Travel Tip: Always have a packet of tissues on hand. That means accessible, not lurking in the bottom of your bag, because when you need them, you might really need them!
On my second day in Bangkok I went to the toilet at Wat Pho, one of the city's major tourist attractions, only to discover there was no toilet paper. I don't mean run out - they just didn't provide any. No toilet paper, full stop.
That was the first time I realised that there is no such thing as a standard toilet - different countries and cultures have their own style of toileting. And I learnt that I should never venture anywhere without tissues!
Our 'toilet' on the bank of the Ganges River - a shallow hole in the ground with a little toilet seat stand that sat on top. I've used worse!
Delhi belly. Traveller's tummy. Cairo curse. Hong Kong dog. Montezuma's revenge. Dakar dash. Aztec two step. Toilets have a tendency to be very important to travellers and it’s not really where you want to experience cultural differences!
Squat toilets. From a grimy hole in the ground at rest stops to flushing moulded stands with footrests in gleaming tiled bathrooms - they are something that must be endured for many travellers. Including me. Given the choice I will opt for a western toilet – my thighs definitely prefer it – and I know I’m not alone.
I’ve been on a tour or two where we girls would check every cubicle at a toilet stop, hoping there was one western toilet in a row of squats. If we were successful we’d then all queue up, just to use that one toilet. My Mum tells a story of sitting in a restaurant in China when one of her travelling companions returns to the table, leans over and whispers to everyone, ‘Coroma. Dual flush’. Sometimes the joy of finding a clean western toilet is almost unbeatable. If it comes complete with its own toilet paper – heaven!
But there is certainly more for a traveller to navigate than just squat toilets. There are automatic public toilets, all sparkling, clean and western, but if you take too long the doors are going to open and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. And if you are travelling alone – what do you do with your big backpack if you need to go to the toilet? Sometimes there is nothing to do but keep wearing it!
There are some countries where the lowest denomination bank notes, useless to buy anything with, become incredibly important. It’s toilet money, necessary to hand over to the man minding the toilets and dispensing a few sheets of toilet paper to all who enter. I hope you don’t suffer from stage fright!
But, I can cope with pretty much anything toilet-wise if I come back to my hotel with a nice western toilet at the end of the day. (There has been one exception – a communal squat toilet in Vietnam. I walked in and walked straight back out again!)
That’s not to say your hotel toilet will be like home though. There might be a rubbish basket sitting beside the toilet, indicating plumbing that can’t cope with toilet paper. I’m really not a fan of that! Or you might be in India where the hotel provides you with one roll of toilet paper a night, containing only a metre or two of paper that is guaranteed to not last until morning.
Or maybe your hotel might have an outside toilet. Let me set the scene for you. I’m staying on Kho Chang, a gorgeous island on the south coast of Thailand. It’s night-time, pitch black, and I’m using a little torch to show the way to the toilet cubical with stone walls and a rickety thatched roof. It’s western style but with a big barrel of water and bucket that you use to manually flush the toilet. I’ve just sat down when I realised I was sharing the cubicle with a big frog. Holding the torch between my teeth, you better believe I didn’t take my eyes off him the entire time. I didn’t want him jumping anywhere!
There are some days when there simply isn’t a hotel to go back to. You might be catching an overnight train where it doesn’t matter if it’s a squat or western because seeing the tracks underneath, through the toilet, is disturbing regardless. Or maybe you have slept under the stars to attend a big event. On ANZAC Day in Gallipoli, Turkey I, along with hundreds of others, queued for a couple of hours to use a porter potty. Planning was advisable as you needed to join the queue before a toilet trip was required otherwise the situation would be dire by the time you reached the front. A famous battlefield and considered the true birthplace of Australia, it’s not somewhere you would just duck behind a tree.
Or maybe you are camping and a tent is all you are returning too.
A tiled bathroom with western toilet was definitely not what I expected to find at the back of a tent in the desert. I wouldn’t describe this as a typical camping experience but it was certainly welcome!
But all those experiences were better than being digestion-ly unwell on a three day cruise down the Nile. I was on a traditional sailboat, a felucca, where you sleep on desk under a canopy and a trip to the toilet requires a 30 minute warning to the boat guys so they could head to the bank. Often watched by cows, you needed to find a tree and be quick as the farmers knew exactly what was going on and sometimes wandered over to say hello. Although I did enjoy sailing down the Nile, particularly in hindsight, at the end of the three days I cajoled my way into using a toilet on one of the luxury cruise ships and was so overjoyed to use that toilet, I had to take a photo of it. (Pre-digital days.) Never had a toilet seemed to lovely and decadent!
Do you have any travel toileting tales to tell? Feel free to comment.
And I couldn’t sign off without sharing this video I found on How to Use a Western Toilet. I think this makes it official; you can find instructions on how to do everything online!
Travel Bug Tuesday: sharing my search for those incredible ‘I can’t believe I’m actually here!’ moments.
