One last post about toilets

Having said that most of the toilets in SE Asia surprised me with their cleanliness, I have to say that Chinese toilets were pretty bad. Mostly they were squat toilets, and mostly they were not very clean, but what made them stand out was the plumbing. Not only can you not flush the paper, the sewers don't seem to deal well with anything, and the smell (even in a clean toilet) was pretty potent.

One thing China did do well, though, was have easily available public toilets. Since many areas historically lack plumbing in individual dwellings, there are lots of public loos. We have a picture of one brand new one of these, complete with a row of 5 or 6 new, Toto squats, with automatic flushes. Of course, they don't bother with separate stalls, so you squat right next to the next person. (Note, that when there are stalls, older Chinese women don't usually bother with shutting the doors anyways, and usually do up their trousers in the hallway.) The automatic flush on a squat toilet is a bit interesting too, since if you're not careful, it can flush unexpectedly and they occasionally spray with enthusiasm.

Oh, and China was the first place that I saw the dirty footprints on the seat of the one Western toilet in the bathroom.

Here in Japan, the toilets are clean, you can flush the paper, and there is an SOS button in nearly all the stalls in public places. In spite of all this, we have yet to find any soap in any public washroom.

The toilet in our house is so high tech we can't figure out how to work it, but I will say the heated seat is pretty nifty. We can't figure out what all the other buttons are for. And it has a gray water system--there is a small sink over the tank. After you flush, the tank refills through a faucet over the sink, and you can wash your hands in that water. It is then stored for the next flush.