Thai Toilets

If this is your first visit to the East, you may be terrified the first time you walk into a toilet in Thailand. Inside you will not find a sink, a stall or anything you would normally expect to find in a bathroom.

Instead you will find a gaping hole in the ground with two ceramic footprints on either side. Your horror will mount when you notice that there is no toilet paper anywhere. It's much worse if you are barefoot and just coming from the beach.

The good news is that the toilets are clean and functional. They just work differently than ours.

Over in the corner of the toilet you should see a jug of clean water. Next to the jug should be either access to a stream or else a faucet.

What you do is squat over the hole and crap.

If it's your first time you might want to take off your pants completely in order to avoid soiling yourself.

With practice you will get your aim down.

Then you ladle water out of the barrel to clean your ass. Next you ladle more water into the toilet to get rid of the evidence.

Do not let anything dirty get into the jug of water other people will need to use it too!

If you decide to bring your own toilet paper, do not shove it in the hole. It will clog up.

Instead put it in the wastebasket.

All of these topics are ones I have encountered when I went to Thailand 13 times, but I am not up to date, so I really appreciate Oz posting these, I remember well trying to find toilet paper in the small border town of Mae Sa when I got turista. What a shock to see that toilet that was nothing but a hole in the ground with a bucket to flush things away. You rinsed your hand and hoped no one touched it the rest of the day.

My favorite Thai boy of all time was with me, so we went from store to store looking for toilet paper. He was a big help since I didn't speak Thai and didn't want to mime what I wanted. We finally succeeded just in time to find a western toilet.

I took my 2 elderly aunts to Thailand about 8 years ago and they loved it. The BF showed them the country and was wonderful to them. The funniest thing I remember from their trip was the Thai toilets and as they were both in their late 60's at the time and slightly overweight, it was something that was so difficult for them and they came out one day just laughing up a storm and I didn't want to ask but finally I had to and they said, "well, lets just say I knew the aim wasn't too good when I saw the floor filling up with liquid."