Panama Real Estate Investment Travel Information


How to get clean clothes

(6 votes)

Written by Matt Landau

Friday, May 11 2007

It was not until recently, when my maid called in sick three weeks in a row, that I began to question how in fact my clothes and linens were always clean. My apartment is void of a washing machine and drier, I have no bath tub, and my sink is about the size of a Cuban cigar box.

I have become very dependant on having a maid as have many foreigners living in Panama. You lose the facility to do simple things like make your bed and clean your dishes because, well, someone else wants to do it for you. I sometimes try to reason and convince myself that in fact, my maid does the same jobs but of far better quality than I, but this rationale usually trims down to the fact that I'm just a lazy ass.

I wandered into the laundry store or shop or whatever you want to call it and the entire Chinese family who owned the place sat fixated around a black and white TV set. The little ones were eating rice out of metal bowls—the kind you see in jail cells and insane asylum cafeterias. I stood there for a good minute, just as fascinated by the family as they were the waterskiing squirrel on TV.

I coughed up some phlegm in my throat in an effort to grab their attention, but then choked on it and looked desperately for a glass of water.

ventually one of the little ones came over to the counter and asked me what I wanted. “I think I'd just like to have my clothes washed” I inquired, startled by the concept that a 5 year old child would be personally responsible for whatever it was I was about to order. “Do you need help with that?” I asked, as the boy hoisted up my laundry basket and stumbled back to what looked like his washing station. He looked like a child contestant on one of those strong man competitions, carrying an item four-times his body size through an obstacle course.

“Come back in forty minutes” one of his relatives shouted at me. Forty minutes? What was this, a magical laundromat where the traditional laws of time and physics didn't apply? How is it possible to wash and dry a load in forty minutes? I wanted to make sure that they understood what I was looking for: not just running the basket through some sort of incinerator. “I'll come back tonight at six. That'll give you plenty of time.” Almost choreographically, the whole family shrugged at the same time as if to say, hey gringo do whatever you want.

Presumably the ironboy's sister, a little gnome-woman ran over and handed me a receipt. She did so while aiming the beam of a laser pointer into my retina. The receipt was covered with a kind of Chinese chicken scratch that read you don't even want to know what you're paying for. And I didn't. I just wanted to leave, because my senses had been stimulated enough at this point.

The receipt showed the number eight, followed by a dollar sign. Eight dollars seemed like a lot to me for a simple washing of the clothes: wasn't there some sort of price cap on goods that we need to live? Like milk and gasoline and Laundromats? But I wasn't about to complain. After all, I was far too lazy to do it myself.

I returned later that night to collect my eight dollar laundry. As I waited for my order to arrive, I saw the same little boy who originally took my order, running around banging a wooden spoon and a plastic tambourine: the kind that they provide in cheesy Indian Halloween costume sets. The part that startled me though, was that he was wearing a pair of my boxers on his head, apparently in place of a headdress. His sister, was wearing my socks on her hands like little white boxing mits.

What kind of place was this?

“Give me those” I scowled, and grabbed clothes off their head and hands.

What the Chinese laundry people returned to me was actually very good work. My three week-old clothes, once reminiscent of a rotting sparrow carcass, now smelled of a fresh tropical breeze or tangy tangerine zest: I'm not quite sure which. Each piece had been almost identically folded and stacked like little newspapers, then loaded into shrink wrap for packaging.

I was happy with my experience. And I was happy that, should times ever get this rough again, I now knew how to get clean clothes in Panama. My maid returned the following week and was amazed to find no smelly gym shorts strewn across my bedroom or arm-pit-stained button downs hanging off kitchen chairs. She was thrilled that I had taken the initiative to do something of this magnitude and when she suggested that I didn't even really need her services any more, I swore not to eat pork rinds for a week.