Upon first arriving on Siamese shores all those many years ago with my Great British short back n' sides, stiff upper lip and a backpack fit to burst with two-ply toilet tissue, I found using the lavatory a mostly disagreeable affair which filled me with equal amounts of fear and disgust.
I mean - seriously: how in the name of Thomas Crapper's left tit is one to supposed to operate without a roll of soft pliable sheets close at hand - hanging expectantly ready to facilitate the mop up.
And that bowl of stagnant water, iridescent with the bodily fluids of a thousand men. I certainly won't be introducing any of that to my arsehole. That would be a sure-fire method of contracting an amalgamation of every sexually transmitted infection in the fucking stratosphere... and others that haven't been invented yet.
And the arse-blaster. Whilst in theory it appears a practical solution - unfortunately it was a case of once-bitten-twice-shy after a particularly volatile torrent of water threatened to dislocate my fucking rectum.
But alas, as the years went by I resigned myself to a life sans toilet paper and eventually concluded that I'd have to try and make friends with the bum gun - lest, of course, I was to tolerate a perpetually sullied pair of underpants.
Thankfully ours blossomed into a beautiful relationship, and I remained faithful to Alma (the Arse Blaster) for the duration of my stay, even on the rare occasions when the alluring form of a roll of Andrex beckoned me come hither.
Fast forward to the present day back in good ol GB and I'm felling fucking hectares of rain forest every time I go for a dump.
Toilet paper, unless you're a 12 week old hamster, just does not cut the mustard.
I never thought I'd be craving the bus station bog in Sakhon Nakhon, but woe is me, it bests my current shitter.
I miss you, Alma - so very, very much.