The Lament of the Chilled Scot

It’s a beautiful morning. Blue skies, 23 degrees with a slight breeze, as I am sitting relaxed on the shaded 11th-floor balcony of our apartment overlooking the green and leafy southern suburbs of Chiang Mai. Graceful birds swoop and glide silently above the lush, emerald crowns of the treetops below. Brightly coloured butterflies flutter purposefully past and above me like Icarus reaching for the heavens. While on the ground far below, a smattering of locals unfurl their morning routines at a languid pace. A blue-hoodied man throws leftover rice to pigeons before settling down for the morning in the welcoming embrace of his folding chair under the shade of a bush, which is in turn in the cool shadow of a tall and ancient tree that has witnessed so very many days such as these.

What lies beneath

So why am I thinking back so fondly of our trips to Iceland?   One word – Plumbing. I don’t know why (well, I can kinda guess), but there is a good chance that you might find that your Thai apartment kitchen (and possibly bathroom) sink might only run cold water. Yup -  No hot water for washing your dishes or your hands in the kitchen sink. That’s three apartments so far we have stayed in here in Thailand that only have a cold water feed to their kitchen sink. Odd. No mixer tap. When you look under the sink, you might find a hot water supply, but that only goes straight to the washing machine (did you know that for us in the West, EU regulations about energy efficiency testing led to all washing machines becoming cold-fill only). No Y-splitter off the hot feed to the sink tap.  So that’s a wee bit annoying, having to run a kettle to help shift that palm oil from the dishes.

Worse though is you finding your bathroom sink has only cold water.  I don’t know about you guys who read this blog but shaving with cold water ain’t much fun (do not get me started on the blunt-in-60 seconds razors here…). Plenty of hot water in the shower or the bath but you may find your sink doesn’t have a hot water feed. Sigh…

So what's all this got to do with Iceland? Well, I remember our times in Iceland when, thanks to all those lovely geothermals (lava flows excluded!), that tapped hot water was ridiculously cheap and abundant and very, very hot. It was also a wee bit sulphurous, but let's not look a gift horse in the mouth.  Dishes were squeaky clean, and chins and cheeks were as smooth as a baby’s bottom. Bliss. 

So this moany-faced, nit-picking git, in his moment of madness living in paradise has penned (with a little help from my pal, ChatGPT) a little softly sighing lament (we Scots do love our laments – I particularly like Ultravox’s one) just to alert you kind and gentle readers of one of the few horrors you might encounter when visiting here.  Be warned!

Lo, in far Thai halls where pipes do wind,

A curious fate for man of northern kind;

In kitchens cold as winter’s breath they flow,

No heated stream for dishes left below.

Behold the sink where icy currents run,

Where water’s chill ne’er meets the rising sun;

And in the bathroom, for shaving grim and stark,

Cold droplets bite like frost in winter’s dark.

I, a Scot of lowland heart and ancient lore,

Do mourn the days on Iceland’s heated shore,

Where sulphur’d springs, with warmth as fierce as flame,

Did grace my wash with geyser’s proud acclaim.

Now in this land of Thai design so odd,

The washing machine alone is favoured by the God

Of heat—yet sinks remain a frozen jest,

Leaving Beowulf’s kin in shivering unrest.

O, how I long for geothermal might,

For piping hot that banishes the night;

Yet in these halls, where chill doth reign supreme,

I face each day as if within a dream.

So sing we now a tale of warmth now lost,

Of icy taps and memories dearly cost;

A humor’d hymn, a lament to the water’s art,

For cold is life when warmth doth depart.