Cool Waters, Coiled Shapes

Earthen tubs like the one in the picture were once common fixtures in most houses. Three feet high and with an equally wide brim, they had a dragon etched on the outside. The tub served many purposes, but in homes, it was mainly used to hold water for bathing. Even on the hottest tropical days, it kept the water cool.

Water is scooped from the tub with a dipper and poured over the body – sluicing is how it is described. No other way of bathing, whether soaking in a bathtub or standing under a shower felt as complete or refreshing.

Sluicing in the early morning after rising from the bed was a ritual that went beyond just cleaning the body. Each dipperful of water poured over the head was like a prayer, washing away the soul’s clutter. When modern plumbing brought bathtubs into homes, people only used them to hold water. The ritual continued.

Earthen tubs were also the main container to hold water in the bathrooms of Rest Houses. These establishments provided accommodation to civil servants, planters from the rubber estates and other travellers before hotels appeared in the country.  Most towns would have had at least one Rest House. They provided better housekeeping, and their restaurants were better than were found in cheap, often seedy accommodations atop shophouses.

In my early years in practice as a lawyer, I was assigned to cover cases in small towns around the country. The tedium of long drives, the strangeness of places and the delays and postponements of court hearings were allayed by the anticipation of the stay in a Rest House. The facilities were clean, the service excellent and they served some of the best food I have eaten. The Hainanese managers who ran these Rest Houses were known not just as reliable hoteliers, but as fine cooks who were masters in adapting every known cuisine in the country to Hainanese style. The chicken chop is a Hainanese invention that added chicken to the established repertoire of pork and lamb chops Their style of cooking was an easy blend of Indian, Chinese, Malay, and even Western flavours, adapted over generations to please any palate that passed through their doors.

Everything was what I had expected when I checked into the Rest House in Port Dickson late one evening to attend a case that was to be heard the next day in the town’s magistrate’s court. The bar was open, and the kitchen still took orders so I decided to delay going to my room until I had a few drinks before dinner and chatted with some of the people in the bar.

The room was clean and well-ventilated, the white linen was starched crisp and the mosquito netting covering the bed hung from ceiling to the floor.

The bathroom was a few steps below the room. There, under a tap, was the familiar earthen tub. Rising early, I walked down to the bathroom and turned on the tap over the tub to begin my bath. But just as I turned on the tap, I noticed something stir at the bottom of the tub. I thought a lizard or rat may have fallen into the tub and was about to look closer when I realised that it was a python, coiled tight, its scales faintly glistening, lying at the bottom. Disturbed by the water, it raised its head, its eyes looking into mine.

Fear took over and I took flight. With my towel wrapped hastily around my waist, I bolted up the stairs as fast as I could and ran along the veranda to the reception area.

“There is a snake in my room, there is a snake in my tub!” I stammered to the elderly man at the counter.

Without even glancing up, he just gave a casual shrug. “Oh, he has moved into your bathroom, ah?”  “Don’t worry”, he said. “He will get out of the tub and go away by the time you get back.”

I got back to my room alright, but not to the bathroom. I attended court that day without a bath or a shave.

I have been back to the same Rest House and other Rest Houses. One python in a tub was not enough to turn me away from the hospitality of Rest Houses, but I now approach large earthen jars with caution for there may be a cousin of the dragon etched on the outside of the jar sleeping inside the jar.