BootsnAll Travel Community

Travelling and toilets don't necessary influence each other. Public restrooms are gross ANYWHERE in the world. I've travelled around in many European countries, and without a single exception all had filthy toilets. Sometimes in sport stadiums and pubs, I wonder if they ever clean them.

Two days ago I saw Tool live in The Point, Dublin. The toilet floor was completely flooded (I tried to push away the thought that that water may come out of one of the toilets!) and on the floor floated some pieces of wood as if the ceiling had come down as well... Terrible. And that was BEFORE the concert and before everyone was drunk!

Also, I've visited sports stadiums all over Europe, and in several of them the toilets had no lights so you had to just aim in the dark. A few had toilets which weren't cleaned or flushed in weeks... One of the stadiums I've seen had toilets overflowing and the whole ground was wet.

I am so fed up with filthy toilets that I do use the ladies room whenever the men's room is filthy. And I can assure I've never ever had a look through the key hole or over the toilet walls or so, I never behaved badly in a ladies' room. The only occasions when I use the women's toilets is when the men's toilets are really all filthy, which unfortunately happens regularly. I think it's the pub staff's reponsability to keep the toilets clean for their customers, if they fail to do keep the men's room clean, then they shouldn't complain about me going to the clean restroom. If I pay for consumptions in a restaurant or pub, I expect a clean toilet to be included in the service.

Also, the most scary experience I ever had in a toilet, was in Spain: I entered the toilet cabin and switched on the light, and -seriously- saw at least 10 seriously big spiders spread across the cabin. I ran out of that cabin and ran back to the hotel room further down the village and used the toilet hotel. The spiders were all over the toilet cabin - how the heck is that possible?!

This thread, hands down, is the funniest thread I have ever read, on BootsnAll or otherwise. It doesn't speak well of my maturity level, I know, but I could not stop laughing. I don't think you guys know how funny you guys are. That said, this is one thread I hope I don't contribute to in the future.

I know this one is great, but this one is pretty good too. I have rarely laughed so hard about tampax, and the female plumbing.

Jet

My Japanese toilet experience:

http://everything-everywhere.com/2007/11/20/adventures-...d-of-the-rising-bun/

Worst one: Goa, Palolem beach 2003, where couple of pigs chewed right away on what you blessed them with from above. Not bad on it self if you think the Green, recycling way. A bit worse though when you've seen right after grilled pork sausages on the menu.

Best one: Whenever I "have to go" and don't waste the time with cold sweating and crossed legs while trying to keep a cool face on...

My best toilet experience was probably using the one in my apartment in Hiroshima in the winter. Like most apartments outside of Hokkaido, the place wasn't heated, but the toliet seat was -- it was hard to get off the seat on cold mornings...

Worst?

I'm not sure if it was the Bari-Igonoumitsa (SP?) ferry, where the toilet backed up while we were still in port. Add high seas and a couple of hundred uses to the mix and...

It might have been the place I stayed during one of my border-runs to Bulgaria when I was living in Istanbul. Though my hosts had a satellite TV, they had neither a front door or indoor plumbing. The toilet was a spider infested lean-to over a hole in the ground, spanned by two dodgy boards. In the pitch-darkness of the middle of the night, I stepped on the boards to get my self in position and Crack! Fortunately, I feel outside of the hole.

homestay village in Laos about two hours from the border of Vietnam...it was my first squatting experience going number 2...Man I needed some good leg strength for that one (check out that really long thread if interested in how to use a squatter)...anyway it stunk to the high heavens, no light, but it is something you do ONCE and hopefully only ONCE...the nicest squatters I ever saw were in Japan they were so clean it was crazy...

Also tied for number 1 just because using a nasty squatter has to be up there, i'd say there was this bathroom in vietnam at a roadstop just as we entered the country...the restaurant sucked and the bathroom was covered in you know what...I didn't even want to step in to the toilet...also at a gas station in vietnam it was outside and just a block of cement...not even number 2 available but when its 100 degrees out and humid boy did that smell...just talking about it makes me remember that smell...peeeuuuuu

anyway i'll spare you guys the photographic experience...

best overall toilet experience - this 5 star hotel in LA...marble all around, luscious toilet paper that felt like heaven...ahhhhhh

I think I went on a cheap bus from Cuzco to La Paz or somewhere in between. I had needed to go to the toilet before I departed but figured we'd stop somewhere.

After about 8 hours, we did. It was in in the middle of nowhere. There were two wooden 'cubicals' of sorts sitting in the mud. I opened the door and there was mud (OK poo) all over the ground and a local woman squatting doing her thang on a swill bucket accompanied by an array of insect life.

I was so desperate to go that almost I went in after her until I saw the swill bucket was full to the brim. I couldn't do it. I think I held on for 16 hours total. A world record! Thank god I didn't have my period!

My worst toilet experience was in Beijing, 1999. I was having dinner at a friend's house, who happened to live in a "siheyuanr" (a fourplex of buildings that share a "kitchen" (outdoor bbq grill) and a "bathroom" (outhouse)). At that point I was already pretty used to public, squat outhouses. However, this one was "over full" so you had to be pretty careful in choosing the lowest point in the mound of human waste to leave yours, so that, well, you get the idea.

All of this wasn't toooo bad. But as the night went on, it got dark. It somehow hadn't occured to me that there wouldn't be electricity (and therefor light) in the outhouse. But, of course, there wasn't. It took me prob 30 minutes of carefully sliding my shoe across the platform to find the hole. And I'm not entirely sure I ever did.

But at least I didn't fall in. I had already decided that if my foot fell in, I was simply going to take off my shoes and pants, catch a taxi home (half naked), and never speak to my friends again.

But as for WORST toilet experiences, just ask anyone who has ever been on a submarine about "Blowing Sands" and you're sure to get some really gross stories.

Did anyone get an answer as to where that mirrored toilet is? I'm intrigued now!

The two most interesting toilets I have seen have been Jonathon's Angels in Rome and The Phil in Liverpool. I was told that the Jonathon's Angels is the most famous toilet in Rome. Its very artistic with an alligator and other kitschy decor. The Phil is the most ornate bathroom I have ever been. I took pictures! As far as sketchy toilets-try using one on a fishing boat after you have been out to sea for a few days- especially in big seas.

I forget to mention my trip to the holiest bathroom in the world; It is a very nicely built bathroom next to the Western Wall in Jerusalem...I took pictures, I mean come on, it sure was holypoo

Neither best nor worst, but amusing:

After an overnight flight New York, a layover in Istanbul, and a short flight to Ismir, I and my four friends located our driver in Kusadasi, who directed two of us women to the toilet in the western-seeming terminal building. A short round attendant looked first at my companion in her loose skirt and blouse and pointed to a stall. She then assessed me in my jeans and directed me toward the end of the row.

I opened the door and found a squatter -- my first. The floor was damp, but clean. I managed to keep my pants out of the stream and off of the damp floor. In fact, I exited feeling rather proud for taking this challenge in stride. And fully expecting my sometimes prissy companion to have something to say. But she remained strangely silent. Once we were underway in the van, I said "interesting bathroom, huh?" She made some non-committal comment, puzzling me further. I was sure she'd never encountered a squat toilet.

It turned out that her lack of comment was because her stall had been equipped with a western toilet. Perhaps the attendant had been offended by my trousers and decided to punish me with the squatter! By the way, the ancient toilets we saw in Ephesus the next day were good-old sit-down style. Interesting that the culture "reverted" somewhere over the interval.

As for worsts: It was the head on my club's 34-foot sailboat one summer Sunday. Someone else had taken her out the previous day and they'd stayed aboard partying into the evening. We have a strict rule about not using the head while at the dock, but it had clearly been violated. I'm sure the skipper had checked the facilities when they got in, but hadn't rechecked before locking up for the night, hours later. When I did the same check after our sail on Sunday, I found the head clogged.

Heads can be kept clear through good habits, and unclogging them is a horrible task. You can't just get out the plunger when you're dealing with rubber hoses and plastic pumps. Therefore, most marinas charge a penalizingly high price for the service. Our club's budget is tight. Plus, I'm a born engineer (if not a plumber). I like to know how things work.

In fact, I did know how the head worked because I'd done a rebuild on it (when it was clean) a year or so before. With one of my crew standing by with the fresh water hose I went at the hose clamps with a screwdriver. I won't go into the mechanics too much, but when you pump the head, it sucks salt water into the bowl and uses it to purge whatever is in there through a macerater and on through a hose past a valve that directs it either into a holding tank or overboard.

By disconnecting the output from the pump I quickly determined that the pump was not the problem. I could pump seawater in and let it flow through the pump and out onto the floor (which drains into the bilge, which has its own pump overboard). A small amount of sewage took this path, so my friend used a lot of fresh water to clear it out of the bilge.

Inside a cabinet behind the head, the exit hose makes an upside down U -- the reverse of the U-shaped trap in a sink drain. This U prevents sewage from the holding tank, or seawater from the output, from backflowing into the bowl. We didn't have a snake to get past the U -- especially one that could be used on rubber hose. We tried shooting fresh water into it to purge the clog. No luck. My only option was to disconnect the other end of the hose from the valve. This required lying on my side on the floor in the doorway of the forward compartment with both arms in the cabinet under the bunk where the valve was mounted to the hull. I'm not a little gal, and contortion like this gets old fast. But I was determined.

This end of the hose released another delightful dose of waste -- fortunately not into my face, but darn close. It also revealed the culprit -- a massive wad of stained fiber with a bit of blue string attached.

Unfortunately, that wasn't all. I discovered that the hose itself was a medical text example of clogged arteries -- the two-inch diameter was reduced to less than an inch by mineral deposits.

It took another couple hours, but we pulled the six feet of stiff hose out of its circuitous path through cabinets and bulk heads and laid it on the dock. We alternately bent it, listening to the satisfying crack of breaking minerals, and ran water through it, until it was a two-inch conduit once more and the built-up minerals were returned to the sea. Then we re-installed it, another contortion act.

I don't know about my helper, but I went home and stood in the shower until I'd used an offensive amount of hot water. Then I dashed off a detailed description of the episode -- you could almost smell it -- to club membership. To be sure, the routine warnings about what got flushed were given more emphasis after that.

Ladies, I implore you: when the sign says "don't flush it down" please, please follow instructions. In fact, I see no reason to ever stress any plumbing in that way. It only leads to the kind of stuff described in the other posts in this fascinating thread.

Best: Decorative toilets at Puzzle World in (near?) Wanaka, NZ.

Worst 2: I was in Sarajevo at a restaurant for lunch. Something I ate did NOT agree with me, so I scooted off to the restaurant's bathroom. I was expecting a squat toilet (not sure why those bother people so much, actually...) but I was definitely not expecting the FILTH. The flies were so bad I couldn't even stay there long enough to get my pants down! The hostel was only two blocks away, so I made some kind of excuse to my 3 lunch mates (random British guys who needn't know about my "situation) used all my strength to hold it all the way back to the hostel. I ran up the stairs only to find 4 or 5 people sitting on the couch outside the bathroom door. I yelled "Gotta pee!" as I flew by them but one of them, yelled "Wait! The toilet's not working!" Apparently the look of horror on my face was too much to stand, because one of the girls burst out laughing and told me he was lying. I ran in, but then somehow had to do my business "quietly" because they were all right outside the door!! Grr...

The other bad one was a squat in the Bangkok train station. There was nowhere to put my bag, so I was squatting with a giant backpack on. Despite months of practice squatting, I peed on my ankle. Before we left the bathroom, I managed to discreetly take off my shoe and sock, throw out the sock and put my sneaker back on (I pretended somehow the pee didn't get in there) without my travelmates noticing... by the next day I was tromping through elephant shit, so pee in my shoe was the least of my concerns