Filth

When you're travelling, things can get pretty filthy.

You pack a four day rotation of clothes, promise yourself you'll do emergency washes in the handbasin whenever the need arises, but somehow, you always end up with a back pack full of BO and you find yourself wearing your undies inside out and donning the souvenier T-shirt you bought as a gift for someone else because nothing is wearable. This much is inevitable.

Your hair gets a thick coating of grease, as that 'nice' hotel you decided to splash out on doesn't have any hot water, and right after your cold shower, the power cuts out and you can't blow dry your hair for an hour, by which time said hair has dried flat and ugly. This is why you pack a selection hats and beanies.

You douse yourself in perfume every morning hoping it will distract from the odour emanating from under your arms, and deoderise over your clothing.

When you can't take it any longer, you try to communicate to the receptionist of your hotel that you'd like some washing done (pointing to the sign on the hotel door that quite clearly states 'laundry service') only to be pointed down the street with a string of directions uttered in an utterly foreign language.

You walk down the street, in the vain hope of finding the supposed laundromat, only to be apprehended by a kind local who delivers you at the door of a nearby tailor, thinking it was his services you were searching for.

You finally find a laundromat. Your stinky clothes finally get a wash, and you realise that all you've seen since arriving in this new city is the hotel, the surrounding streets and the inside of a subterranean laundromat.

You pack up your freshly laundered clothes, breath an omo fresh sigh of relief, and emerge into the sunlight, ready to explore and experience.

You get back to your hotel, only to find socks lurking in the bottom of your pack that are starting to grow their own feet, and that shirt you spilled your dinner on two nights ago.

You concede that travelling is not about looking and smelling good, it's about getting out and immersing yourself in another culture, drowning out the voices in your head with foreign language, getting lost and then finding your way again.

Or maybe that's just me.