When I visited in thailand for a year and a half, I noticed in the Tokyo airport that the toilets were designed as a porcelain hole in the floor with anti skid foot treads on both sides of it. I was a bit curious about the mechanics but it seems pretty obvious how it works.
all the time I spent in Thailand I lived in a house which had a western style toilet but I visited public buildings which were uniquely equipped with the oriental style. I never asked, and hence never found out, how they use them. The question is, Since they don’t have toilet paper in the stalls, what do they use?
Each of the public rest rooms had a large 50+ gallon urn of water in the bathroom outside of the stalls with a dipper floating in it. I guess they carry the dipper full of water into the stall and I heard rumers that they wipe with a bare hand. and I guess they rinse of the hand with the dipper.
The reason this doesn’t make sense is everyone who knows the truth who is willing to talk about the hygenic nature of the system says that the oriental style is cleaner than the western style. Anyone who has skid marks in their shorts will understand why. A hand cannot by itself get a butt cleaner than a piece of flimsy paper! And they can’t splash the water in there, the basin isn’t big enough to catch it, not to mention the likelyhood of getting your dropped pants all wet.
So, how do they get their butt clean with water and not TP and no plumbing fixtures such as a douche thing? I didn’t even see a flushing mechanism.
Now. I realize there will be millions of people who can answer the question by virtue of the fact that this web site is available all over the world. But I fear I must reveal my ignorance to get this screaming curiosity to rest.
Just got back from China and experienced these. We did the “b.y.o.t.p.” plan and seemed to be fine…except for flushing since there was none. There was usually a wastepaper basket that was filled with paper.
We tried to explain this whole process to my SO’s 13 year old daughter. She wretched after her first real experience using one. Later we found out that she didn’t remember the squatting part of the instructions and sat down right on the hole. Ew.
You lived there for a year and a half and you never used one? I used one about an hour after I got off the plane in Bangcock. And for the next week it seemed I used them hourly.
Everybody travels with their own tissue. Most of the toilets these days flush, but some still have the bucket of water you flush by pouring the water in.
I didn’t live European (cheaper that way) so while I was there (in Thailand) it was always squat and go. Actually seemed to vacate more effeciently. Well, once I got over getting the leg cramps from squating so much. I lived in the north and it is not quite so big on Western facilities. When you squat, there is less, toilet paper necessary.
That being said, I also had lived about nine months in relatively rural Japan so I was used to the toilets.
Depends where in Asia you are. In India, the water is used to cleanse your buttocks. So, yes, you are wiping your ass with your hand. But you do clean up afterwards.
I encountered these in France (and nowhere else in Europe) and some of the Yanks I knew referred to them (for no discernible reason) as “Flying Dutchmen.”
My first encounter was in Germany on the Autobahn. No one warned me about these things before but when a girl has to go, a girl has to go. I don’t recall any flushing but it’s been several years ago. I do recall a previous user’s poop on the floor… and trying to work out the logistics of keeping my pants out of the bottom of the loo. Ugh. Give me a western, water guzzling, paper swizzling toilet any day
Possibly TMI but difficult to avoid given the subject matter!
Two points:
1/ These toilets were common in France and countries south in Europe until relatively recently (some decades ago). They have been mostly replaced by standard sit upon toilets. The old squatters in Europe used to flush- pipe from back angled to spray water around the flat bowl, toilet brush provided. Toilet paper meant to be available and was in bars/restaurants, but never in public facilities. Those toilets in public facilities were often disgusting- encrusted and under flushed or even blocked.
2/ Western diets are high in fats and low in roughage. Anyone who has been on a peasant’s diet of vegetables, brown bread, cereals, pulses, little meat, little fat etc. will be aware that bowel habits change and the resultant fecal matter is less ‘sticky’, and exits the body more cleanly! A simple wash with water is usually suficient. Similarly with less ‘sticky’ fecal matter, there are fewer skid marks on the toilet pan, and hence cleaning the bowl is easier.
From another thread somewhere/sometime on this board, I understand that many western women solve this problem of contact with toilet apparatus by ‘hovering’!
We have a Western toilet, but when I lived in a teakwood house in the North for a couple of years back in the 1980s, I had a squat toilet. You put your feet on the sides and squat. Kept a supply of toilet paper.
Best to take some with you when out and about even today even in Bangkok, as even many places with Western toilets won’t supply toilet paper; some do, especially the new mega-malls, but of the ones that don’t, there MIGHT be a vending machine selling some tiny packets near the sinks.
These toilets (we call them Turkish toilets, but that’s probably just because Bulgarians are’t fond of the Turks) are pretty common here in the fabulous Balkans. Usually you have to pay a small fee, and they’ll give you toilet paper or paper napkins if you ask. If you don’t realize it’s a Turkish toilet before you go in…you’re screwed, pretty much.
Ya…nice try tossing in a little lecture about western versus “peasant’s” diets to defend those squat toilets. The where and how of peasant defecation is a function of what is available, and not a function of the high quality of their poopie. If anything stools from diets high in roughage are softer and bulkier and messier.
I spent 15 years growing up overseas in the third world. Plus in the course of my career my index finger has been in places it should not have had to explore thousands of times. Poop is poop and it comes in all consistencies from all bodies.
The “toilets” are that way b/c they don’t have anything better. In many places they are a huge modern upgrade over the local field. They use water b/c they don’t have toilet paper and a wash basin. And very few people privileged to have a modern flush toilet choose a squat toilet, a bare hand, and water anymore than they choose stick fires over central heating.
I do agree that modern sit toilets bring an anxiety of resting your bare bum where the filthy bum of the prior user has just sat. Another story.
It’s not like there’s any toilet paper by evening in the rest rooms at the community college where I teach. I carry a flattened roll in my bag, just like I do when I travel.
Peasant is not, as far as I am concerned, anything to do with social class, race or culture. A peasant diet is as described in any culture- lacking oil based products and other parts of modern american/european foodstuffs. Although such diets do make the stool bulkier and softer, they lack the ‘stickiness’ associated with fats, especially processed fats and oils so prevalent in western cuisine.
This is from experience and learning gained as a health professional- retired nurse- where we do have some unfortunate interest in quality of the stool and what affects it.
From experience I know that if a person (a confused elderly person) is smearing very sticky faeces around their area, a modified diet with less fat and more roughage leads to less of the shit stucking, whether it is to the perineum or to the house walls!