Thai family life bathing

It was pretty strange to have a family around me after traveling alone for so long

It was like discovering a strange tribe, a tribe that had rituals, close relationships and mutual dependency - all the things that I wasn’t accustomed to.

On second thoughts maybe traveling the backpacking way has its rituals too. Most backpackers get out of bed - or their sleeping bags - shower, put on their clothes, make tentative plans for the day, at about the same  time each day.

Thai bathing - the jar system

Thai people, at least poor Thai people like this, didn’t take showers. Showering was for relatively prosperous backpackers who could afford to stay in hotels - even cheap backpacking hotels had showers.
These people bathed by pouring water over themselves, which they scooped from a big jar that was stored on the porch of their homes. For privacy, they kind of loosely wrapped their clothes around themselves, held the clothes at a distance of about a foot from their bodies, and poured water over their bodies.

Thai bathing - the river system

Or they bathed in the river, if it was nearby (the river was called the ‘klong,’ which I believe  really means ‘canal.’) These people bathed on the porch, they didn’t seem to bathe in the klong.
It’s possible that only the people who lived on the edge of the klong or just a few yards away from it bathed in it.
The water in the jars was rainwater, the jars were filled when it rained. I don’t know what happened if it didn’t rain for a few weeks, it seemed to rain every few days so the problem didn’t arise.

Thai bathing health and safety issues, if any

So technically, and from a health and safety point of view, it was stagnant water.
I had only a vague idea of health and safety issues as far as bathing in stagnant water was concerned but I guessed that it probably wasn’t very healthy.
On the other hand I did have a certain resilience, a certain resistance to disease and infections. At least I believed that I did. I had lived in the tropics and sub-tropics for quite a while and believed - rightly or wrongly, that being exposed to these conditions gave me some immunity from diseases and infections.
So rightly or wrongly (from a health point of view,) I bathed the Thai family way, in rainwater aka stagnant water with a sarong wrapped around myself.
In photo: the kids in my Thai family