Showers Or Baths?

I have never really given a thought of how we wash ourselves. It just comes automatically. I needed soap and lots of water to clean myself from head to toe. Period. Shower or bath, whatever. In my own language there's only one word for washing, mandi.

But since I came to England and live in sort of old-style British flat with only a bath and no shower, I started thinking - Big difference. Big cultural and even language difference.

For me and my 9-year-old son, having a bath tub with two separate taps, hot and cold, and no shower, was a big puzzle. We enjoyed bubble baths for a month. It was our dreams come true. Bubble baths had always been a luxury we had when we travelled and fortunate enough stayed in a star hotel.

After a month of bubble baths everyday, I felt really filthy. I needed water, clean water, to run down the dirt from my soapy body. How did the British, in the old days as well as nowadays, wash themselves?

We finally came for a solution. A very traditional Indonesian way of washing, using bucket and little pan we called gayung. There's no English word for gayung, I've checked the dictionary, for there are no such thing known to the Anglo-Saxon culture. But my son and I made it.

I finally feel clean enough the way I always liked it. Here is our hybrid tribal Indonesian and British washing ritual. Hop into the bath tub. Fill the bucket with both cold and hot water until we got the right temperature. Scoop the water with the gayung [we use small plastic measuring pan], wet ourselves. Soap the body from head to toe. Then finally rinse with clean water from the bucket with gayung.

It's far from simple. But I had my peace thinking that I don't waste water as I was with having the whole tub filled and I don't have to soak in my own dirt.
I thought my family was the only crazy people in England who thought about this thoroughly, until I heard a talk in BBC 2 radio, one Saturday morning. They were talking about shower and bath, the American and British way of washing.
Uh-uh! So there it is, the Americans use shower and they feel clean because they don't have to soak in their own filthy water. The Britons like bath because how would they clean their toes in the shower when they have to stand on their feet? Good point!

I don't have to go into detail of Indonesian traditional way of washing. Enough to be said that we use a bucket and a gayung. That's the way it has always been for ages in villages. Although my parents have shower in their big-city house, I could do with traditional Indonesian kampoeng (village) of washing.
Still I wonder. How do Britons living in old-style houses or flats wash without shower?

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(Originally posted on Chevening website www.chevening.com on August 2006)