver colour plating.
Sometimes the clue is on the mirror. If you are looking at the basin or looking at your face in the mirror you may miss the sign. Look at the mirror. Check again further along the mirror for another sign.
Yesterday I found a sign for the towel after I washed my hands. Looking back, I realised I had missed the sign for the soap.
HIDDEN SOAP
Do you need soap? Yes, you do, even if your hands don't look dirty. I discovered that in Singapore in 2016. Signs reminded you to use soap, explaining that soap will kill more germs than water alone.
Sometimes, at motorway stops in the UK, I have been on the int of leaving the washroom after washing my hands, and then discovered a soap dispenser on the wall near the exit. Sometimes dispensers offer a gel (alcoholic?) which cleans your hands without the need to wash and rinse.
TOWEL
Why bother to dry your hands? Another reminder from Singapore is not to wave your hands about sending drops onto the floor. Other people may slip on a wet floor.
If there's no paper towel, there may be a blower on the wall.
If there's no blower, there may be paper towels under the mirrors. Two clues. An almost invisible sign on the mirror above your basin or at intervals along the mirror, sometimes above alternating basins. So the signs are not above your basin but above the basins to the right and left of yours.
SOAP
If you see nozzles, this shows there must be a soap dispenser, either full or empty. Move your hands and a colourful blob of gel will either land on your watch or miss your hand and land on the white basin. Wipe it off and use it and / or try again.
PULL OUT PAPER TOWEL
If you don't see a sign, or see a sign but don't understand the symbols, look under the mirror. You will either see the paper towel, the empty paper towel dispenser. If your paper towel dispenser is empty, look along the mirrors for another dispenser.
PAPER TOWEL DISPENSERS
If the paper in a high dispenser showed just a sliver of paper which won't descend or tear, however hard you try to grab and yank, don't drive yourself nutty pulling off tiny silvers of paper, nor risk breaking the machine. Look for instructions. You may need to hold your hands below the machine which then makes the paper descend automatically. You will hear a whir and an oblong of paper will descend, often perforated for you to pull it off neatly.
Not enough paper? Try again. This time you know what to do!
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.
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