Tired. Deja bu and the Malaysian bathroom.

Tired today. My 16-month old daughter was struggling with her milk last night. Then she rolled off the edge of the sofa and banged her head on the floor. Floors are almost always tiled here, so it's a hard landing. She seemed a bit inconsolable, then the note of the cries plunged like something from the Exorcist, and I was wearing her last 3 meals all over my neck and back.

One advantage of living in the tropics is the bathrooms are 'hose-down'. We had a varnished pine floor in our house in the UK, with painted walls. We always worried about splashing water out of the bath. Here, there are no bathtubs, just what is locally called a 'water heater' on the wall. It's optional: when you buy a house, chances are there's a shower head attached directly to the water feed for the bathroom. The water heaters are an added luxury, but not really necessary. The bathroom temperature must be at least 30C, and I suspect the 'cold' water is at least 20C. Since it comes from a tank in the attic, it may even be 30C. The 'bathrooms' are just tiled rooms, wall and floor, and invariably have a short hose on the wall near the toilet. Perhaps I'll write a full article about that hose sometime.

The short hose is handy when you're a vomit-covered parent and child, you just go into the bathroom and spray both of you off. There's a drain in the floor, in one corner. The drain in the downstairs bathroom hasn't been draining at all well recently, and when the washing machine (which is just outside the bathroom) and the shower are in use together, the drain briefly overflows. Last night, just as I was feeling lucky I had a hose-down bathroom, the drain stopped making noise, and bits of undigested baby food started popping up through the holes in the cover. A chill ran down my back, just writing that sentence. My wife took our very subdued daughter away to complete her cleanup and change her into fresh pyjamas. I sploshed around in the dilute vomit and wondered what to do next.

We'd bought a plunger when the drain first showed signs of blocking, and it did seem to marginally improve things. I used it last night, and as the hours went by, the water on the floor became clearer and clearer, and then actually dropped below the level of the cover. By that time, I had got over my revulsion at the soup I was standing in, so I conducted a 'manual investigation' of the drain. It's a big pipe, so a hand goes in easily. Just below the drain cover, I could feel bare concrete - the down pipe mustn't have come up far enough when they laid the floor, so I'm guessing they just stuffed a bag in the top and laid concrete up to that, before sticking the cover over the bare concrete. about 6 or 7cm down, I could feel the sides of a plastic pipe descending. At about 15cm, I could feel a smaller pipe entering from the direction of the handbasin - I recall the builders used the same pipe for the washing machine waste.

At about 30cm down (almost elbow depth), another small pipe could be felt, this time on the side of the pipe facing the back door. This ought to be the exit, but the pipe comes into the larger downpipe by more than a centimetre. Feeling around this pipe, it's obvious that there's no joint there. There's a jagged hole in the larger pipe with bits of soft concrete protruding through the gaps around the smaller pipe, and in places gaps that I could push my finger into, with something soft inside. I couldn't decide whether this pipe entered or left the larger pipe, so I felt further down. Just as my elbow went under the surface (face uncomfortably close to the bobbing carrot and milk curds), I could feel a pile of rubble. I fished out a few 8cm diameter lumps of the concrete they used as a substrate for tiling, and felt again.

The larger pipe's walls were smooth down to about 40cm below floor level. At the bottom of the pipe is soft, like very wet mud. At the edges of the soft bottom, I could feel the end of the large pipe. WTF? There's no end to this pipe, other than the dirt the house is built on. Capping the lower small pipe with the palm of my hand, I could feel a very soft suction - that pipe is the exit for the drain water. I'm guessing some drain water must just sink in the mud at the bottom of the pipe. I tried pushing a hose into the exit pipe and running some water into it, but all that did was add black silt to the dilute vomit I was standing in. I cleaned up as best I could and went to bed.

This morning, the level of water in the drain had dropped far enough for me to see what I was feeling last night. The down pipe is actually two short lengths of larger pipe of slightly different diameter, one pushed into the other. I suspect the upper section was added by the tiler who tiled all the floors in our house. Why didn't he add a longer piece? The two smaller pipes enter the larger pipes through holes that look like they were cut with a craft knife; jagged, with great gaps all around the smaller pipes.

My wife says one of her brothers has some drain rods and maybe a power washer at his factory. In the UK, I'd be straight on the telephone to the Lone Drainer, but here, I think I'd rather do it myself. I've paid for some very disappointing work here. In preparation, I lifted the drain inspection hatch by the back door. I cannot adequately convey my feelings. The chamber beneath has smooth concrete walls, perhaps a metre deep. The chamber itself is about 30cm by 50cm. The walls appeared to be moving as I lifted the hatch, but when my eyes became accustomed to the gloom beneath my feet, I could see that I'd woken up several dozen cockroaches, from peanut size up to thumb sized. I was shuddering so much, I think I pulled a muscle in my neck.

I fetched the hose from the parking area outside, and washed off the walls of the inspection chamber. It's briefly satisfying to see all the cockroaches wash down into the sewer, but they start coming back within a second or two of turning the hose off. There are 3 large pipes emptying into the chamber. One is for the toilet in the downstairs bathroom, One must be for the bathroom upstairs, and the third has a slow trickle of water coming out of it. The slowly trickling pipe has silt in the bottom of the pipe where the other two do not. I'm guessing that pipe is the exit for the bathroom drain.

I'm really not looking forward to this job.