BootsnAll Travel Network



e) In search of a toilet

Although our children have had experience with long drops, some of them still looked horrified when we explained not every toilet we will use will be a clean white bowl!
They are looking forward to trying different sorts and recording the evidence here!

The end of the trip arrives and we can add:

 

It turned out that taking photos was not so easy – when the toilet block is well-occupied with long queues and no doors, it seemed a little immodest to take pictures! But the above pic was our private toilet – that’s the shower hose hanging above the toilet, and the handbasin to the right – yes the loo was placed in the centre of the room. Black bin is for toilet paper. Where? Laos.


Here’s one of our many long drops. It is over thirty metres away from the “house”, which in this case was a ger.
Obviously no running water.
(That was collected from the water pump at the bottom of the hill in a 100l container.)


And another of our Mongolian longdrops.
It may have lacked a door, but it had toilet paper – and a great view!

We were surprised to find longdrops in the south of France and Italy. But not dis-satisfied with them. You know what? I now find a squatty potty to be more hygienic!!

Germany had the fanciest toilets we came across. They were at many truck stops and you had to pay 50 euro cents for the privilege of using them, but it was worth it for the experience (once, anyway!). After paying, and receiving your ticket, you proceed through turnstiles, do your thing, flush and then….an automatic sprayer popped out and sanitised the bowl, then a little brush emerged, the entire seat raised, and a squirter started strutting its stuff as the whole seat rotated a full circle.

Athens had some impressive toilets too – by virtue of the fact that they were square!
They were also enormous, and perhaps seemed even more so, as at the time we were travelling in motorhomes with the smallest toilet cubicles! In fact, even the smallest child could touch every wall in the room at one time. Space being at a premium, the handbasin was located above the toilet, meaning you had to lift it in order to be able to access the loo.
And maybe the Athens toilet seemed extra-fancy, because it flushed itself, whereas in the motorhome we had to vigorously work the pump to activate a small trickle of water!

The motorhome toilet was also the shower. To the day we left, the mother did not manage to teach anyone to put the toilet lid down if using the shower! But, by that stage we were well used to wet toilets. It seemed that almost every toilet in Asia was placed directly under the shower rose, even if the room was big enough to permit a different configuration. In fact, one guesthose we stayed at boasted that the shower was at the opposite end of the bathroom to the toilet. It was enough to make us book in there!

Perhaps our most unfavourite toilet (apart from the ones that stunk) (and apart from Cambodia – where every public surface is a toilet – much safer to walk up the middle of the road than on the pavement – where we saw someone, men and women alike, urinating on the pavement or in the bushes or against a wall almost every day we went out)….most unfave….the long narrow drain, which had to be straddled, in a cubical, but without a door, at a train station in China. The “deposits” were moved down the drain by gravity, and we made the mistake of using the cubicle at the lowest end of the line. Not very pleasant at all.

The most spectacular toilet was in the Metro in Rome. Hoping to flush away the contents before the children used the throne, I pressed the nearest button, only to discover it was a panic alarm. A Very Loud Alarm Which Wouldn’t Stop. I’m not sure if it was the ear-piercing noise, the state of the amenities or the fact that the door kept automatically opening, but no-one needed to go after that!

 

 

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4 responses to “e) In search of a toilet”

  1. Debbie Jones says:

    while being on the road we have experienced some great toilets around the world. the kids most memorable is the self washing ones in germany. they glow blue and the entire rim rotates for cleaning. my son took a video. my favourite was an 8 person urinal in the middle of a roundabout in amsterdam. I took the photo with cars and bicycles circling around.

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