Now I lay me down to sleep

This post is for my mom who asks about such things...

We've had a few questions about our typical accomodations. Well, five months and eleven countries have given us plenty of hotel rooms and "toilets" to compare! This post is mostly photos with some explanation of the wonderful world of budget accomodations in places where $6 will get you a decent night's rest!

See photos of hotels and bathrooms... how can you pass that up?

Hotels here are cheap. We were expecting such and, honestly, we've gotten used to the prices such that anything over $10 seems high, but it really is amazing how inexpensive a day in SE Asia can be. The most common budget option is the guest house, a scaled down version of the hotel. In Vietnam a guesthouse could be a woman's home where three rooms are rented out. In Malaysia, it could mean a 35-room complex, and in Thailand it could be a gathering of individual bungalows. Towels, top sheets, and toilet paper were hit-and-miss and AC available for a price (sometimes double the regular room rate!). We rarely splurged on AC, but it was nice on those uncomfortably hot nights like in Hanoi, Vietnam for us.

Our method: find a general area of guest houses from the guidebook. Check out one recommended one in particular, leaving packs at the desk. Visit a few more. Then end up back at the first one! We learned to check the noise of the fan (fans are very, very important), the existence of the shower, its water flow, and the cleanliness of the sheets. We also asked about hot water (rare) and a generator (especially from Myanmar on).

Inle Lake, Myanmar- This was one of our favorite places with it's beautiful woven bamboo walls and airy windows. I think we paid $8 and we got breakfast!

Koh Tao, Thailand- This fantastic beach front bungalow was free!! Well... plus the cost of an open water dive course...

Its attached bathroom was great (despite the lack of water pressure)- stones and wood slats placed right on the sand. I don't know that my shampoo was biodegradable, though...

Vietnam- We by far had the best luck in Vietnam. Our money would get us a nice, clean, tiled room with attached bathroom, towels, sheets, and sometimes even a TV. We even learned to listen to the nicer touts. One tiny older woman- with a wrinkled face, about 4.5' tall and wearing a conical vietnamese hat- led us through the rainy streets of Saigon to one of three rooms a woman rented out for $6... it was fantastic!) This was one of my favorite places (Josh not so much... I'll explain why) because it was four rooms in an ancient Chinese-style house in Hoi An.I thought the mosquito netting was pretty. The courtyard attached to our room. All that open, carved wood was lovely, but it did mean that pests could move from room to room... We saw a rat scurry across the floor one day, so we hung up our food (which became standard from that night on... lots of ants!). Unfortunately, we accidently left a bit of food in Josh's pack, and, well, the rat chewed right through it! "Great. A rat ate our breakfast." was the new quote of the week...Malaysia- We thought the accomodations went downhill in Thailand and Malaysia. I think part of it was the poor exchange rate and such great rooms in Vietnam and Laos. For the same price we had paid, we found ourselves more and more in rooms with seperate bathrooms and missing top sheets. The rooms also started to have less windows or windows that only opened up to the hallway instead of the exterior (very bothersome to an architect!), making the air circulation much worse (not to mention fire safety...). This was our hallway in Kuala Lumpur where the only windows are those slatted ones you see in the hallway.The KL hotel had this funny outdoor walkway to a shared bathroom- four showers and four toilets.We only stayed in a dorm twice- in Malaysia and Singapore (because Singapore is expensive!). This is a Varanasi dorm attached to the room in the photo below. They usually stuck to 6 people or less and had bunkbeds... this one was a little odd!India- Our room in Varanasi was fun and costs about 3 bucks! Tiny, but formed from the little bump-out of the building. And the fan worked! Bathrooms down the hall... Notice the thin matress- typical!

India- We loved this Jodhpur hotel because of the large courtyard and the shared lounge and restaurant. No TV, but towels and sheets- pretty standard fare for us by the end of our trip. We decided after Bangladesh that if we were in a place that made us tired outside, we should try to be comfortable inside!Josh in the restuarant.Bangladesh- We stayed in more hotels in Bangladesh as guest houses weren't as common (like the tourists) and were sometimes a little uncomfortable (stares, unfriendly). This hotel had an amazingly helpful manager, and our room included a little sign telling us which way was Mecca!Pnom Penh, Cambodia- Probably our most disgusting hotel room. This place was cheap ($3), but dirty with paper-thin walls and a flimsy lock. Probably a bad sign that we were offered drugs as soon as we walked in. It did have a lovely porch overlooking a pretty lake, but we moved down the street to a $4 room that next night that was much smaller but nice and clean- what a splurge!Cambodia- Bathrooms! This was the bathroom attached to that dirty room in Pnom Penh.We tended to get attached bathrooms. They usually had a western-style toilet (as opposed to a squat), a bucket or two, a sink, and a shower in the middle of the room. That means every bathroom is always wet- how can it not be if you have to practically stand over the toilet to shower?? This bathroom in Myanmar had so many extra pipes. Notice where the drain of the sink goes?Mandalay, Myanmar- The only bathtub on the whole trip! That blue pipe is the sink drain again... heading right for the floor drain! Also, the shower is on the wall on the photo's left side. That means the water hits the floor, flows around the tub over to that drain... why??Pak Beng, Laos- The hose shower... Josh's favorite. Usually they stayed on the wall for the shower, but not always! This one was an especially nice height... if you're under 5 feet!I'd say this is a typical bathroom at a touristy restaurant. A"western" toilet is an unexpected, but welcome, surprise. Toilet paper is an extreme rarity.
A squat toilet is more typical. This is like the king of the pit toilet- uncommon raised porcelain! All bathrooms include some form of water for both flushing and "wiping." The scoop is used to pour water down the hole and over, well, you know...This is more common- a trough of some type where the water sits and breeds mosquitoes. In hotels, there was usually a hose or a low faucet and a bucket. It was funny to see the shapes of the plastic scoops change with the countries. The handled types like in this photo were Thai, little pitchers in India, flower watering can shapes in Bangladesh... whatever gets the job done!

Another bathroom possibility that we encountered more in Nepal was the simple squat and trough... you had to walk uncomfortably past other peeing people to find an open slot. This is a very clean Nepali version (the clean part being highly unusual). One of my most uncomfortable moments on the entire trip was in Bangladesh where there would only be men's bathrooms. I would get directed into them and walk past the men squatting in the open to get to the enclosed stalls. Apparently women just don't have to go in Bangladesh!