Toilet Perfecting At Its Best

No, this child has nothing to do with toilets. I just thought she was super cute and I would like to put her picture on my blog. I figure her parents allowed me to take a picture of her [they even placed her somewhere to pose] so they wouldn't mind if I shared it with my friends. Na rak ka :) [Cute]

I think back to the first time I had to use a public toilet; on the 14 hour long drive to Nakhon Phanom. In the first washroom we stopped at, I was bewildered to see when I turned the corner into the Women's washroom that there were ceramic holes in the floor. I was almost positive that I had walked into the Men's washroom and these ceramic holes were some form of urinal so I walked out to check the sign. I wasn't wrong. This was the Women's washroom in all its glory. And what a glorious thing it was. I stared at the sign, utterly perplexed, then walked back in and stared. The act of walking out to look at the sign and walking back in to look at the bathroom repeated several times until a woman seemed to notice that I was uttlery confused and pointed down a different hallway where I could see regular toilets in cubicles. I almost laughed in relief, I had no idea how I would get through using the ceramic hole.

Have you ever been in the washroom and after the time came that you could no longer switch to a different stall, you noticed that there was no toilet paper? Well that is exactly what happened. Except that in this cubicle it appeared that there wasn't even a place to HOLD toilet paper if there was some. Instead there was what looked like a silver hose attached to the wall. I wasn't sure what to do so I listened intently to what was going on in the bathroom and heard the hose like thing being sprayed. I assumed that you had to clean yourself with that, and then drip dry.. boy was I right.
Throughout the rest of the long drive to Nakhon Phanom I had to use the washroom multiple times, but unfortunately at each rest point the washrooms became worse and worse. The second one had no regular toilets, only the ceramic holes. The third had ceramic holes and instead of a hose like thing there was a big bucket of water with a smaller bucket that you used to pour on yourself. The fourth was the same as the third, and infested with misquitoes. I had bug bites in uncomfortable areas for a few days. I don't think I need to express just how miserable that drive was. At my home we don't have a ceramic hole which I later found out was called a "squatter potty" [whether they are named by the foreigners or the Thai citizens I do not know], but squatter potties are the only bathroom in public areas. Marvelous. However at my home we do have the hose things [I have yet to find out a name for them] which you are supposed to clean yourself with and then use toilet paper to dry yourself. You cannot throw the toilet paper in the toilet bowl because the sewer system is very different here and it would clog the pipes.

I am proud to say that I have mastered using the toilets here, it seems perfectly normal to drip dry after using a public restroom [though I try to avoid using them at all costs] and just as normal to spray myself down with a hose every time I use the washroom. It's different, but it's no longer weird.

That, fellow countrymen, would be my adventure of perfecting the use of a Thai toilet. Until next time.

"I send my words into the world and wait for whatever new words will come"
- Georgia Heard, Writing Toward Home