Live in the Philippines

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Taking a shower in public

Philippine Culture, Video / by

When I first moved to the Philippines, I was a bit shocked when I saw people actually taking a shower in public.

A few weeks after I moved to the Philippines, I was going to go to a small town about an hour drive away, along with another expat friend of mine.  His name is Mike.  Mike picked me up in the morning at quite an early hour.  After we had driven out of town, about 30 minutes from town or so, Mike told me that when he drove out in this area he liked to go at the same time each trip, and it was at a very early hour.  I was a little puzzled, so I asked Mike why he did that.

Mike replied to me that along the route, coming up pretty soon, there was a place along the roadside where a quite beautiful young lady took a shower at the same time every day!  Ha ha… I was looking forward to passing by that area, and Mike made sure that he kept us safe, by driving quite slow.  Of course the real reason why Mike would slow down was to offer a better chance to view the “scenic” wonders of the area!

Well, after we drove by, I quickly learned that “taking a shower” might not be quite the scenery that I had been expecting.  Mike had a good laugh, and we continued on with our day.

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      • Bob,

        Yup that’s how we shower in the Philippines. We shower with our clothes. I Kinda miss it tho. I took my hubby to Bohol in 2010 and my cousin shower were broken so we had to use the tabo( Kabu in Bisaya) and oh boy! You should have seen him shivering and whining like a baby because the water was as cold as ice. It was fun!

        Nice post Bob.

        Aurora

        • Thanks Aurora. I am already used to taking a cold shower… our water heater broke a couple of years back, and we just left it that way, because the cold water is fine with us. 😉

          • Hey Bob,
            I’m surprised–you used to hate taking a cold shower you used to say. You can get used to it it’s true.
            I remember your funny post once about your neighbor at your other house who used to shower in her yard next door. haha

            I couldn’t seem to access this video, but I’ll post the boys that we’ve been following lately as they experience taking a shower outside in public.
            I hope it’s not one in the same.

            http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9xm8_d9MdE

            • Hi Queenie, same video. 😉

              You are right, I used to hate a cold shower, but I am used to it now.

              I had forgotten about that lady next door to our old place, ha ha, thanks for the reminder.

              Hope you are having a nice weekend.

  2. When I first went to the Philippines the house I lived in was in Santa Maria, it was in the Jungle and we had a pump like this, I had to fill up 5 5 gallon pales to supple enough water for the day, then in Santa Ignacia we had city water but also had a pump like this to use for utility water for laundry and cleaning…but mostly the water was cold so we had to heat the water up with a small electric water unit and pour it over your head, usually took a 5 gallon bucket of warm water and some cold to take a good shower…most of the toilets had to be flushed with water from a bucket, but I loved it and tend to move there in the near future…will be looking for a new wife…young and beautiful….

  4. Thanks Bob, I went out there is 99 and got married, my wife abandoned me in 09, I had bought a new town home in General Trias, Cavite and all I put into the marriage is gone, too expensive to fight. I am waiting for her to get the annulment done and then I can go out there again…but I keep the faith..thanks again…

  6. my first trip in january, 1990, my future wife told me we were going to take a bath outside at the well and i had visions of getting naked outdoors, lol. nothing better than a cold water shower to cool your body off. to this day, i never take a hot shower in the philippines.

  8. I used to go for an early morning motorcycle when i first arrived here. I would go at first light when there was no traffic and the air was cool. I had to stop that routine because in my area the ladies take their shower on the side of the road where the water pipe is and for the most part they do not wear anything at all. i decided that their need for privacy outweighed my need for a joyride in the cool of the morning so now I don’t leave before 7:30 am when I take my stepson to school. The one thing that I have totally been unable to adapt to is a cold shower . the one thing that was easiest and most pleasant to adapt to is My wife bathing me from head to toe as if i were not capable of doing it myself!

  9. Bob;
    I have the on demand water heater in my shower, and use it during the months of December and January. The rest of the year It’s seldom on (Except prolonged rainy days) But I’ve discovered that the water gets a funny smell from the heating coils if not used for a time, so now I take one hot shower a week. My wife has no use for the water heater, and jokes with me about it.

    • Hi Paul – I take a hot shower on occasion, but not often. When I want to take a hot shower, I just boil up some water and add it to the water bucket until the bucket of water reaches the temperature that I want. I doubt that I do that more than about once per year, though. 😉

  10. But what do you guys do for sanitation for cleaning dishes and the like—or just use chlorine or quat solution ?

    • The hot water that comes from the tap is not nearly hot enough to make dishes sanitary. That is a misconception. Cold water and soap work just fine.

  11. I wish the government inspectors and the medical field here in the US felt that way. On my contract the wash soap water better be 110 and the rinse water 170 and if it can’t be 170 it has to be properly chlorinated or other chem sanitizer. FDA food code.

    • Been living here for 13 years. Been washing dishes with cold water the whole time. Never been sick from it. I know of nobody, expat or local, who has hot water for dish washing. I also know of no outbreaks of sickness from it.

  13. Hi Bob, In Ormoc they have a water pipe continuously running and was amazed to see people especially women washing naked, it did not seem to worry them at all, i don’t think i could do that though,haha
    And as for cold water showers, which i am not used to, well it took me about 3 to 4 days to get used to showering that way, but now, i don’t think i could go back to having a shower with hot water, i find it very refreshing..

    • Hi Mel – Hmm.. all the women are showering naked up on Ormoc? I’ve been thinking of coming up to Ormoc for a visit! 😉 just joking…

      Like you, Mel, I really do find a cold shower refreshing and reinvigorating!

  14. I always make sure the hotels I stay in while visiting Philippines have working hot water. Lately those hang on the wall instant hot water heaters seem to be becoming quite popular. I think I priced one on my last visit and they are selling for somewhere around 6000 peso. I was once in a situation there when I really did have to ” attempt ” a cold water shower. I did not find it very comfortable at all. One of my filipino friends commented ” here, at least we can feel the water “. I just thought to myself ” yeah right “. Never again for me at least if I can help it. LOL

    • Hi Bob, I guess one feels “cleaner ” showering with hot water than cold and personally I like hot water but am getting used to the cold water now. My question is, does your body gets cleaner using hot water than cold?

  15. As long as I have water for a shower, I’m fine. Oh yeah it’s cooler than what I was used to in the States, but I feel so much more refreshed and clean when I finish.

  16. I still remember my early years of living in the congested streets of Manila in the late sixties and early seventies. The local fire department will periodically turn on the fire hydrant in my street, complete with fire hoses, when the outside temperature became unbearably hot and the occasional wind start kicking up the dust all over the place. The firemen will spray the dusty street down and leave the water on for a couple of hours for the kids to play in and the local residents to take the opportunity to wash their clothes, refill their water containers, and bathe.

    I still vividly remember this wide open space not too far away from the fire hydrant. Someone ingeniously dug a hole on the soft ground, perhaps about eight feet in diameter and about four to five deep in the middle, complete with a canal that allowed the water to funnel into it. This hole became a community cesspool for everyone to swim in. It didn’t matter how dirty the water got and no one seemed to care. There were a few occasions when one of the older kids would turn on the fire hydrant illegally to flush out the dirty water out and refill the cesspool with clean water, which some of local firemen gladly condoned because they lived in the same neighborhood and their own kids were swimming in it. Ahhh…those were the days.

      • Julia – While I disagree with Julius’ opinion on this, he if free to state his opinion here. Your response goes a little over the line.

      • (Please delete my exact earlier post for grammatical errors)

        Bob (Julia, read this one before you rant and rave–you might learn something):

        Thank you for your open-mindedness in accommodating my difference in opinion, even if most of the followers on this forums cannot or refuse to understand where I’m coming from, and the fact that we had shared a common interest–and eventually developed a bond as writers– when I was a columnist for your site.

        To this day, I still consider you a friend, in spite of the fact that we’ve grown apart over the years and the events that have transpired over the last few days. The current followers of your blog will never understand why you had invited me as a writer in the first place, nor my unique perspectives from having been raised in the United States, my reasons for moving my young family to the Philippines and raising them there, and the dynamics of the Filipino mindset and the reasons why foreigners fell in love and decided to live in the Philippines.

        Your earlier columnists (Kevin Smith, Dave Starr, and Klaus) and followers (Ron Lefleur, Zois, and Bill Huff) were very understanding and supportive of what I was writing about when I was your columnist, even if they couldn’t picture the depth of my material at first and it went against their own beliefs. In due time everyone realized each other’s uniqueness, and that there are people out there who are just as happy and normal, even if they’re not buying into the majority’s viewpoints or notions just because it’s popularly the status quo.

        I left your blog because I had too much on my plate with my overseas work, family matters to tend to, and my own blog to build. Each time I tried to rejoin the LiP family (and there had been many occasions) by submitting a new article, I’ve became more and more estranged not by your past and current columnists (they’ve managed to stay professional enough to remain objective and stay out of the triviality), but the kind of readers following your blog. These followers are critical of viewpoints that do not match or are not proliferative of their beliefs and views about the nature of Filipinos living in the Philippines or other parts of the world, and the foreigners who have ties with the Philippines and its people.

        As now an outsider, I know I’m offending you when I say that your site have become homogenous in its thinking, refusing to accept differences of opinions that contrast or challenge the status quo; refusing to accept that things are not always as they seem just because everyone has bought into the same notion; that no one dares to state a difference of opinion, for fear of repercussion or ostracization; that everyone says basically the same thing to reinforce each other’s beliefs and views— and often stroke each other’s ego. I think I’d proven that with my posts and the backlashes I received as a result. I hope you’ll understand, my friend, that these are the reasons why I will never feel welcome in the LiP family again.

        Julius

        • Julius – differing opinions are posted every day.

          I am sorry that you don’t feel that you are welcome here. I have not seen anybody ask you to leave. People are only arguing their opposing opinion, which proves that people here are not afraid to give opinions which are different from others. Frankly, I feel that your feeling of not being welcome here is unwarranted.

  17. I’m also in the cold shower camp. Though I prefer a bucket & dipper to stepping under a cold spray. My Mother-in-Law’s farm house has a water heater in the indoor CR. she also has a CR and a roomy shower in the far corner of the dirty kitchen. When all of the stateside family are visiting folks wait for a hot shower. I just head out to the old one outside.

    The only “public” showering I’ve done is in the river while we were camped at our ranch. Now that we have a well & pump on the property, we just use that. I suppose that we’ll have a small water heater when the house is built. But I think it will be mostly for visitors comfort.

    I do see the appeal of a warm shower during rainy season. And I take advantage of the hot water in the hotel in Manila. Maybe that’s because I’m freezing in the air conditioned room!

    Take care,
    Pete

  18. Ahh the Filipino shower,
    My first visit in 2010 I tried to take a cold shower for a couple of days only cleaning the essential (stinky) body parts. At that time we were staying in Quezon City with the family. On about the third day I was in the CR and my girlfriend burst in and grabbed the dipper, filled it with cold water, dumped it over my head and said something to the effect of, this is the way we do it here! I got the message! I think she was acting on a suggestion from a family member! Now when I visit, I’m used to the routine, a cup of instant coffee, a couple pandesol (misspelled I think), and an invigorating cold shower and I’m ready for the day!!

      • Hi Sir Stevec It should be PANDESAL not PANDESOL hehehe.. thanks for trying =)

        FYI = if I’m not mistaken the word “PAN DE SAL” came from Spanish word which means “SALT BREAD”

        Have a nice weekend everyone 😀

  20. Hi Bob,
    Reminds me of my Boy Scout days camping, oh what fun !
    Bathing in the river and washing the dishes in river water, ha ha i survived, i’m still here.
    The modern western world has become far too sanitized, no wonder so many people suffer allergies these days.

  21. The cold water shower is nice! It wakes you up early. I sent a campers solar shower over to my father in law and he fills it up every night before bed and hangs it in his coconut tree all night he says it is nice and warm by 9:00 am. He has asked for 3 more for lolo and Lola and extra for him…

    • Hi Dirk – I find that if I wait until around mid day to shower, the water is often warm just from sitting in the hot pipes out in the sun! 🙂

  22. Bob,
    I can tell you my experience of taking cold shower if you can call it that? My second time in the RP with my ex wife there we went to her fathers house which was in the boonies they didn’t have running water just a well, needless to say I’m taller the average filipino so their stall was made for them not me, i was sticking out a bit like almost half my body had gotten two big buckets of well water and bar of soap! as i was lathering up i notice the neighbors were watching me take a bath i know they was laughing inside at me but it didn’t bother me any i just keep on washing up pouring the water from clean tube over me until i was clean. lets just say it was different and probably will not be the last time I’ll have to take bath like that in my life time. What can i say you gotta do what you gotta do right!

  23. Sweet, now that most posters have moved on I can recount my experience. I will never forget my first encounter with a Philippina having a shower, it was the next morning after I arrived in the Pines in early 2007. My new girlfriend and I were staying at the Shangri La in Manila. She woke me up and called me to show her how to get the bath going. No probs, i turn on the taps and away she went. The only thing I found a bit strange was that she still had her clothes on. Shorts, t-shirt undies the lot? Oh, she also complained that the water was not cold?