Squat or Sit?
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 that country?
My North American toilet, a raised porcelain throne.
Well, for absolutely everything I have on the topic, arranged on a country by country basis, see the menu at the left on this page and on all of my toilet pages. But to summarize:
North America —
Nothing but raised porcelain commodes.
Yes, some state or provincial or national park probably has
a squat toilet somewhere, and there are probably some squat
toilets in Quebec, but I don't remember seeing any.
The worst toilet in the world, a public toilet in Nafplio, Greece.
Europe —
Mostly raised porcelain commodes with exceptions:
- France — Some squat toilets in restaurants and bars. A few public squat toilets remain, although these are being replaced with the high tech automated toilet units developed in France.
- Greece — Most public toilets are squatters — many of them are very grim and some of them are truly awful.
- Romania — Some public toilets are squatters, especially at monasteries and other places not really catering to outside visitors.
Latvian train toilet with footpads on the rim.
Further east, getting into the former Soviet Union, you get crossovers. The Latvian train toilet shown at left was built in Russia during the days of the Soviet Union.
| Install your own squat toilet! | |
The footpads on the rim of the bowl let it be used as an elevated squatter. While that would be the design generally preferred by the people of Soviet Central Asia (Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kirghizstan, Tadjikistan), squatting might be preferred by anyone forced to use it after a long train journey had rendered the seat quite filthy.
Middle East —
Almost entirely squat toilets, with exceptions in
Turkey
where most (but not all) Turkish trains and
many hotels and guesthouses have raised porcelain commodes.
Raised commodes are more common in hotels catering to foreign
visitors, but they are also found in places catering mostly
to Turks — for example, some places I have stayed in
Konya
and
Malatya.
Further south, in
Syria and Jordan,
I saw very few raised porcelain commodes,
and none at all in
Egypt.
Asia —
Or at least what little I've seen of that huge and diverse
continent, my travels so far being limited to parts of
China
and
Japan —
Public toilets are almost all squatters.
Some hotels have squat toilets in the guest rooms,
especially large Japanese hotels catering to Western
business travellers, but many feature squat toilets.
Squat toilets at the Temple of the Six Banyan Trees in Guangzhou, People's Republic of China.
Some people in the U.S. purchase a small stool to elevate their feet while seated on a raised commode, to somewhat mimic the anatomical pose of squatting.
The picture at left shows one author's four-step process for getting into the correct position:
- Knees higher than hips. Use that little stool!
- Lean forward and put your elbows on your knees.
- Bulge out your abdomen.
- Straighten your spine.
- GO!
Others insist that your puborectalis muscle is going to choke your rectum and you must squat.
Some of these people are very insistent, zealous evangelists of squatting.
Quiz: What vital step has the squatting man forgotten?
That's right, he has neglected to remove or at least drop his trousers! His oh-so-natural relaxed straightened rectum is going to fill his pants.
This "Squat or Sit?" question leads to a related one:
Wipe or Wash?
Do I use Toilet Paper or Water?
It is also related to this vital question:
Bowl or Bin?
Where do I put the used toilet paper?
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.
If you're not bored yet, you might be interested in (or at least tolerate):
