I’m Thirsty!

 

Marcia on the trail wondering when she can
have a drink. Pha Muk Village.

I’m not sure when the focus of US health training began to zero in on hydration. All I know is that after being in Thailand for four years, we returned to the US and wherever we looked, everyone was carrying giant insulated cups punctuating every stroll or conversation with generous sips. Even in church, it wasn’t unusual to see church members with a Bible in one hand and an adult sippy cup in the other. Even now it seems we in the US are no longer thirsty, we just recognize our need to be hydrated.

Going to Thailand in the 1980s, I would have said I was reasonably fit and heat tolerant. My early post college work would often involve walking farm fields or forests for hours at a time and being relatively young, I didn’t even think that walking was any exercise at all. But I was from a flat corner of northeast Ohio and had rarely walked up a good hill let alone a mountain. Northeast Ohioans also thought it was occasionally hot and humid in the summers of the 1970s and 80s but I think, it was fairly mild compared to Thailand.

Going to Thailand and starting to walk the tropical mountains, villages on steep slopes and mountain
fields, we began to learn what heat and humidity was all about. Simply walking suddenly was a lot more exercise than I ever thought it was. Never dainty in my ability to perspire, Thailand taught me what genuine sweating was all about. I could soak through my clothes in no time at all and losing all that water soon taught me what being thirsty was all about.

Duane with Waw Hae and Dee Wah in a hill
rice filed. Mae Ha Khee

Early in our time in Chiang Mai, I remember we had a floor mat in the car melt to the floor. Sure, it was a cheap floor mat, but that represents impressive heat! Then I also remember an early village trip where we spent the afternoon walking through various rice paddy fields in the hot, dry sun. It wasn’t even the hot season but I had not yet learned to carry water and for the first time in my life, I was genuinely thirsty. I was so thirsty it seemed hard to swallow and it was getting hard to put one foot in front of the other. Of course, there were flowing streams and maybe irrigation ditches but nothing as far as drinkable water in the countryside or even in most villages. Also, this was all prior to the epidemic of bundled plastic water bottles that we see today. So when we finally got back to the village at the end of the day, it was hard not to guzzle the hot tea (boiling made the water OK) our host graciously provided.

Being a slow learner, it took several village trips before I learned I might not be quite as fit and heat tolerant as I thought I was. Eventually though, even without the hydration training that apparently was happening in the US, I decided it might be a good idea to carry some water along on village trips.