I’m not sure what people in Thailand drank before bottled water came along. Nowadays, almost every Thai drinks bottled water of one sort or another, and all of it comes in plastic. I’ve been on a personal mission for almost a year to rid myself of as much plastic as I can, and this is the reason for my purchase of the Steripen.
My friend Darren introduced it to me. It’s a handheld ultraviolet (UV) light that you use to stir, up to one liter of water, in order to sterilize it against harmful microorganisms. It sounds like a magic wand, right? You’d think I was performing magic the way people watch me when I use it.
The web site for Steripen says that what it’s actually doing is sterilizing the microorganisms so they can’t replicate once they enter your system. That still leaves them swimming about my digestive tract, but so far I haven’t had any troubles.
On my travels, I’ve seen the UV system in use. Sometimes, if you look under the sink or behind a fresh water dispenser, you’ll see a glass tube that the water passes through on its way to the tap. It’s typically housed in glass so that you can verify it’s functioning properly.
The Steripen is a costly investment at about $100 USD, but over time, I believe it can pay for itself by reducing the number of water bottles I purchase and, considering I travel for months at a time, that could be a significant expense. I also know the expense of using plastic water bottles as I’ve seen, otherwise pristine shorelines around the world, littered with plastic water bottles.
I learned the hard way, that the one thing the Steripen does not do is improve the flavor of the water. After a few uses in Thailand, I noticed my reusable water bottle began to smell like sewage. I realized that the tap water I was drinking, while sterilized, was still quite foul.
Determined to have faith in the sterilization, I decided to persevere, since it was only the smell that was telling my body it was not good. I remembered reading that people with no sense of smell can not taste things, so I decided to try holding my breath as I drank the water. This actually worked, and I couldn’t tell the difference from any other water; that is until I exhaled. Then the odor streamed through my nose, and I was left again with a foul taste in my mouth.
The next time I tried it, I held my breath both while drinking and for a few seconds after the water went down my throat. This proved effective, and I can now safely drink sewer water just as we all did before the invention of the plastic bottle.
