If You Are Eating, Skip To The Next Episode…

Today I’m going to take you around the world as per usual. Today, though, I want to take you around the world in six different toilets. So if you’re eating, you might want to skip to the next episode because here in its repellent, slightly delightful glory, is my guide to the toilets of the world. I mean, when do you remember being on the toilet? I mean, you don’t really remember being on the toilets, but I remember being in Korea, I’m walking into this massive exhibition, this huge exhibition, and it was about the toilets of the world.

And the slogan for the exhibition was “toilets are life”. Now, I don’t think toilets are life. I think they were just trying to grab me in there with that headline. But toilets can often be one of the most humorous memories of a trip, because when you travel and you go to very far-flung places — especially if you go out in nature, if you go off the beaten track — if you go to somewhere like Mongolia, even if you go to Japan, you will find that the toilets are different to home.

The Squat Toilet

Now the classic toilet is the one that everyone had in our own countries a hundred years ago, maybe less, maybe more. It’s the squat toilet. It’s a normal toilet, except it’s kind of missing everything that’s above ground. I find that the squat toilet is a very clever toilet, because nobody wants to use squat toilets. Squat toilets just conveniently happen to be the only toilet available when your insides are rotten from dodgy street food or way too strong curry. You’ve been staying in great hotels all across Asia, you’ve had fabulous toilets and then you change planes in an airport and that’s when your gut starts going a little bit — and it happens to be a squat toilet.

Now, confused with the squat toilet is the hole in the ground. A hole in the ground is something you’ll find out in nature. It’s actually very functional. So instead of ceramic, it is just a hole in the ground and you squat. And then you basically straddle two wooden planks over the entrance and over time, the human waste collects and it becomes fertilizer for the earth — fully organic. The hole in the ground you’ll find it especially in Mongolia, places with nomadic cultures and basically rather than going in nature, you have this recyclable use of your insides.

I remember using a hole in the ground in Nepal. I was doing the Everest base camp hike. And it was so cold out there and there’s not — you stay in very basic accommodation on this hike, it is really, really, really remote. And the challenge always with the hole in the ground is that — it was below freezing, so around the planks would be ice, so that would be really, really tired legs from many days of hiking, you can hardly squat and then had to contend with the ice on the ground, in the nights.

The Toilet Of The Future

But very memorable — not a toilet experience I’d love to repeat, but so, so memorable. And of course when we travel, we don’t just have the less salubrious toilets. There are also the toilets that are beyond — a more luxurious version of what we have at home. The toilet of the future. When you travel to Japan, South Korea, the standard is a toilet accompanied with a flashing panel of buttons, red or blue, the wavy lines or the straight lines — which one dispenses paper and which is going to shoot a jet of warm water on your bum? Perhaps one of them is going to initiate the robotic hand.

Maybe soon, the toilet of the future is going to charge your iPhone, or flush using voice recognition. Maybe it already does that. Toilets in Japan and Korea are fascinating. And if you’ve never experienced one before, you go in and you think, what is this? You can spend half an hour just trying to figure out what the buttons are.

I remember the first time — I sat down, I’d finished, I pressed the button. I got this hot jet of water came out and I jumped up in horror — jumped up, turned around, so then of course the jet of water went straight in my face. And then I missed the wonderfully pampering hot air that dries your bottom after the water. So I was wet. I missed out on all the good things of that experience — a part of culture shock, going to these countries and experiencing a toilet like that.

Male Or Female?

And then in Europe, you find this a lot — what I call the brain teaser. You’re in a country where the language is different and you have to rely — when you go into the toilet in a cafe or a bar or a restaurant, what’s going to be male or female? — well, you rely on the symbols. You don’t read Cyrillic, so you rely on the symbol. You don’t speak Spanish or French or, or any language, okay, so what does the symbol say?

And then some are easier — okay, that’s the pink elephant in the bikini, so that’s the female. That’s a cigar-smoking top hat, that’s gotta be the male. But there are so many that actually in trying to be really cute and really trendy and really creative, they created this brain teaser. You look at these two symbols, which is male, which is female? Is that women’s hair, or is that a silhouette of Jim Morrison? Triangle or square? Can somebody explain to me what that is?

I remember a great one in Southern Africa because it had the gender symbols of the Zulu tribe, fabulous learning experience, fabulous connection to culture, but can somebody explain to me the symbols before I go to the toilet?

And then my favorite toilets of the world are the artists’ playgrounds, where in rural places — you know, this doesn’t happen in hotels — this is in places that are quite rural. And instead of just putting a squat toilet, instead of just putting a basic toilet in nature, where they’ve already had to battle with engineering, with something beyond just basic plumbing, and they’ve created something artistic, such as a toilet at the top of some steps. So you climb up some steps, you go on a wooden platform and it’s called pooper falls. And it looks out over Popa Falls. That’s in the Caprivi Strip in Botswana.

Or a toilet — so, male and female — pink, fluffy seat cover, that’s Eve’s toilet. And then next door, Adam’s toilet chained with a padlock, so the toilet seat never goes down. Or in some really high-end camps, I’ve seen — you walk into the bathroom and it’s literally a blossoming forest of pink flowers. Within it, this pristine toilet with a padded seat. And only after you’ve sat down on the toilet, you realize this is not man-made. This is really a blossoming forest of pink flowers, and they’ve hidden the toilet within it and made it seem like — it’s done so well, it almost feels they created something that just seems it’s so good it has to be artificial. But it’s not, it’s completely natural, and so wonderful that people have created this art out of the most functional of human tasks.