How to Use the Water Filling Stations in Thailand

When traveling you must always ask if the local water is safe to drink. In Thailand this decision was an easy one as we learned very early on that even the Thais don’t drink the water. Yet buying large amounts of water in plastic bottles only produces a large amount of plastic that as we all know, is very harmful to the earth.

However, the Thais have thought of this. We see cases of water in white plastic bottles that seem to be returned and reused. We’ve also discovered water filling stations that seem to be everywhere in the residential areas.

Here’s how it works:

Step 1: Find the machine closest to you.

Step 2: Place the container inside the filling station, lining it up with the nozzle above.

 Step 3: Put in either a 1, 5 or 10 Baht coin and push the green button.

Step 4: Voila! Water comes out of the nozzle filling whatever  you’ve put underneath.

We didn’t know how to stop it at first and also, not being able to read the sign in Thai (take a look at the first picture again to know what we were up against) we didn’t know how much water our 10 Baht coin would give us. We learned that to stop it you just push the green button again but we still are not sure about the amount of water is gives us. We haven’t figured out if the price is per liter or per time. Anyone out there have any ideas or speak Thai by any chance?