I spent most of my 30 hour stay in Bangkok – before boarding the night train to Chiang Mai – at a basic, yet clean and quiet, hotel/hostel located not more than a 15 minute walk from the capital’s central station, aka Hua Lamphong, in Chinatown.

The room I’d booked was perfect for my needs and even came with a decent top-floor view of the neighborhood – and if I’d only been able to open the damn window (it was sealed), I might have taken a shot of it.

After years of traveling and staying in hundreds of different hotels, guest houses, hostels and dormitories, I finally found a WC where someone had evidently made an extra effort to place the toilet roll holder in the worst possible place. Though not visible in the above shot, they could have mounted it on the opposite wall facing the toilet seat. But no, that would have made toilet life too easy!

For my age – and despite enduring the stiffness from mild arthritis, I am still surprisingly flexible. But I ain’t Houdini, David Blaine or Nadia Comăneci. So the only way to reach for the toilet paper was to sit up, lift off from the seat, twist 180 degrees, grab a suitable amount of paper, sit down again and, well, you know, clean up. And as we all experience from time to time, one may need to grab a second round of paper before the job is done. Fortunately, I’m on a intermittent fasting schedule right now, so I only had to endure one of these contortionist sessions.

As per usual when I encounter wacky impracticalities at places I stay at, which happens frequently – even at fancy places – I vigorously yearn to speak with the individual whom decided where to place the toilet roll holder. Who knows, perhaps I’d even uncover a humanistic perspective to their decision process