Latest / bit of a Rambler / 005 A Bidet to You

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005 A Bidet to You · bit of a Rambler

• 0:00
  Hello, my name is Kai and I am a bit of a rambler.
• 0:05
  I like to travel, learn and tell stories.
• 0:09
  If there is anything Americans got straight up wrong, any hill I'll die on, it is a top
• 0:14
  the fountain of hygiene that is the Bade.
• 0:18
  Bade's are actually no joke one of my favorite parts of living abroad and having lived abroad,
• 0:24
  so let's get into it as delicately as possible.
• 0:27
  What are Bade's?
• 0:29
  To make it simple, a Bade is a device that allows you to use water to clean yourself instead
• 0:34
  of your hands.
• 0:36
  Now that I only use Bade's, I am so upset that I spent the first couple decades of my
• 0:44
  life using my hand to remove my waste with absorbent paper as the only barrier, tissue
• 0:55
  paper, the only barrier between my hand and solid waste, dangling in the toilet bowl.
• 1:03
  That is gross to contemplate.
• 1:07
  But, Bade, you don't have to touch anything.
• 1:11
  Your hands are completely clean, you spray yourself and wash off and you're done.
• 1:17
  It is one of the biggest benefits of traveling and I mean that completely sincerely.
• 1:24
  My hands are always clean.
• 1:26
  I haven't made a mistake wiping and had to be like, "Oh, I got to wash extra good this
• 1:31
  time in 15 years, longer, a long time."
• 1:37
  That's just not on my mind.
• 1:39
  Now, when I shake people's hands, I'm like, especially Americans, I think to myself, "Oh,
• 1:45
  this person very recently touched their waste."
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  I can't not think about it.
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  It's kind of like if I were wearing clothes and walking around and everybody else was naked.
• 1:57
  So every time I met someone, it's not like I'm condemning them, but I do notice that they're
• 2:05
  naked every time I meet them and I'm wearing a full set of clothes.
• 2:09
  That's kind of how I feel whenever someone has me over for dinner and I go in their bathroom
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  and there's no Bade.
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  And then I shook their hand like 200 times, having known them already, or they handed me
• 2:24
  things so many times.
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  And I know that their hands were not as clean as we're all pretending they are.
• 2:31
  We all pretend in America that our hands are clean and they simply are not as clean as
• 2:38
  we pretend.
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  I know you wash your hands.
• 2:40
  That's great.
• 2:42
  But what is cleaner?
• 2:44
  Let's say you had to pick up dog mess with a paper towel or you had to use a wet wipe to
• 2:48
  clean your baby's bottom after when you're changing a diaper.
• 2:55
  Would it be cleaner after you had used your hands to wipe that stuff away?
• 3:00
  Or would it be cleaner if you had never touched any of that and just washed it away with water?
• 3:06
  Obviously the second one.
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  So yeah, it's not a crippling fear.
• 3:10
  I still shake people's hands.
• 3:13
  Please my cross to bear.
• 3:15
  It doesn't bother me that much to be honest, but I am always aware of it, especially if I'm
• 3:21
  in someone's house and I know they don't have a bidet.
• 3:24
  I'm like, that's too bad that they're constantly touching their waist.
• 3:29
  Even by proxy through tissue paper, it's not like tissue paper is foolproof or failsafe.
• 3:36
  You're going to touch your waist accidentally if you are using tissue paper, especially
• 3:41
  given the fact that tissue paper is absorbent and made to be terrible.
• 3:47
  It's rapidly gaining traction, I think especially in the past like 10 years or so.
• 3:52
  I think that's due to cheap economy flights and people have been moving around the world
• 3:56
  and they're like, oh, I don't have to touch my waist every day, multiple times a day.
• 4:02
  Why am I touching my waist multiple times a day?
• 4:04
  After you use a bidet the first time, it's pretty difficult to go back to touching your
• 4:09
  waist when you don't have to.
• 4:12
  Yes, you're using toilet paper, but there's a thin one to two layer of fiber between your
• 4:19
  hands and your waist and that fiber is very soft, absorbent.
• 4:25
  It rips easily and yeah, it's absorbent.
• 4:29
  I mean, once you don't have to go near your waist at all, most people choose not to go
• 4:36
  back to that.
• 4:38
  All the travelers I know who go to Thailand, they're like, okay, this is one of the best things.
• 4:42
  This is great.
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  It's of course shocking the first time because you're used to using paper or not in some
• 4:48
  countries and so you're not used to actually washing yourself after you use the toilet.
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  You're used to wiping a lot of it away or pulling up your pants and heading on your way, but
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  with a bidet, you actually wash yourself, which I think people that don't have a bidet
• 5:06
  are not used to.
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  They're only used to washing themselves in the shower or bath and especially their private
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  areas, they're only going to do that in a shower.
• 5:15
  But to me, using a bidet is just like how most people think of washing their hands after
• 5:21
  using the bathroom or washing their hands after sneezing into their hands or something
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  like that.
• 5:26
  If I sneeze into my hands, I don't feel clean after I wipe my sneezed on hands with a
• 5:32
  dry piece of paper.
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  I feel clean after I wash my hands off and it's the same thing with the bathroom.
• 5:39
  I don't feel exactly clean after I wipe away most of the waste with a dry piece of paper.
• 5:46
  I feel like I got most of the waste away, but I don't feel clean until I wash that area.
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  It's always shocking at first because you've never actually washed yourself if you haven't
• 5:57
  used a bidet before.
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  So you're not really clean.
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  Also your skin is absorbent and your skin has oils.
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  So when you wipe yourself with a dry towel, you're irritating your skin.
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  You're obviously wasting a bunch of paper and you're spreading, you're rubbing that waste
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  into your skin back on your skin.
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  You get up most of it away for sure.
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  Most of it is not there, but you aren't actually washing yourself.
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  If you use a bidet, you are washing yourself.
• 6:30
  I honestly think if there's any one episode I want people to listen to and take action
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  on, it is the bidet episode.
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  You have nothing to lose by being more hygienic.
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  Just try a bidet.
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  Give it a shot.
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  They're very cheap.
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  You can get one under $30.
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  There are some under $10 of, like, and they screw right into most sinks.
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  So you can just pop it on there and try it out and see if it works for you.
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  In fact, let's talk about the different types of bidets because if you haven't used one
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  before, then all the things I'm describing probably don't make a lot of sense.
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  So there are the completely hands-free kind.
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  They're the ones with all the buttons that are always a joke in a movie, which button do
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  I push and the water sprays everywhere.
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  But they're very sedate, efficient machines.
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  And the buttons are straightforward.
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  One says front, one says back, one says air.
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  Some of them have soap on them.
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  So you can get a really fancy one that has all of the functions.
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  And you just click the button that you use and you don't have to touch anything.
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  And then there are the handheld bidets, which is exactly what it sounds like.
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  It's a lot like the faucet sprayers that you have in your kitchen next to the regular
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  faucet.
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  There's like the hose and you push the button, then water comes out.
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  That's basically the same thing.
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  There's a few smaller holes that the water pressure is a little bit higher.
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  But most of them are adjustable.
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  There will be a lever and the further up you push the lever on the faucet or toilet gun,
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  as they're known a lot of the time in Asian countries, the higher the water pressure.
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  So you can adjust the water pressure to your comfort.
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  Wash yourself off, put it back in its holster next to the toilet, and you're clean.
• 8:15
  That's basically it.
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  There are hands-free bidets and there are handheld bidets.
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  The prices are every range.
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  You can go crazy and get like a $6,000 Japanese, whatever the hack, like with 50 different buttons
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  and its own dedicated, purified water line.
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  They do have those with the shampoo and everything.
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  Or you can get like $16, $11 on sale of handheld bidet, which I find very convenient.
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  And those ones can either just screw right into where your faucet is, or you can attach
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  them to the lines under your faucet and then you can adjust for the temperature as well.
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  So yeah, the prices go from $10 up to a few thousand, but it's so cheap to get started with
• 9:06
  a bidet.
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  And you can see how it works for you.
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  And it's so easy to detach those faucet attached ones as well.
• 9:13
  So if you really don't want to use it, you can just detach it and you're done.
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  I really think it's because people travel to places that already used bidets heavily,
• 9:21
  like Southeast Asia, that they're becoming so popular, so rapidly.
• 9:27
  But in the past 20 years, every country has started using bidets and even in the states.
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  It's not easy to track how many people exactly, and it's still low in the states.
• 9:40
  But we can track how many bidets are sold through companies, bidet companies who are proud
• 9:45
  to share their numbers because every year sales are going up 20%, sometimes 30%.
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  Because it's obvious, it's more hygienic, it's far less wasteful, it's much easier to
• 9:58
  use a bidet than to wipe yourself with dry paper.
• 10:02
  It's less irritable on the skin for sure.
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  It just makes more sense to have one after you've used it.
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  So most countries now, some percentage of them are using bidets and those numbers are just
• 10:15
  going up because it's just a device that makes everything simpler, cleaner and cheaper and
• 10:22
  less wasteful.
• 10:23
  I don't know what the downside could be to a bidet.
• 10:26
  That's an interesting question.
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  If you have an idea of what a downside to having a bidet is, go ahead and send it over to
• 10:35
  a bidet of a rambler@gmail.com.
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  But I'm not going to address any straight up obvious jokes.
• 10:43
  So if you have an actual question or an idea of what could be the downside, send serious
• 10:49
  tags so I know to address your question.
• 10:52
  Here's a fun statistic.
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  Americans have 4% of the world's population and use 20% of its toilet paper.
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  That's bananas.
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  But that number is going down and the number of bidets sold are going up.
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  There's good news as well.
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  I first started using bidets in Thailand and I didn't know what it was when I first saw it
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  and I used it to clean off my legs and feet because I was like, "Oh, that's weird that
• 11:17
  the shower is next to the toilet and low to the ground."
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  But I was like, "I guess I'll just rinse myself off."
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  And then I kept seeing them and I slowly put two and two together.
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  And I was in Japan and I had the opportunity to use the robot button ones and I just got
• 11:34
  to click a button and tell my robot anus cleaner to shoot that water up there, which is fine.
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  But I do like the handheld ones better myself.
• 11:46
  The only numbers I could find is that about 3 billion people today are using bidets.
• 11:52
  I don't know how accurate that is, but I do know that they're definitely becoming more
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  popular because I see more of them than I did 10 years ago in the countries I used to go
• 12:00
  to and I see more of them today.
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  And like I said, those bidet companies are giving us the data on their sales numbers and
• 12:07
  those sales numbers are going up 20% a year.
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  So that means that their sales are doubling every three years or so.
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  Now I think it's cleaner because you don't have to touch or waste it all.
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  So they've done studies because a lot of people think, "Okay, sure.
• 12:24
  It's nice to use water to clean myself, but am I getting any cleaner?"
• 12:29
  And yeah, scientifically, you're much cleaner by using a bidet.
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  There's literally 90% less fecal matter and bacteria on your hand using a bidet versus
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  using toilet paper.
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  PubMed National Institute of Health, there are plenty of studies that show exactly numerically,
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  that it's 10 times more hygienic to use a bidet than it is to use your hands and toilet
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  paper to clean your waste off of yourself.
• 13:01
  And I travel with one.
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  Most people don't do this, I'm sure.
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  But I have a nice stainless steel bidet with a very nice thumb lever to control the water
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  pressure and it fits on every sink that it's possible to attach to, which is most sinks
• 13:23
  in the world.
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  So I take this stainless steel bidet with me in a plastic bag and I screw it into the
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  faucet of every hotel or apartment or house that I visit that doesn't have a bidet.
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  And that's so...
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  It's such a comforting thing to know, "Oh, good.
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  I'm clean now."
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  I don't have to forego hygiene because I want to live in someone else's house.
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  Now if you've traveled and you haven't come upon the bidet yet, go to anywhere in Southeast
• 13:56
  Asia.
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  Like all the countries there use bidets regularly or Japan.
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  Like if you don't want to buy one yourself and you're traveling right now or maybe yeah,
• 14:05
  maybe you don't have a sink yourself and you just don't know where to buy them.
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  They sell them on the road in a lot of the Southeast Asian countries.
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  Now any store will just have a $5 attachment that you plug in and then it works.
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  But you can just travel and go do it.
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  You go to Thailand, you go to Vietnam, Cambodia, India, Japan, obviously.
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  You go to any of these Asian or Southeast Asian, not China, countries and they'll have...
• 14:33
  But day is right there and you can try them out and have 10 times less bacteria on your hands.
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  It doesn't remove 100% of the bacteria.
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  But this is kind of like when doctors started washing their hands in hospitals and infection
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  rates plummeted from 90% to like 7%.
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  They didn't get rid of all of them but it makes a massive improvement in hygiene.
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  But days are the same way.
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  They're...
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  Paradimicol.
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  They change the paradigm of hygiene for anyone who uses a toilet.
• 15:06
  Alright before I close this out with the travel recommendation.
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  Here is the secret bonus tip so that you can have a bidet literally anywhere.
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  When you're backpacking for months in countries that don't have running water so you can't
• 15:23
  hook up the faucet bidet I was talking about.
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  It's called the backcountry bidet or the bottle bidet or the water bottle bidet.
• 15:31
  So you can use an empty plastic soda bottle, any empty plastic bottle that is easier to
• 15:36
  squeeze the better while retaining its shape.
• 15:40
  Heat up one time of a fork so just get an old bad fork.
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  Bend out one time.
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  Light a lighter under it for 20 seconds.
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  It's hot enough.
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  Push just the tip of the time into the water bottle right below the flange below the cap.
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  So you don't have to take the cap off or anything.
• 16:01
  Just poke that hot fork time through so it makes a very small hole.
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  Maybe 2mm by 1mm.
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  That's all you need.
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  Now take off the cap of the water bottle, fill it up with water, put the cap back on, squeeze
• 16:16
  and you have a water bottle bidet.
• 16:20
  So you can take that with you anywhere, empty, fill it up at the sink, use a bidet when
• 16:25
  you use the bathroom.
• 16:27
  So now you have a bidet anywhere.
• 16:29
  You don't have to think about toilet paper ever again.
• 16:32
  This revolutionized my travel is specially backpacking where I just thought I was
• 16:38
  resigned to toilet paper until I realized that there must be a better solution and portable
• 16:46
  bidet searches led me to this bottle bidet.
• 16:49
  It works great.
• 16:52
  I always have one with me if I can't hook up my regular bidet.
• 16:57
  I cannot recommend the bottle bidet enough if you like to clean yourself hygienically.
• 17:04
  No touch, no must, no fuss.
• 17:07
  There's a very nice section of Thailand called Krabi with crystal clear beaches.
• 17:13
  It's far away from the tourists but it's easy to get to.
• 17:16
  And you can stay at the Krabi Pien Boutique House completely outfitted with handheld bidets
• 17:21
  as most Thai places are.
• 17:24
  It has a high rating, good reviews for $8 a day, $240 a month.
• 17:31
  You can move to a beautiful part of Thailand.
• 17:35
  And try out maybe update your hygiene practices.
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  I did.
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  I am so happy I did.
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  And I'm never going back to toilet paper.
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  [MUSIC]