I really missed you. You just disappeared without any notice or clue. You didn’t even say when you would come back, so I had to find alliterative to replace you.

Now I am just glad to have you back after 3 weeks of absence, and I hope you will stay with me every day.

Dear hot water.

3 weeks ago in my apartment of Ulaanbaatar (capital of Mongolia), when I went to the shower room and turned a faucet, something surprising occurred: there was no hot water! And since then, I somehow had to manage my life without any hot water for 3 weeks.
With that in mind, in this post, I will talk about how to survive without hot water, be it at home or outside (when traveling).

At home
○Boil water and mix with cold water (When there is electricity)
○Quick wash with cold water (When there is no electricity)
○Easy wash* with cold water (when it’s too cold)
*If you can’t manage the temperature of cold water, washing only the sensible parts with cold water is another option. When there is no water, you can buy mineral water (if you think it’s waste, it’s better to keep water in a big bottle or something)

Outside
When you are outside (travelling), it is more difficult to deal with, especially in the cold place.
From my traveling experience, I had to deal with non-hot water environment several times. Besides, when you are traveling, you tend to swear more because of nervousness and excitement, so you definitely need to take a shower.
All you can do is doing quick wash or easy wash as mentioned above.

Here is my small tip to deal with non-hot water environment:
(1). Wash your hair first (some people do it after washing body, but this is important)
(2). Before moving to your body wash, dry your hair completely
(3). Wash you body

The point here is dry your hair as soon as this part is done, since you feel colder if it’s wet. I think this is also useful when you take a bath.

After 2 weeks of no hot water, I wanted to ask until when it would last, then asked apartment keeper “Excuse me, hot water, when?” in Mongolian (I learned how to say hot water, which I think I never forget). I was glad to hear it lasts only 3 more days (although it took 1 week more).

Also, when I was in a rural village in Guatemala, the family who kindly let me stay in their house did not have electricity. But out of great hospitality, they made a fire with limited coal to boil water for my shower (they weren’t using hot water, probably due to a lack of coal). I still cannot forget how warm I felt both from my body and my heart.

Last of all, the water bill from the last month was much cheaper than previous months. I heard that we use 12-15 liters of water every minute of shower (depending of shower head and pressure, though). So this also made me realize how much I wasted water when hot shower was available.

It’s just water, but essential for our lives. It also teaches us many things, especially in its absence.

This time I learned that:

You can survive without hot water as long as you use available resources, and washing hair first and drying it before going to body wash is really helpful.

Knowing until when the difficult condition will last will help you psychologically, and leaning language (if you are in other country) will help you to get such an information.

Hot water, just like other essential things in our lives, teaches us in its absence how much we take it for granted.