I’ll summarize my experiences so far with Asian life. I’ll simply take stock of what works differently than I’m used to in Europe.
Then I’ll go around a bit to see what’s missing or what’s inconvenient for me.
Some of the thoughts you can read here have already appeared here and there on my blog.
So let’s talk about the things that work differently for me.
Bathroom
In the almost six months I’ve been here, I’ve only seen a bathtub once. And that was out of use.
The bathrooms here are very puritanically furnished. This is strange compared to their European counterparts, which contain a small store’s worth of items, which I’m used to.
Shower, toilet, washbasin, a mirror and maybe a towel rack. There are no small cabinets, wall-mounted shelves, towel radiators. There are no tubes lined up next to each other. In many places, you can only put soap on the floor.
I only see a washing machine in this house where I live now. It’s not even in the bathroom.
But there are trash cans everywhere so we can throw all the(!) paper in them.
There are showerheads built into the bottom everywhere. This is also good for mopping the floor. And keeping the spiders that attack me at bay.
The bathroom usually consists of a single floor. There is no frame for the shower. No parapet wall, no entrance, no door. But the bathroom doesn’t get wet.
Personally, I find this structure practical, because here you really don’t have to worry about what will get wet and what won’t. The water is the main character here.
Public toilets
There are many of them. And most places are free to use. How many times have I been in trouble in almost every city in Hungary because there are none. Only restaurants and train waiting rooms are where they are most common.
I don’t really see people urinating on the street. That’s all for now.
Most public toilets don’t have paper. Not because of negligence. This is the culture here. But there are showers for washing bottoms everywhere.
I’ve hardly been to a place where there wasn’t liquid soap. Not the empty dispenser, but one that actually serves its purpose.
This is definitely the point where I say it would be good if it worked like this in Europe.
Kitchen
Where there is a kitchen, you shouldn’t imagine it the same way as back home.
I haven’t seen a gas stove in an apartment for months. They use it on the street and in restaurants. Where I live now, there is an exceptional case of a small gas cylinder, on which they put a pot holder that can be attached, so the food is cooked directly on the cylinder.
They prefer electric hotplates. Often with one heating surface, maximum two. How many times have I thought that even for me at home, 4 cooking surfaces were often not enough. Here, if there is no problem at all. I find that if someone cooks, they prepare one dish, then one surface is enough for that.
If you don’t have cooking facilities, then there is no problem, because the food you get on the street is really cheap. You can buy food almost anywhere. There are lots of small motorbike vendors everywhere and they put very delicious food in front of you in a matter of seconds. Fruit, sweets, main courses, whatever you want.
If I want to take the food home, they almost always put it in a bag. The food is pre-packaged in a bag. Soup too. That was very interesting for the first time.
If there is a kitchen, it is not equipped with a lot of utensils. I usually have a couple of plates and cutlery at my disposal. Two or three pots and pans. There are no deep pots or non-stick pans. It would be nice to have a wok. I haven’t seen one in my previous places.
The microwave is not trendy either. If I think about it, I’ve only seen one in one place so far.
The refrigerator is not the two-story wonder that is standard equipment in almost every household. A normal-sized refrigerator with a small freezer inside and we’re good to go.
Most refrigerators I saw were almost always completely empty.
There are no spice jars. I have a few bags of spices and I have all the ingredients. I remembered my old kitchen again. I had 12 jars and a shoebox full of everything just for storing my spices.
Rooms
Every room I saw was characterized by its lack of furniture.
There are no rows of wardrobes that take up entire walls. There are no carpets. There are no two- and three-seater sofas. Tables and chairs.
The rooms usually have a bed, a small clothes rack, and if they are very well equipped, a nightstand.
I have seen many rooms from the street, and everywhere this puritanism greets you. In many places there is no bed frame, only a mattress on the floor. I have also seen more than once where there is no mattress, only a mat spread out on the floor.
I have not really come across any paintings on the walls. Except for the pictures of old family members placed in a central place and the photos of the king and queen.
Electricity
I have already told you that I would not like to be reborn as an electrician here. What I see on the street under the heading of electrical network, another name for it is chaos. Wires hang like bunches of ripe bananas from almost every electric pole.
Last week there was a power outage all day. A few hours after it started, I wanted to check if the power outage was still central, or if there was a problem in the apartment. I couldn’t find a circuit breaker box. Nowhere. I’ve seen them somewhere, but it’s very possible that they’re not everywhere here.
I remember looking out the window on Koh Samui and seeing a street distribution box explode 60 meters away.
I just smile because when I touch my forearm to the corner of the laptop here, where I’m writing now, the machine tickles a little. I’ve learned not to put my hand there and I try not to worry that something will happen to my work tool.
Speaking of machines! If anyone who knows about them is reading this, please reassure them. These little ants sometimes crawl around on the table here. They are not very big, about a fifth of the size of our domestic ants. They are such cute little insects, I can see that they don’t want to harm me. I’m worried about my laptop. When they are here, they walk in and out of the keyboard, crawl on the monitor. They won’t short circuit the motherboard with their little legs, right? LOL.
I think electricity is cheap here anyway, because everyone uses it like there’s no tomorrow. I try to save money, like I did at home.
Security
Apart from Bali, you didn’t have to take locking your apartment very seriously anywhere. On Koh Samui, the kitchen door didn’t even have a key, you could only lock it from the inside. If we left the apartment there, that door was open.
There might be a little interlude about why we didn’t go out the front when we went to a party. The reason was Jody, the dog. The owner said the dog would be sad if we left it there, so we snuck out the back door. Oh, those sweet teenage years.
I’ve seen a tablet in the trunk of a motorbike in front of a shop. Cars and motorbikes parked there with the keys in them. In most places, no one is worried about theft.
Not really because of burglary, but it might also be because most houses don’t have really valuable things.
I didn’t see many police on the streets either. I know they were there, in many places in plain clothes so they wouldn’t be noticeable.
I felt safe everywhere, I trust that this will not change.
What is it that makes me uncomfortable?
The reason I gave this paragraph this title was actually because of two other questions.
The question has been asked several times:
- What is missing from Hungary?
- What is not good out there?
The answer to the question “what is missing” is very simple: nothing.
If someone were to ask “who is missing”, then the answer is not as simple as I wrote above. I think I am being quite lenient with myself here, because my answer here would also be that no one, since many of us keep in touch with each other in the online space. We know about each other, we talk regularly, as if we were right next to each other.
Last May, I wrote my post entitled “Keeping in touch”. What I wrote there in advance is also completely relevant in my current life situation. Physical contact is the only thing that is missing, but this does not need to be changed now.
Returning to the idea of “what is missing”, this question also arose in a more specific form. Isn’t there some food missing? Wouldn’t you rather have a good this or that? I still answer this now that no matter how much I love good Hungarian food (making and eating it), there’s nothing missing.
For example, I love bread, especially good white bread. I haven’t eaten good white bread for almost half a year, but I’ve eaten about 10 slices of bread in general during these months. Still, I don’t miss it.
And if I look at myself a little, I’m sure the reason for this is that I don’t focus on what’s lacking, but on what I have. In my opinion, this is very useful for me so that the flow can truly lead and that “I’m happy with what I have” can take on real meaning.
Or the other way around: life leads and that’s why I don’t miss anything.
Dad asked me what I don’t like here.
Flow, the flow leading the soul and fully experiencing “it’s good just the way it is”, I answered him with a laugh that there is none.
I’ve been saying this ever since.
Later I found one thing that could be better. I accept that it is, but it is much better in Hungary. I wanted to write about Europe, but then I remembered that I had struggled with this problem in France, for example.
The socket.
There is no recess in the socket here, so the two prongs simply hold whatever I plug in. The consequence of this is that if a moth flies onto something, it falls out of the wall. It’s not very pleasant.
But I laugh at it, I can’t even say that I don’t like it. It’s just so different from what I’m used to that when the phone charger head falls out, I always remember how much more practical it is elsewhere.
So, the socket is an unpleasant point.
I was still in Koh Samui when I asked my dad once if he remembered what the second thing I told him about the wall socket was. Unfortunately, neither of us remembered it.
Dad, I’ve figured it out since then. I found out what the other thing was that was inconvenient, and since then there’s been a third.
The thing is, chewing gum doesn’t work here. I’ve tried several different ones, but the real one hasn’t arrived yet. They last a short time, their taste and texture are different.
Finally, you can’t buy “normal” tissues. Because there are none. Many stores don’t have them, and they come in a very different package from the usual practical ones. A pack of 10? Forget it! A pack of 100? I’ve never seen one. There are no regular-sized tissues either. But there are packs of 1000, but they don’t fit in my pants pocket.
By the end of this chapter, I’ve finally changed my mind.
Nothing wrong with this, but good chewing gum and good tissues are missing.
When I visit home, I buy a pack of tissues even if I don’t need them. I hope at least my nose will run from a good, strong chewing gum.
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