A bucket and a hotel window make life easy
Doesn't everyone hang a tent out of a hotel window?
After five months of bush camping, we’ve got a clean tent again. Well, clean enough we hope.
We’ll be landing in Australia in a couple of weeks, and quarantine (AQIS) there is very strict. They’ll be wanting to see our tents, tent pegs and ground sheets. They’ll want to know all sorts of information too, such as where we’ve been camping and whether we’ve been on farms or in other rural settings. It may seem extreme but, over the years, Australia has managed to keep out lots of dreaded diseases and pests (foot and mouth, for example), so they’re serious about keeping things safe and clean.
Poor John and I looked into having someone else wash the tent, but thought $6 was exorbitant! Frankly, you do get used to cheap prices in these parts of the world and can forget that what might seem dear at home is actually quite cheap where you are at the time.
Anyway, we also decided that we might spend $6 and still have a fairly dirty or even damaged tent. So on our first afternoon in Malacca, we went to work in the bathroom of our hotel. There was a bucket in there, so we took the tent apart and washed the inner lining and fly separately—actually Poor John did most of the work. I washed the ground sheet, which was so dirty it had to be done twice. Thank goodness for the nail brush and enough floor space to spread things out a bit.
We hung everything out the hotel window and let it dry in shifts—it was a little tricky to make sure the gear didn’t slide out the window and down the side of the building. Poor John noticed that a lot of water from the tent dripped onto someone’s motorbike seat. They’re probably still trying to figure out how it rained on just their bike! 🙂
Our big case is now all packed up. Probably no need to open it again until we reach Australia, unless quarantine wants to eyeball the contents.
Where to next? 
Hi Peggy,
Only another couple of weeks! Goodness!! How the time has flown by. I’m pleased that everything has gone pretty well and hope it continues to do so. Although I’ve not yet managed to travel, I’m also very pleased that AQIS takes such a keen interest on where people have been and what they did while they were there. After all, you can’t be too careful. Take care and keep being happy and I’ll look forward to seeing you relatively soon.
As always, ‘hello’ to Poor John too.
Louise
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I can only imagine the thoughts in the motorcyclist’s head…”where the bloody hell did this water come from…IS it water? Oh it’s so brown, and a bit slimy oh NO some bird let loose on my seat! Oh wait, is that soap? What the…GAH sod it I’m taking off.”
🙂
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Those little episodes are always fun to recall.
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