Periods, Pools and Perspective

Went there for the 'gram

Once upon a time, I really wanted to visit the Szechenyi thermal baths in Budapest.

Call me bougie, but I've long had a fascination with baths and spas and other things that combine water and relaxation. Baths are really a thing of luxury in Singapore, considering most of us live in apartments with small toilets and we grew up being told that we had to save water because Malaysia could cut off our water supply any time. (Imagine taking a shower halfway and suddenly Malaysia declares war on SG. You'd die with suds still on your body!)

So, when I first found out about the baths on social media and I was mesmerised. The accents of yellow and blue, the water glinting under the sun. The fact that they looked straight from a scene from The Life of Pi. Such architecture! So bath!! Very history!!!

In fact, I was so determined to visit Szechenyi that I packed a bikini when I went on exchange in 2016. To UK. In winter.

Fast forward to April, and the weather was finally warm enough for a bikini. I found two other awesome girls from uni who were keen to go to Budapest. We scheduled an entire afternoon to spend at the baths and we even bought disposable razors from the corner store to shave off 4 months worth of armpit and leg hair accumulated over winter.

Our bodies were ready - or so I thought.


Instead, my uterus decided to shed its lining a day before our visit to the baths. I was devastated. Actually I am devastated nearly every time I get my period but that's a topic for another day. I wasn't great at using tampons back then, but I was so looking forward to Szechenyi that I had no choice. So I went back to get a box of the smallest tampons I could find (Playtex is great for beginners btw) from the same corner store we'd bought the razors.

You must be wondering why I spent 100 words just talking about my period. It is called context, and soon it will make you laugh. So please.

Anyway, spa day finally came, and me and the girls hurried excitedly to the Szechenyi Thermal Baths. We paid for entry and lockers, then made our way to the locker room.

This is when things started to go down.

The locker room was crowded, humid and pretty old, which I should've expected since the baths were built in the early 1900s. I don't know why I was surprised at all, but I also realise we don't have many buildings in Singapore that old. I mean we already freak out at HDBs that are 40 years old ya, don't talk about a 120 year-old swimming pool.

Just to give you some perspective, the locker room had the vibes of a Singapore public pool toilet circa 1990s. The kind your mum would change you quickly in before your swimming class but not want to spend a minute more in there, lest you caught some venereal diseases just by sitting on a wet bench with your bare bottom.

I saw a lot of saggy old titties while getting changed, then I went into a toilet cubicle to put in my tampon. Half of the cubicles were under renovation, so the queues were extra long for those with working toilets. And as I mentioned earlier, I wasn't any good at tampons back then. While I struggled with it in the dark and damp cubicle, other ladies knocked on the toilet door impatiently to try to get me to hurry up. Few of you will understand the horror of navigating your birth canal with people shouting at you at the same time. It was stressful, to say the least.

Alas, the tampon made it in me and I made it out the toilet! Even though we were off to a rough start, my friends and I were still excited about the baths that lay ahead. I imagined it would be like the prefect's toilet in Hogwarts with all its scented taps and steamy glory, but the reality turned out quite different.

Inside the main building were dozens of pools with varying temperatures and minerals, and inside these pools were many old white men with hairy chests, big bellies and tiny trunks. It was the trunks that were the most disconcerting.

Not quite knowing where to look, my friends and I huddled together, trying to ignore how we were fast becoming underwhelmed by the experience. Then I caught a waft of iron from my surroundings.

If you are a person with periods, you will understand my panic - I thought the smell was coming from my vagina. It was entirely plausible to me at the time that I had inserted my tampon wrongly and my blood was leaking into the whole pool.

After looking down and triple checking that the water around me was clear, I asked my friends if they smelled it too. They did, and we realised it was coming from a combination of the minerals in the water and the fact that the railings were rusting directly into the pool. Put off by the smell, we went to the outdoor pool to enjoy the rest of the afternoon.

Things were a little better outside. The cool air made the smell of the pools less noticeable and it was the first time my skin had seen the sun in months. We found a nice spot at the side of the pool and bobbed about for a bit, and that's when we all confessed that we all felt a little let down by the experience.

Instagram had made this place seem so magical but in reality, it was what it was: a bunch of sulfur-y baths in an old building. At the corner of our eyes, we saw a couple making out aggressively on the other side of the pool. We dared not to think about what was happening below the surface.

I used to be very into overexposure

I thought about this incident as I scrolled through insta the other day. If you were to go back to my feed in 2016, you'll see I still cared for ~aesthetics~. This was partially because I was looking into a career in social media, and because taking nice photos made me happy.

But the truth is, I wasn't happy. I had pictures in all these glorious locales, but inside I was hurting. Many changes were happening in my life and I hadn't yet learnt how to cope.

In the past year I've found myself struggling again. This time I can't even bring myself to curate my feed or crop and edit photos because that takes effort and I don't have any more of it to give.

Instead I scroll mindlessly through my friends' photos and see them taking stock of their wins at work, and flit through instastories of them hanging out in Bali. It is somehow always Bali. I feel a surge of envy, forgetting that that's just one side of their story.

I guess what I'm saying is that I'm learning not to compare their highs to my lows. Everyone has their own dingy, in-need-of-renovation locker room with broken toilets and saggy titties. Just because we don't show it, doesn't mean it isn't there.

In the end, my friends and I left the baths after just a couple of hours in. We'd given it a fair shot, but it just wasn't for us. Now, when I look back at my time in Budapest, it's the unphotogenic moments that have my heart: the night out in that unassuming local club that looked like a garage; the 3-course meal we enjoyed al-fresco for $15; sitting cross-legged on the Fisherman's Bastion, promising myself I'd bring a lover if I ever came back.

It's 2020 now. I no longer shave my legs or use tampons, among other things. May this also be the year I stop looking at life through Instagram.