Notes on showering etiquette in Central Asia

Notes on showering etiquette in Central Asia
Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan
October 8th, 2007
By Dan Murdoch

THE SHOWERING situation here is quite an adventure. The facilities are very much communal, shared between three large apartment blocks. Inside what I shall politely call the gentleman’s washroom, but may be better termed a small, filthy cesspit, there are three showers, which in my experience are shared between six people.
The routine is this: you jump in the shower for a quick rinse, wait for the naked men surrounding you to start staring, then step out and begin to lather yourself. You will have to wait near a shower for at least five minutes, dripping and soapy like some fluffy yeti, for a gap to appear beneath the crowded nozzles. When you see a space it is imperative to jump in quickly and wash off the spuds, before the other nudies get annoyed.
You may then retreat to the relative safety of the dressing area, pleasantly decorated with live moss, where people perpetually leave the door open to the wider world, leaving you horribly at risk of a terrible exposure.
Of course I always seem to arrive in the washroom when there is a deep queue for each shower. So I have to hover, in full naked glory, waiting for my go and wondering where to look. I normally stare at my miniature aeroplane bottle of shampoo, which is about the size of a teabag and written entirely in Russian, a language so foreign it uses a different alphabet, and is utterly, utterly indecipherable to me.
I'm sure this ruse is wearing off, but I have yet to work out the correct posture to adopt when standing in a room full of naked Kyrgyz.
But I tell you this: I have seen more cock in the last ten days than the preceding ten years.
And the Asian penis has been hugely underestimated.

Ends
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