God Bless Plumbers

The bathroom in my apartment is a wet mess. It's a small room with a manual-flush toilet and no actual tub for a shower. Just a drain in the corner of the flat tile surface and a shower head that sprays directly onto my John. It's really not that bad, but let's be honest: Thais need some help with engineering.
I must dip a bucket into a bin of water and then pour that water into the toilet in order to manually flush it. Water (clean) sloshes everywhere, all over my toilet seat, all over the floor, all over my feet. Wet mess.

I refuse to use the sink, which is outside, because if I go out there, I will let bugs into my room, I will see and smell the pleasant view that resembles a river-sewer outside, and, of course, the high school next door (which hosts band practice like, every day until 7pm, making it impossible to nap, by the way), would have a perfect view of me in all my morning glory if I were to use that sink outside.

Thus, I use the shower head in my inside bathroom to do everything from wash my hands, brush my teeth, wash my face. But that usually means water all over my legs and all over the floor. Wet mess.

So imagine the sick little chuckle I gave when I found that the puny drain in the corner was not doing its duty and sucking the wet mess away from my bathroom. And, not only was the drain not um, draining, it was PUMPING water into my bathroom.

Brown water decorated with clumps of hair and...lettuce. Soggy lettuce and rising water in my bathroom (I'm still hoping that the lettuce pieces were the extras from someone's dinner, not from someone's stomach. Ew.).

I first became aware of this dilemma a few days ago when I'd see remnants of dirt on my bathroom floor, and sometimes a bit of water from the drain. Curious, but nothing too bad. But today, while laughing at candid/tabloid-esque pictures of a drunkenly dancing Katie Couric (see Huffington Post...hilarious!) on my bed, I was jolted to consciousness as a disgusting smell crept up into the depths of my unwilling nostrils.

It registered. The water. It was back.

Okay, watery mess? Try swamp. The water had risen a good four-five inches. It was 10:15pm and I didn't want to wake my sweet landlord, Apple (yes, that's her name. Oh, and while we're on the subject of fruit-names, I also have a student named Orange Peel. Lol, seriously.), so I spent 30 minutes crouching down in The Swamp with my pink, $3 crocs on, scooping the water with my bucket-for-toilet-flushing, into the toilet.

I almost started singing Cinderella songs.

And then it got ridiculous. The water was not retreating or being sucked back into that hole. Terrible thoughts and scenarios were playing through my head. I envisioned a real life snake slithering up through my drain, Harry Potter style. I imagined dead geckos floating everywhere. Worst of all, I imagined mosquitoes mysteriously living in this domestic swamp and using me as food (see previous post for why this thought terrifies me). I had to stop the living nightmares, so I called Apple's emergency number. I didn't care what time it was (10:45pm).

Her husband came over with his wire and snake, enlisted the help of two Thai guys (WHERE did they come from?), who monitored the sketchy sitch outside at the output of my pipe, and fixed my drain. The cause? Hair, toothpaste, and dental floss. Damned be the previous tenants.

[Apple's hubby. You're my hero!]

Anyway, God. Bless. Plumbers.

The trickling of water running so sweetly down a drain has never sounded better.

[Oh, this is my room, by the way. Small but cozy.]