I Can't Believe It's Not Butter!

After the hectic truck ride through the mountains (see previous post), all I wanted to do was get back to the guest house and take a nice, long, relaxing shower. I remembered that I'd forgotten to pack soap, so I went to the local Burmese market to pick some up. All the soap was written in Thai, Burmese or Chinese, so I just went for the one that smelled the best - an herbal scented bar with Chinese writing.

I went home, hopped in the shower, lathered up, and was overwhelmed by the incredibly luxurious texture of the soap - it literally felt as if I was bathing in silk. When I got out of the shower, my skin was smoother and more conditioned than it had ever been in my life.

The next morning I showered again with the soap, but this time noticed that once I'd rinsed the suds off, there was still a bit of a grimy film left behind. Who cares, more skin conditioning. I left my guest house and as I was walking down the street a dog came up to me and started licking my shins like it was his business. That had never happened before, but I just figured the dogs in Mae Sot were hungrier than those in other small border towns.

A few more minutes down the street and I was sweating uncontrollably, more than I ever had in my life. And it wasn't that hot out. When I went to wipe the sweat from my brow, I realized that the droplets on my forehead were extremely oily. Hmm.

When I arrived back in the guest house later that afternoon I took off my clothes to cool down and noticed large grease stains on my shirt and pants. Now this is just bizarre! I looked at my body and realized that a few small spots had appeared that seemed to look like blackheads, which one typically gets from clogged pores.

I figured all of this was related to the soap, as I'd never had any of these reactions previously, so I took the bar of soap and the box it came in to the manager of the guest house who spoke Chinese and asked him to read me the ingredients on the box. He said there was one ingredient: unsalted butter. For two days I had been bathing in butter.

I Can't Believe It IS Butter!