Facing the Bal-rok

WARNING: THIS POST IS EVEN MORE GRAPHIC AND DISTURBING THAN USUAL. Please turn back now.


In the movie 'The Untouchables', Sean Connery teaches us that the only way to succeed against the mafia is to make yourself do what the other guy won't. "He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That's the Chicago way." It's the same in Asia - except without the guns, mafia, violence, bootlegged liquor or award-winning dialogue. If you are to function out in the everyday world (ie. outside Nichada Thani) you have to occassionally force yourself to do things that you would like to think are beneath you. You must submit to things that, weeks earlier, would make you want to run, or wretch, or worse. You do it, and you go about your life and you think 'I guess that wasn't so bad, as long as I don't have to do it again anytime soon!'

And so it was that one afternoon I found myself in the National Library, completely unaware that I was about to undergo such an experience. While reading a dissertation on the meaning of public monuments in Thailand I felt a sort of rumbling within. This was not the happy, Winnie-the-Pooh, 'I'm so rumbly in my tumbly' sort of feeling, either. No, it was the sort of rumbling you dread when you're far away from home. It was fire down below. It was the sort of feeling that comes from eating a lot of spicy foods, and riding in Bangkok taxis, and constantly being in an unsanitary environment. For a moment, I felt the sort of insane fear that Dutch colonists must have felt when they realized Krakatoa was about to erupt. There was really no reason to panic. Every floor in the library has a men's room. But I knew what was waiting for me in that Men's room. I knew it as surely as Gandalf knew what awaited the Fellowship of the Ring in the Mines of Moria. And I knew I would have to face it.

Now I knew I couldn't head into battle with such a powerful adversary, one that had bested me on so many previous occassions, without a suitable weapon. I headed out of the library looking for a store that would sell me some kleenex, tissue...hell, I would have even settled for a newspaper. I finally found an open restaurant that had a case of toilet paper stacked up on top of its small Coca-Cola refridgerator. I'm pretty sure they didn't intend to sell it, because the owner seemed unsure what to charge me. Fortunately, in Thailand everything is for sale once you find the right price, and this was no different. I was grateful that this cottage capitalist did not realize the urgency of my demand. If she had demanded I purchase the entire case for twice what is was worth I would gladly have complied rather than walk away empty-handed. As I hurried back through the gate into the library complex, with my roll in hand, I could feel smoke beginning to billow out of the volcano. I knew an eruption was imminent. I raced up the stairs to the second floor men's room, opened the stall door and sure enough - there it was. My arch-nemesis: the bedae.

Many of you have never used a bedae. Imagine if you will a small white porcelain basin only slightly elevated off the floor with built-in foot pads on either side. To the right you have a large plastic tub of water with a dish inside. There is also a small hose extending out of a faucet on the wall. And with these meager surgical tools they expect you to perform one of life's most discreet operations. I took a deep breath, shut the door behind me and prepared to compete in the 'squat and thrust' event.

Like everything else in the country, the bathroom stall and the bedee itself are Thai-sized. It's extremely important to stay properly balanced in order to avoid soiling one's clothing, and it doesn't help that my size thirteen shoes are hanging off the edge of this precarious perch. I had to slam both hands against the walls in order to steady myself. This made an inordinate amount of noise (if there were any people next to me they probably thought I was giving birth). Finally, with my seat upright and my traytable locked in position I was ready for take-off....

KABLAAMO!

Only after inspecting my clothing and finding it unsullied did I experience that wave of relief that normal accompanies such a procedure. But I knew that I was only half-done. Thai fixtures do not have super powerful flushing action, so it requires a certain amount of manual labor to force the - unpleasantness - down the pipes and into the waiting canals. I turned on the faucet and as the large plastic tub filled with water I tried to relax by pretending I was somewhere else.

No doubt the bedae realized I was getting the upperhand, because it took the fight to another level. As I pictured the beaches of Kra Bi, with the white sand and surf, I suddenly realized it was high tide there in the restroom. The tub had a large hole in the side and water was leaking out onto the floor as quickly as it came out of the faucet. Without thinking, I picked up the tub and attempted to empty it into the bedae. Now that I was holding the tub, water sprang out of the hole onto my shorts and t-shirt. Meanwhile, water was also still pouring out of the faucet onto the floor. It was complete chaos. Reflecting back on this incident, it's difficult to say for sure whether the waste was actually flushed down the pipes, or if the resulting flood simply washed it into another stall or perhaps towards a drain somewhere in the corner of the bathroom, but when I got the water completely turned off and gathered myself, it was gone. That was enough for me.

I emerged from the stall with water all over the front of my shorts and t-shirt - I can only imagine what the other people in there must have thought. But I was now ready to go back to my research, content that I would not be visiting these facilities again, at least until I was home. I had taken the bedae's best shot and was still standing. It pulled a knife, I pulled a gun. And that's how we do things here in Thailand.

(Well, not Kaddi or the kids...mostly just me.)