Faulty showers

Some showers have a life of their own!

IMAGINE standing stark naked in an unfamiliar hotel bathroom, wrestling with an unfamiliar shower. Not an ideal scenario, but if you can see the funny side, it can be quite hilarious.

While some hotel bathrooms are fitted with easy-to-manage showers, a few are equipped with sophisticated mechanisms that often require serious manipulating before you are able to set them to the right temperature and spray. 

Some showers in older hotels need a couple of minutes to ‘warm up’, so beware or you’ll be in for a rude shock when icy cold water hits you!

Aware of the havoc that can be wreaked by an unadjusted showerhead, you try to alter the setting on the showerhead before turning on the water. But to your horror, the whole showerhead comes off in your hand! What do you do now?


Showers with flexible hoses are easier to manage because you can take them firmly in your hand while you adjust its temperature and pressure. However, if you are not sure which direction the showerhead is facing, you can easily lose control of the wild, surging water jets.

If the shower curtains or sliding doors are not securely closed, just a few seconds of that fierce flow could easily drench the bathroom.  Soaked items by the sink, drip marks on the mirror and flooded floors are all evidence of having lost the battle with that vicious shower.

What’s worse is how some bathrooms are built on the wrong gradient and water collected on the floor does not flow out through the floor traps.  Finally, you have to slosh through ankle-deep water to flee from your bathroom skirmish.

The next time you undress for a shower, brace yourself and be ready to wrestle with that hotel shower because it often has a life of its own.

This article was first published in The New Straits Time, Travel Times on12 September 2006