Bathing 101

 

Bathing is a public affair

A critical part of mountain travel was village style bathing. One would think that by our mid to late 20s we would have known how to take a bath by ourselves, but sadly, such was not the case.

One of the great things about living in America is that bathing is a private affair. We go into a small room with only hot and cold running water for company. All alone, we disrobe, lather up, rinse, and repeat. We’ve been doing it alone since Mom got fed up and said "do it yourself." It was all I knew and I have to say, it’s a good system.

But it wasn’t the system in the mountain villages of Thailand. First off, we were never alone. There were no small rooms within or even in the vicinity of a village home. Outhouses for toilets were few and far between and didn’t exist at all in many villages. There was also no running water either hot or cold anywhere in the house or anywhere outside. In fact, a big part of the purpose of the Irrigation Project we were joining was to provide village water sources so outhouse style toilets might be more possible and practical.

With no outhouse, bathroom and/or water source one might assume the Karen people skipped the whole bathing routine. But that would be very wrong. The Karen, like everyone we met in Thailand were dedicated bathers, maybe even taking a couple baths per day. If there was any doubt, the evidence was plainly visible as bathing was and often still is a public event.

Instead of going into a small room for privacy, all the disrobing, re-robing and even washing and drying were accomplished with all due modesty under the cover of a pha ka ma (sometimes translated as a Thai loincloth) for a male and phasin (a long skirt) for women. The technique is while clothed, wrap the pha ka ma around your waist and tuck it in so it stays in place. Remove what ever needs removed under the pa ka ma, make sure the pa ka ma is still tucked in so no accidents occur, then make your way to what ever creek, river, spring or well serves as a water source for that particular village.

For women, its basically the same thing though the pha sin would have to be raised high enough to

Marcia modeling her elastic topped phasin and
doing some laundry before bath time

cover the upper levels of the female anatomy. Not as adept at the fold over and tuck technique as the village residents, Marcia eventually used elastic around the top of her phasin to hold it in place.

Maybe it is liberating to change clothes in the midst of lots of people while chit chatting with them but it takes a little getting used to. Pha ka mas are also made for Thai sized waist lines so I found I was a little short on cloth to make a full wrap around with a good, solid tuck and no revealing slit up the leg. Eventually, I started using a larger Burmese style “longyi” that could be sewn up to eliminate any leg slit and had enough cloth to tuck in firmly.

Pha Gay Htoo and Ginda at the
village bath site.

Once disrobed, but under the cover of a pa ka ma or phasin, it was time to head to the water. Sometimes it was close by but other times it was a hike. Since bathing was the goal, foot wear to get to the bathing spot was generally flip flops. I find flip flops fine for dry feet and if the terrain is not too steep and gravelly. But I slip out of them easily once they are wet and muddy and around the water hole, it was always wet and muddy. It’s usually steep and rocky on the way to and from the water hole too. So I am glad there are no videos (that I know of) of me walking to and from the bathing spot, sliding in the flip flops while trying to keep the pha ka ma together.

Water hole quality also varied. Some were quiet little babbling brooks. Others were rivers. As might be expected, the larger the body of water the more people and creatures would be using it. There was some agreement it seemed, that the water buffalo, pigs, dogs, etc. would use the water downstream of where the people were bathing but I’m not sure the members of the animal kingdom were always aware of the rules.

Water buffalo spectators at the water hole

In any case, there was generally some company at the bathing spot. In some cases, we were told that
Marcia was the first white woman to ever visit their village so she drew a crowd. The village kids in particular were fascinated by the tall, awkward white people trying to take a bath and wrestle pha ka mas and phasins in their creek. People would line the banks above the creek watching our every move. Hopefully, the pha ka mas and phasins did their job and it was never fully revealed just how white we really were.

At one of the Baw Gaew Clinics, I was still getting used to bathing in public. But it was past time to take a bath and with all the doctors, nurses, dentists, volunteers and visitors, the mission house bathroom wasn’t available. But there was a pond across the road that remained from a former tin mining operation. It looked inviting on a hot day.

So loaded with all my bathing paraphernalia, I headed to the pond. There was a place to get into the water, just next to the path that everyone was using to go to and from the clinic at the mission house. No problem. No one was paying particular attention to me. I was used to the idea of changing clothes in public and I’d even brought swim trunks to use while actually wet. What could go wrong?

So, I disrobed under the pha ka ma and tossed it aside on the ground. I hopped into the water in my swimming trunks, enjoyed the water a bit and got a full-fledged bath to boot. I came out of the water and dried off. Grabbing the pa ka ma, I did the wrap and tuck so the pa ka ma would stay in place and took off the swimming trunks ready to dry off and put on my street clothes underneath the pha ka ma.

Bathing or playing? It's good either way.

It was all going according to plan until I started to feel a painful, sting. First one sting, then a couple more, then within seconds I had stings all under the pa ka ma. All that anatomy where the sun doesn’t shine was being stung and it genuinely hurt. My first instinct was to grab the pha ka ma and fling it off and run away. But then I saw the constant flow of people walking to and from the clinic and thought a more measured response was in order. So I looked down at the pha ka ma and noticed it was covered with black ants that had pointy back ends apparently armed with potent stingers. Turns out I had tossed my pa ka ma on top of an ants’ nest and the ants were mad and making me pay! I wound up brushing off as many ants as I could see then worked on squishing the remaining ants as they stung me under the pha ka ma. All the while I was making faces and doing a strange dance to the wonder, interest and bewilderment of all the people walking by.

We had cross cultural training before coming to Thailand but we must have missed the lesson about checking for stinging ants before tossing the pha ka ma on the ground. But after that particular bath at Baw Gaew, it was a lesson I never forgot.