Tapayan ni Hans

In Filipino culture, the tapayan is an earthen knee-tall jar used for storing water for washing. In many bahay kubos (huts) for the barrios, there is a tapayan near the entrance hagdanan (bamboo ladder) and another one at the back porch called the batalân. The function of this placement and implement is this: whenever you come up a house, polite manners necessitate that you wash your muddied feet. Ergo, the water jar and the tabó (coconut shell ladle) are just the right implements. In addition, the attached back-porch batalân serves as the out-bathhouse where there are several tapayans. Of course, one takes a bath using the buhos system (scooping water from the tapayan with a tabó and pouring it over one's hunched body).

From "Yaman ng Lahi" by Dr. Penelope V. Flores, San Francisco State University.