The Tale of the Disappearing Tabo

This is toilet talk.

I grew up in the Philippines and so I am so familiar with the ever ubiquitous “tabo” (dipper) in every CR (comfort room) or Filipino bathroom. This has been ingrained in our culture and for us, using the tabo when we use the toilet is the only considered and acceptable proper hygiene.

The tabo that I grew up with was not even a real dipper with a handle that you can buy in the market, but rather was an empty, sanitized, repurposed, 1-quart motor oil plastic cylinder that was common in the 1970’s. Or it could also be an empty half-gallon Magnolia ice cream plastic tub. Now, you can buy a simple plastic tabo, with a wide array of color, yet rather cheap from the palengke.

Several years ago, MUJI, a famous Japanese department store, came out with a very chic and quite expensive tabo that costs a couple of hundred of pesos. On its caption, MUJI wrote: “This is not your ordinary bath dipper; aside from its clean and simple design, the angle of its handle is designed to make it easier to scoop water with less weight on hand.” I guess we can be considered “sosyal” for we got our tabo from MUJI.

Needless to say, even if we have been living in America for several decades now, the use of the tabo has not disappeared in our daily life. For us, using the toilet paper alone is not clean and sanitary enough. When we would go on a trip and stay in a hotel here in the US, we always have a make-shift tabo – whether it is an empty plastic water bottle, or a large cup, or even the hotel’s ice bucket.

I have not been back in the Philippines for about 8 years. We planned on going home in 2020, but COVID happened and so the trip was cancelled.

Speaking of COVID, during that time, toilet paper became a sought after commodity in some countries including the US, that you can only buy a limited amount. Even policemen were seen guarding the stocks of toilet paper in some grocery stores (photo below) as some folks were hoarding them. I thought to myself, this would never happen in the Philippines as we don’t really need toilet paper, for we have the tabo.

A few weeks ago, we finally went back home to the Philippines.

The moment we landed in Manila, I have noticed that there is this “new trend” when I used the airport toilet. Since my domestic flight to Palawan for a medical mission would be the next day, we stayed overnight in a hotel nearby. Again I noticed this new trend in the hotel’s bathroom. Even the simple hotel where we lodged in Palawan had this device in their toilet, except for the one in the medical mission site (see previous post) which was basically a hole in the ground.

After Palawan, we travelled in other parts of the Philippines, which included a plane ride to Ilocos Norte to visit my relatives there, I noticed this trend again when we slept in a hotel in Laoag. Then we drove down from Laoag to my wife’s relatives in Vigan, Ilocos Sur, where we spent a few days and stayed in her niece’s newly built home, I noticed it in their bathroom as well. We also took a bus to Pampanga, where my wife’s ancestral home was, and their renovated house have this too. When we went to a resort in Batangas, I experienced it there again. Finally, when we spent a week in Metro Manila where we stayed in an Airbnb in Makati, the same was true. Is this the toilet norm now in the Philippines?

The toilet trend that I’m alluding to is that the beloved tabo is disappearing. Yes, the tabo is gone!

But before you conclude that Filipinos have abandoned their cleanliness and hygiene, well, it’s not that. The reason that the tabo is not needed anymore is that most of the toilets I have seen in the Philippines recently, now has a bidet. “Bidet” is actually a French word for pony, which means you have to do a straddling position to use the bidet.

I have encountered bidets before, like in Japan’s airport, in some hotels in Europe, and in rare fancy hotels here in the US. But those bidets can either be a separate toilet bowl or the water hose can be located and concealed underneath the toilet seat. The ones I saw in the Philippines were mostly handheld device that were mounted beside the toilet seat.

The reason I was a little surprise is that in America, bidets are almost non-existent. I am not judging Americans for their hygiene, it’s just that it is not their culture. In the Philippines, we have the tabo. Until now.

According to a study conducted by QS Supplies, a British bathroom supplies company, they found that rental accommodations in the Philippines have some of the highest number of bidets in the world. The common Filipino household may be following this trend, that is, if they can afford it. Italy has the most number of bidet, as there’s even a law stating that Italian homes should have at least one bidet. Believe it or not the Philippines now ranked fourth on that list.

I am not sure if I like the bidet over the tabo. Especially when the water is squirting so forcefully that it could hurt my bottom. Maybe I am old-school. Or maybe I am just nostalgically attached to the lowly tabo.

I did not see this coming: the death of the tabo.

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(*photos taken from the web)