Daily Mud - Fashion Week Hits the Mangroves

"Still, a chap ought to look smart
in front of the men, don't you think?"
Lt Gonville Bromhead, played by
Michael Caine, in Zulu, 1964, just before
being sliced up into pet food by 6,000
angry warriors

It was upsetting when it happened, like a pet dog finally dying, but having made the decision, it was clearly the right thing to do. No doubt to the relief of the talented and quizzical seamstress, K’Nee, who had sutured them back to life and respectability many times, the faithful and crucially nylon, fast drying shorts that I always wore to the mangroves finally endured their last trip & rip, while in the brown stuff at Ban Tale Nok, Phang Nga province. A rose-like climber ensnared the shorts, ripping them from top to tail, and slicing my thigh like a barbed wire cheese cutter.

Pity. So before a more detailed and hopefully useful report on Ban Tale Nok, some thoughts on sartorial elegance in the filth. Consider the presence of sun, salt, silt, sea, sweat and Islam.

Clearly hats are vital and a full brim is better than a baseball cap. The tropics receive twice the amount of radiation from the sun per area compared to the UK so bald bonces need covering. Good sized holes on the side stop from brain cells frying. A Tilley might be the answer – one of Canada’s finer exports. Better still, they are washable as without doubt any hat is going to get muddy and sweaty. Tilly’s also have a thin layer of foam in the top – just enough to make it float, and has saved my head when a tree has leapt out and hit me.

Sweat, like salt (water) is bad news for many materials. Delicate straw creations might be dandy for toffs day at Royal Ascot (horse races), but will not last past a second washing. Local Thai builders wear something that looks like a cross between Mexican in a recession and a lamp shade. Straw and large, they too don’t last long.

The artificial fibres of nylon shorts and also a Gortex-style Berghaus t-shirt resist being eaten by salt much better than cotton. A cotton t-shirt just gets wet and stays wet all afternoon (and no, I wouldn’t win a prize). The cotton socks worn to help deal with the sand trying to grind my feet to powder, last five visits max before the holes start to join up. And all of the above are also likely to get suntan cream tide marks. Thus black is definitely in vogue.

Black is also a sane choice as, in much of the developing world, washing clothes is done in a top-loading ‘impeller’ washing machine. These machines do not heat the water. And however hard Unilever and P&G try, washing powders just don’t work as well in cold water. They can add all the enzymes, UV reflectors and gimmicks imaginable, but stains stay. Thus, once something is worn into the mud (like white boxer shorts), it is never ever going to be clean again. Just ask the soon-to-be Mrs Balaji.
Watches, jewellery, necklaces, bling, blah blah blah. If you can avoid it, don’t bring it. High clay content mud is very slippery, especially if you are in a Monmorillonite area. This can make rings slip off without you knowing. Leather and rubber are corroded by the salt. Steel is good. Unless it’s sapphire crystal, watch faces are abraded by the sand when digging. Necklaces are a hazard. But something I started wearing round my neck while on site as a tree surgeon was a whistle. Wading through the twisting channels of a mangrove on a cloudy day can be disorientating (spot the correspondent, pictured below?). Wind doesn’t penetrate a dense stand. The voice travels perhaps only twice as far as the eye can see. A whistle might save you when lost, stuck on some abandoned fishing gear (of which sadly there is much) or have crumbled your back trying to demonstrate that 40 is still young. Gents- earings. Necessary? Think you’re P’Diddy? When it’s been caught in a Flagellaria climber and ripped through the lobe, post a blog on this site for some sympathy (no picture, no reply).

Shoes. Not enough can be written about shoes. [Agree, G?] Shoes will be the subject of another posting. Enough to say, wear them, and lace ups. So back to the shorts. It’s not that I’m obsessed but those shorts had two other qualities that endeared them, when in semi-liquid surroundings. The first was lots of pockets that either zipped up or buttoned up. Positive fastenings are really useful for keeping the essentials in place (phone in a ziploc bag). And zip-on extensions to turn the shorts into longs for visiting Muslim communities and mangrove areas with lots of mosquitoes.
So, RIP, faithful shorts. Just not while I’m in them.