When Nature Calls

When traveling, it's always interesting to experience another country's "toilet culture". In Thailand, there are essentially two types of toilets: western style and the squatter. Western style toilets are becoming more common especially in larger cities like Chiang Mai, and due to the influence of Japanese culture in Thailand, we even see fancy bidet-style toilets now. In fact, we have one in our Airbnb. It cleans, dries, massages, deodorizes... we just haven't figured out how to use it yet!

Most washrooms, especially in older buildings and rural settings will have squatters. If you go to a public washroom and you're not at ease using a squatter, try checking the last stall in the washroom because if there's going to be a western style toilet, it's usually in the last one or two stalls. Otherwise, for those who do yoga, be grateful for all those "malasana" (deep squat) poses you've been practicing. Of course, those of us equipped with "frontal elimination devices" no longer fear the indignity of losing our balance in a squatter.

Thai people do not use toilet paper in the way you might think. They use water either from a "bum gun" (toilet hose) or a water bucket to clean themselves. They then dry off with toilet paper which is thrown into a wastebasket, NOT into the toilet. If you are using toilet paper in the traditional, "western" way, do not throw the toilet paper into a Thai toilet as it can clog their plumbing system.

But what happens if you clean yourself with water and there's no toilet paper to dry off with? Well, "Shake your booty, shake your booty"...

Many public washrooms will charge a small fee for using the toilet. We've paid anywhere from 3 bahts to 10 bahts (about $0.10 to $0.40 CAD) for the pleasure of relieving ourselves. We've also discovered that temples usually have clean toilets that are sometimes free of charge, and those with small bladders will be happy to know that here in Chiang Mai, there are 117 temples!

Bear in mind that for locals and tourists who are only familiar with squatters, western toilets can be as befuddling as the Japanese bidet-style toilets are for us. Please see the picto instructions of how to use a western toilet which was taken from a public washroom in Chiang Mai. The first five images are pretty straight forward if not a little bizarre. However, can anyone explain the last image? Brownie points to the person with the most creative answer!もっと詳しく