Bottoms up!

Great marketing job and I have to admit, the view was stunning indeed.

It’s all about predictability, regularity and consistency – with bowel movements that is. What might seem like a rather crude topic to those of you sitting behind your work PC, steaming morning coffee in hand, is a regular agenda item for backpackers. Especially when the predictability is affected, the stakes in the daily treasure hunt for the right toilet at the right time become immeasurably high.

Toilet graveyard

It is this common experience, shared by all backpackers, that inspires animated conversations among complete strangers about post-pooh washing techniques and the best antidotes to travelers diarrhea. The location of ‘doing business’ is also frequently discussed and in this department, I have become somewhat of an expert. Having had the good fortune to sample up to four different toilets in one day, I have developed a keen nose for sniffing out note worthy exhibits.

A visit to the Pathet Lao caves in Northeastern Lao, presents me with the most historically interesting toilet. I am a little surprised to find a well structured squatty-potty as its design, but even a revolutionary force in hiding must answer to basic human needs in the most practical fashion possible. I leave the caves pondering the thrones of present day political leaders like Barack Obama or the somewhat eccentric Muammar Gaddafi. I suppose their toilets are a tad more fancy, perhaps resembling the western style variety that I am most used to – a sit down toilet with toilet paper?

Nice try but I can't reach the toilet paper.

In Asia, squat toilets dominate and water, usually provided in the form of a full tub, bucket or sprayer, is generally preferred to paper. To the western mind this may seem quite unhygienic, but not so to one early Arab traveler whose manuscripts are the first record of the use of toilet paper. On his trip to China in 851 BC, he noted that the Chinese were ‘not careful about cleanliness, and they do not wash themselves with water when they have done their necessities, but they only wipe themselves with paper’ (What on Earth Happened?…in Brief, P.200).

The most logic defying toilets seem to be scattered across Indonesia. They keep me guessing to this day. A small room, looking from the outside like a toilet, signposted ‘toilet’ and yet inside nothing but a slightly slanted cement floor and a huge trough of water. The room lined with personal items such as tooth brushes, soap and shampoo makes me feel as though I am unwittingly peeing into someone’s shower, even after numerous instances of backing out of these bathrooms just to be urged back into them by their owners.

Interesting derivative of the floor only toilet.

This arrangement, however, feels comfortably familiar compared to what we find on our western Lao jungle trek. Here our cross cultural toileting experience is taken to a whole new level. It is early afternoon, when children, adults and all matter of free-roaming farm animals welcome us to our host village for the first night. Needing to spend a penny, I ask our guide where to best go for some privacy. He generously waves his arms in no particular direction and says ‘everywhere’. In a quite barren and populated village, this answer is not exactly what I am looking for and I ask again. ‘Everywhere’ he reiterates and then adds with a smile: ‘Make sure you take a stick to keep away the dogs and pigs.’

Advertisement