Mark Derail
Contributor
The article is linked; since online articles tend to disappear, I've copied the important relative loo bits in this post.
Please, let me restate that, Pretty Please With Butter On Top, share your personal experience on the squatters, so us future travelers won't be caught unprepared!
How to Use a Squat Toilet - Features - World Hum
Beginning Squatting: I called Doug Lansky, a traveler and travel writer who knows the hardships of squatting. Its difficult, said Lansky, who edited a book called, Theres No Toilet Paper on the Road Less Traveled.
There arent any helpful directions, like a seatback pocket, that show you how to use a squat toilet. You have to sort of find your own technique, whether youre up more on the balls of your feet, or whether you get a little more comfortable and put your heels down. And if you get advanced, you can even bring the newspaper in with you. Thats sort of the double black diamond mogul run of squatting.
World Hum travel advice guru and Vagabonding author Rolf Potts has also seen a few squatters in his day. In places like India, and many parts of Asia, he told me, a bathroom wont have toilet paper. It will have a little cup of water. Basically, after youve done your business, you take your left hand and wash the exit hole of fecal matter, then wash your hand. Thats why nobody shakes hands with their left hand in most of Asia and the Middle East, because thats your ass-wiping hand.
Dr. Jane Wilson-Howarth is probably the worlds foremost expert on excretion, a real Buddha of Bowel Movements, and shes not afraid to get into the details. My technique when Im teaching volunteers about to go abroad, said the author of How to **** Around the World from her UK office, is that when youre learning, you need to take everything off below your waist: socks, shoes, pants, underwear. Then squat over the toilet. Pour water over your bum, and with your left hand, just whittle away with your fingers and try to dislodge any lumpy bits while pouring water. And thats actually not too unaesthetic, because any mess that goes onto your fingers comes off in the water.
Advanced Squatting: Do above. Read The Wall Street Journal Asia.
What to do: Most important: Cultivate the right mindset. Relax, pretend like youve been doing this for years. Remember, using your hand is (according Wilson-Howarth) actually more hygienic, not less, than using toilet paper. You get good bacteriological cleaning with just rubbing your hands together with soap under running water four times, she says, and cites a study which says you dont even need soap. It can be ash or mud, just rubbing your hands together under water with some kind of washing agent. Even dirt from the river bank will give you good bacteriological cleaning.
In other words, the dirtiness is primarily in your mind, as Potts found out one day on the road. I think it was when I was traveling through Southeast Asia that I eventually got caught out, he told me, and was forced into this mental power situation where I just willed myself to use the water. It was very strange. Were not culturally conditioned to have that kind of intimacy with our butthole. So I just sort of had toits sort of like riding a bike, or having sex for the first timeI just had to figure out what I was doing. Then, of course, I washed my hands extensively afterwards. But thats when I realized its not that big of a deal.
What not to do:
* Dont ignore your pockets mid-squat. Dont lose your wallet, cell phone or passport, cautioned Dean Visser, who has lived in Asia for more than 15 years. If you do, chances are youll have to tell someone how it happened. I speak from hard-won experience, Little Grasshopper.
* Dont use glossy magazine pages. (See: Smearing)
* Dont be afraid to ask questions. Its a difficult topic, said Howarth-Wilson Just because theyre embarrassed about it, people dont even know where to have a **** sometimes, so they wont ask where the right place is to defecate. They do a dump and run, then everyone is ending up encountering this stuff.
* Dont lean back too far.
* Dont forget to pour a little water in, if its a porcelain/metal squatter, before you go, to help wash it all down afterward.
Preparation: Its a good idea to get a few, er, dry runs in while still at home. Because with practice, you can get it down. After all, as Lanksy and others pointed out, we are biologically designed to squat. Its the fine tuning we lack.
The technique, said Wilson-Howarth, is to use a lot of water so youre not actually scraping **** off your ass. What youre doing is facilitating washing it off. But if youre a learner at this, and you dont take your bottoms off, it splashes onto your pants and you look as if you had an accident, and everyone laughs at you when you come out.
Traveling benefits: Mastering the squatter will save you tons of heartache, stomachache, time, comfort and embarrassment. It works; its clean; and it will give you the fearlessness to travel anywhere.
Besides, youll never step out of the toilet in that Nigerian bar looking like you just stepped out of the shower.
Please, let me restate that, Pretty Please With Butter On Top, share your personal experience on the squatters, so us future travelers won't be caught unprepared!
How to Use a Squat Toilet - Features - World Hum
Beginning Squatting: I called Doug Lansky, a traveler and travel writer who knows the hardships of squatting. Its difficult, said Lansky, who edited a book called, Theres No Toilet Paper on the Road Less Traveled.
There arent any helpful directions, like a seatback pocket, that show you how to use a squat toilet. You have to sort of find your own technique, whether youre up more on the balls of your feet, or whether you get a little more comfortable and put your heels down. And if you get advanced, you can even bring the newspaper in with you. Thats sort of the double black diamond mogul run of squatting.
World Hum travel advice guru and Vagabonding author Rolf Potts has also seen a few squatters in his day. In places like India, and many parts of Asia, he told me, a bathroom wont have toilet paper. It will have a little cup of water. Basically, after youve done your business, you take your left hand and wash the exit hole of fecal matter, then wash your hand. Thats why nobody shakes hands with their left hand in most of Asia and the Middle East, because thats your ass-wiping hand.
Dr. Jane Wilson-Howarth is probably the worlds foremost expert on excretion, a real Buddha of Bowel Movements, and shes not afraid to get into the details. My technique when Im teaching volunteers about to go abroad, said the author of How to **** Around the World from her UK office, is that when youre learning, you need to take everything off below your waist: socks, shoes, pants, underwear. Then squat over the toilet. Pour water over your bum, and with your left hand, just whittle away with your fingers and try to dislodge any lumpy bits while pouring water. And thats actually not too unaesthetic, because any mess that goes onto your fingers comes off in the water.
Advanced Squatting: Do above. Read The Wall Street Journal Asia.
What to do: Most important: Cultivate the right mindset. Relax, pretend like youve been doing this for years. Remember, using your hand is (according Wilson-Howarth) actually more hygienic, not less, than using toilet paper. You get good bacteriological cleaning with just rubbing your hands together with soap under running water four times, she says, and cites a study which says you dont even need soap. It can be ash or mud, just rubbing your hands together under water with some kind of washing agent. Even dirt from the river bank will give you good bacteriological cleaning.
In other words, the dirtiness is primarily in your mind, as Potts found out one day on the road. I think it was when I was traveling through Southeast Asia that I eventually got caught out, he told me, and was forced into this mental power situation where I just willed myself to use the water. It was very strange. Were not culturally conditioned to have that kind of intimacy with our butthole. So I just sort of had toits sort of like riding a bike, or having sex for the first timeI just had to figure out what I was doing. Then, of course, I washed my hands extensively afterwards. But thats when I realized its not that big of a deal.
What not to do:
* Dont ignore your pockets mid-squat. Dont lose your wallet, cell phone or passport, cautioned Dean Visser, who has lived in Asia for more than 15 years. If you do, chances are youll have to tell someone how it happened. I speak from hard-won experience, Little Grasshopper.
* Dont use glossy magazine pages. (See: Smearing)
* Dont be afraid to ask questions. Its a difficult topic, said Howarth-Wilson Just because theyre embarrassed about it, people dont even know where to have a **** sometimes, so they wont ask where the right place is to defecate. They do a dump and run, then everyone is ending up encountering this stuff.
* Dont lean back too far.
* Dont forget to pour a little water in, if its a porcelain/metal squatter, before you go, to help wash it all down afterward.
Preparation: Its a good idea to get a few, er, dry runs in while still at home. Because with practice, you can get it down. After all, as Lanksy and others pointed out, we are biologically designed to squat. Its the fine tuning we lack.
The technique, said Wilson-Howarth, is to use a lot of water so youre not actually scraping **** off your ass. What youre doing is facilitating washing it off. But if youre a learner at this, and you dont take your bottoms off, it splashes onto your pants and you look as if you had an accident, and everyone laughs at you when you come out.
Traveling benefits: Mastering the squatter will save you tons of heartache, stomachache, time, comfort and embarrassment. It works; its clean; and it will give you the fearlessness to travel anywhere.
Besides, youll never step out of the toilet in that Nigerian bar looking like you just stepped out of the shower.
