The Basic Toilet Questions
This page answers your basic international toilet questions.
Click on any of the pictures or questions to be taken to detailed explanations with more pictures.
Squat or Sit?
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This is the biggest toilet question in the minds of most international travelers. And for some, especially Americans, it may be the biggest question of all, part of what keeps them from travelling out of fear of the different: Will I have to deal with squat toilets in this country?
The "Squat or Sit?" page breaks it down country by country.
Wipe or Wash? Paper or Water?
The next question worrying the traveler is: What do the locals use, and therefore what will they provide for me: Toilet paper or water?
Put another way: Wipe or wash?
It varies with location, but this page breaks it down country by country. Sometimes it's paper, sometimes it's water, sometimes it's both as seen above in Italy.
Bowl or Bin?
It is very important to realize that the plumbing in many countries is not designed to handle toilet paper. Putting your used paper in the bowl is likely to cause severe problems.
But where do you put used toilet paper, in the bowl or in the bin?
For example, let's say you're in Велико Търново (Veliko Târnovo), Bulgaria. The toilet is nice and modern and very clean, but does the paper go into the toilet or into that waste bin?
It turns out that Bulgaria is east of the Paper Curtain and you should put your used paper into the waste bin. Read this page for the full details on which countries have plumbing that can handle your paper, where you need to put your paper into the waste bin, and what do to if neither is really possible.
Where's the Seat?
Sometimes you will find a raised porcelain commode with no seat, like this example in Moscow, Russia.
Where is the seat and why is it missing?
It's very likely a cleanliness issue, as toilets can be much cleaner without a seat. Click here to learn why and to see countries where seatless toilets are common.
What's a Bidet?
Some Americans go to Europe and wonder:
Why are there two toilets, and why does one of them look so strange?
Stop! That second unit is not a toilet, it is a bidet! Here is an explanation of what a bidet is and how to use it. At left you see Jim Morrison's bidet in Paris, or at least one just like it in another room in the same hotel.
Some toilets have a bidet function added on, like this Italian unit. Japanese add-on bidet units can be very complicated. Turkish ones are just a copper tube.
Turkish squat toilets usually have a small plastic bucket next to the water spigot, and for some reason they are almost always red.
And sometimes you just have a short length of hose.
Click here for full details on the range of bidets.
How Can I Install My Own Squat Toilet?
A surprising number of people ask me: How can I install my own squat toilet?
Start by purchasing the hardware. At left you see a Chinese plumbing supply shop. However, you will find on my dedicated squat toilet installation page that you can buy squat toilets in countries where they aren't commonly used. What's more, you can even buy squat toilets from Amazon!
Click here to learn how to install your own squatter.
What is a Toilet Snorkel?
Yes, there really is such a thing as a Toilet Snorkel.
Click here to learn about the toilet snorkel: what it is, why it exists, how to build your own.
Rose George's The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters is a fascinating description of sanitation conditions around the world. "2.6 billion people don't have sanitation. [....] Four in ten people have no access to any latrine, toilet, bucket, or box."
In September 2009, Morna Gregory and Sian James published a book titled Toilets of the World. It's pretty much the same theme that you find here — photographs and commentary on other people's plumbing.
The Porcelain God: A Social History of the Toilet, by Julie Horan, contends that civilization began with the toilet.
Toilet: Public Restrooms and the Politics of Sharing, edited by Laura Noren and Harvey Molotch, has essays by anthropologists, sociologists, and architects on the importance of the toilet, especially for urban dwellers.
Latrinae Et Foricae: Toilets in the Roman World describes the toilets of the Roman Empire from Iberia to Syria, and from North Africa to Hadrian's Wall in Britannia.
Toilets, Bathtubs, Sinks, and Sewers: A History of the Bathroom, explains the history of personal cleanliness and hygiene to children in grades 5-8.
| A Sani-Flush blue border indicates a toilet that I've used. |
How long have my Toilets of the World pages been around? I'm not exactly sure, although they started in the mid 1990s as a single page on a Purdue University server. The Internet Archive Wayback Machine lets you see what that looked like as far back as January 17, 1999.
My cromwell-intl.com domain appeared in September, 2001, although the Wayback Machine didn't notice its one enormous Toilet of the World page until January 17, 2002. Some time soon after that I split it into categories, and the collection has grown ever since.
In December, 2010 I registered the toilet-guru.com domain and moved the pages to a dedicated server.
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