We spent most of the last day of my recent trip to Vietnam sightseeing. We were in Ho Chi Minh City which was formerly Saigon. We were going to spend time in the downtown area checking out museums and looking at historic areas. Before we left our hotel, one of our hosts told us what he usually does when he has a flight later in the day like the one we had. He would leave his luggage at the hotel with the concierge and return a couple of hours before his flight left. He would then go to the spa at the hotel for a shower to get refreshed from a day out in the city. Since we were in a tropical zone during the rainy season where there was extremely high humidity, this sounded like a good idea. The night we had arrived in Vietnam, the humidity was smothering at 11 in the evening when we exited the airport. It didn’t get much better any time we were there except immediately after a rainstorm. A shower should be refreshing alternative to just getting on the plane like I normally do during international travel.
One of our travelling companions had joined us from China and would not be leaving until the next morning. We left our luggage in his hotel room. He had offered to let us shower in his hotel room but we felt this would be awkward. We took our luggage to the spa where arrangements had been made for us to shower before we left for the flight. Considering the heat and humidity of the day in Vietnam, the shower was much needed refreshment. I stepped out of the shower to get dressed. Then it hit me. There was no vent in the shower area. No way for the heat and humidity of the shower to escape the room. No cool air flowing into the room to counteract the additional humidity from the shower. As I was finishing getting cleaned up, I began to sweat. The sweating was extreme. My clothes were sticking to my skin as I tried to put them on. I felt like I was trying to get dressed in a sauna. There was nothing refreshing about this exercise. I think I felt less refreshed after my shower than before. I was wishing that I had showered in that hotel room instead of the spa.