This vacation I will wear white

My life as a backpacker was a lot of things. Exhilarating. Challenging. Sometimes lonely.  

But not clean. 

I was a very dirty backpacker — like, actual filth — and not by choice. 

Basic hygiene can be hard to come by when you’re sleeping on overnight buses, bus station benches, or saggy mattresses in moldy hostels. It’s even more difficult if you visit some of the places where I traveled, where water was precious. 

I became a master of the bucket bath, which involves the same kind of bucket you’d use to build a sandcastle at the beach, plus just enough water to fill that bucket, and a small ladle or measuring cup. Here’s how it works: Dump a cup of water over your body, soap yourself, then rinse with another cup of water.

 

Some towns were simply out of water, so bathing wasn’t an option at all.  By the time I arrived in Villa Tunari, Bolivia, the town hadn’t had flowing water for weeks. In Arba Minch, Ethiopia, the townspeople said they hoped to see water any day. Two days later, I looked like Pigpen in a Peanuts strip and lost all hope.

When showers were available, they often weren’t comfortable. Some were cold enough that my lips turned purple and my body shook; others were so hot I thought my skin would blister.

Laundry became the height of luxury. About once a month I brought my dirty clothes to a real laundromat, but in between I rinsed my clothes in sinks. As I dunked, soaked, and swirled the fabric, the water turned a murky brown, like making mud tea.

If you travel slow enough, you take on a bit of each place you visit, and the things I wore were proof.

 

I didn’t really envy the tourists I encountered — the ones who stepped out of air conditioned vehicles, took selfies and trotted through museum tours before they were whisked to another location — but I admired how they looked. 

They were crisp. They were clean. I bet they smelled nice. They wore WHITE.

My clothes were dingy, dark tees and khaki hiking pants, clothes designed to camouflage grime as I absorbed the world. But those tourists were confident in their fuck-it-all white. They moved through the world as though nothing could soil them, as though there was laundry service waiting for them at the end of each day (because … well, there was).

Sometimes they even wore linen, which is a fabric I just don’t understand. Some people can pull it off. Me? I look like a crumpled Kleenex.

White clothing is something I always notice when I look at travel photos now, and I say that as someone who stalks a lot of travel accounts on Instagram. More than a magnificent hotel backdrop or a gorgeous cocktail hoisted in the air, a white shirt screams opulence. You’ve achieved a level of travel luxury that I never have.

 

 

 

But wait. All of this is about to change.

This summer I’m taking another journey. I’ve worked very hard and saved to be able to take my son to Southeast Asia.

When I traveled through Thailand and Cambodia before as a solo backpacker, I daydreamed about what it would be like to make that same trip as a mother. I was curious how it would shift the dynamic when I met people, how they would respond to me as a mom, how my child would respond to them. So it’s not an exaggeration to say this is a trip I dreamt about long before I ever gave birth. 

I’m going to bring my son to the elephant sanctuary where I volunteered. I’m going to show him how to kneel and pray in the temples that made me weep. I’m going to give him bowls of slurpy noodles and let monkeys jump on his head. We are going to get filthy. 

This time around I’ve budgeted enough to pay for laundry service as we go. And you can bet the first thing I’m packing is a crisp, white shirt. (And a white dress. And a white bikini.) I want to travel in white just this once, to have a taste of something I’ve never had before.

But not linen. Screw linen.