Snow Wash?

On the road, one expects to see things that require explanation. One hopes for foreignness. Curiosity and a need to know about other places are the reasons to leave home in the first place.

So it was with mounting interest that I saw a word I never expected to see in South East Asia: snow. There, repeatedly on signs leading to the east coast town ofKota Bharu, were the words "snow wash".

SNOW WASH. Snow Wash! SNOW WASH.

In different letters, different colours and different sizes, here were words I could not explain, advertising who-knows-what that I couldn't explain, either. And as Theroux wrote in his latest book, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, travel writing is about jumping to conclusions.

So, my conclusions...

A man ordered a snow wash, just because he was curious. Out came men dressed as elves and treated him to one. Those nasty little midgets took the man out at the knees and dragged him to a snow bank, which was carefully preserved in the back. They tossed him in, pulled him through and left him standing on the other side, shivering and miserable. He was no longer curious.

A man ordered a snow wash, just because he was curious. Out came five lovely Malaysian girls, dressed in robes of white and iced blue, to dance a ceremonial snow fall, or what they imagined one to be. They twirled and swayed and drifted around the man. He left thoroughly enchanted and ready to move his entire life to Malaysia.

A man ordered a snow wash, just because he was curious. A Malaysian stepped from out of nowhere and pasted him in the back of the head with a snowball. The man had snow trickling beneath his shirt collar. He was no longer curious.

Sadly, the facts were a lot less exciting than my conclusions dictated.

I fell into conversation with Kisham, a restaurant owner in Kota Bharu. His English was rather good so I asked the question.

"I gotta know. What's a snow wash?"

"It's a car wash," he laughed. "They have a big tube [Kisham here braces his hands as if holding the tube] that shoots soapy foam. It looks like snow."

Oh. All of my imagined explanations - the elves, the lovely girls, the snowball - and I end up with "it's a car wash."

Travellers like to feel that they're experiencing something new, seeing something that nobody ever would at home. They like to feel they're having an adventure and living to tell about it. The explanation of snow wash was something of a disappointment, entirely lacking any sense of drama.

That said, I satisfied my curiosity and learned something new: Malaysians describe foamy soap as snow.