Notes from My Travels: Bathrooms Around the World

 

Framed el bano bathroom sign
I found this beauty at TJ Maxx about 10 years ago.

Are you hovering over the back button wondering whether you should back the heck out of this weird post? Or maybe you’re just oddly curious? I admit toilets are an odd kind of field trip.

Roman bathroom Ephesus Turkey 1999

My interest in bathrooms started when I was about 11 years old. My brother and I went on a tour of the Kohler Design Center near Sheboygan, Wisconsin. We were there for hours looking at hundreds of toilets, tubs and faucets. Who knew there were so many different kinds of toilets? That was when I started to pay attention to the bathrooms I was using.

 

Fort Collins Colorado Bathroom 2011
I got a kick out of this water-saving toilet in a grocery store, Pull handle up to flush liquid waste (#1), push handle down to flush Solid waste (#2). Fort Collins, Colorado 2011

A couple years after our Kohler tour I started traveling internationally. First with my family to Canada, then in college I went to Greece and Turkey. In my 20’s I travelled to the Philippines, Hong Kong, mainland China, Amsterdam, France, Belgium, Mexico and Belize. During my travels as a young adult I noticed there were several things that all cultures seem to have in common Each country, each culture, has their own unique kind of restaurants, foods, hotels, cars and yes, toilets.

Tour of Toilets Around the World | Life as a Field Trip
Wisconsin restroom, 2014

I started taking pictures of memorable bathrooms (and hotel rooms and meals) many years ago. I always wanted to hang photos of the many kinds of bathrooms I’ve been in on my bathroom walls, but I never got around to it. I figured “hanging” the photos on my blog would be a the next best thing. Then a few weeks ago I saw this super perky sanitary napkin receptacle. It inspired me to get moving on hanging those photos on my blog and it made think we should all be this happy in the bathroom. Happy enough to kick up a leg!

Tour of Toilets Around the World | Life as a Field Trip
This one makes me smile. I was in a Spanish immersion program in Puebla, Mexico 2000. My host mom was super sweet and had her house decorated to the hilt for Christmas.

Before we get too far on this Tour of Toilets. Please remember not to judge an entire country’s toilets by the photos I post here. In my 20’s I travelled inexpensively. We stayed at NO frills pensions. I sat on my share of many conventional, boring toilets in each of the countries and states I’ve visited. I’m highlighting the memorable ones here.

Tour of Toilets Around the World | Life as a Field Trip
A toilet-shower combo at a very inexpensive pension. “Shower water does not stay in the shower- bathroom is a swamp by the time your shower’s over.” Yucatan Peninsula, México 2002

Sometimes I couldn’t take photos of bathrooms and toilets. Instead I wrote about them in my journal.

Tour of Toilets Around the World | Life as a Field Trip
Istanbul, Turkey 1999

“Interesting bathroom stop. There was a squatter! The regular toilet was just a [toilet] bowl and the tank was on the wall.” Greece, 1999

“Stopped at a buffet style restaurant>>Turkish food. Very clean bathrooms.” Turkey, 1999.

Tour of Toilets Around the World | Life as a Field Trip
Bathroom at a small family restaurant near Meteora Greece, 1999.

“In the stall next to me there was someone very quiet until they started declaring angrily in Spanish things I didn’t yet know. I decided it was time to wrap things up and get out of there!” Hotel restaurant, Puebla, México, 2002.

My Tour of Toilets | Life as a FIeld Trip
This is one of my favorites because I didn’t have to touch it to flush!

“I have to say that I’ve never had a bathroom experience quite like our first rest stop today.” ” Bathrooms known as C.R.’s or Comfort Rooms.” “I’ve come to grasp that in almost all of the [public] restrooms here there is very little privacy between fellow peers in different stalls…and the stalls are all open- just a cement three-sided concrete cubicle with a toilet bowl in it and outside the stalls a huge barrel of water and a scoop to rinse out the toilet when you’re done. ” On a 12-hour bus trip. Philippines, November, 2000. Not long after that experience we splurged on a hotel room with “a toilet with a seat.”

 

Tour of Toilets Around the World | Life as a Field Trip
“The bathrooms are in a tin shed downstairs. They are pour toilets.” Simon’s View Inn, Batad, Philippines, 2000

“Bathroom attendant sleeping in Tutix bathroom.” Playa del Carmen, México, 2002.

“Bathroom was worth a picture.” Orient House, Istanbul, Turkey, 1999. I wish I had taken a picture. I can’t remember it at all!

Tour of Toilets Around the World | Life as a Field Trip
I also look for bathroom humor. These bathroom signs at a Cancun restaurant made me smile. Mexico, 2011

Whether I flushed with my hand or foot or it was hands-free, whether I pay 50,000 lira or tipped an attendant, whether there was toilet paper or it was BYOTP…I wish I had a picture of all the interesting toilets I’ve seen. I don’t have photos of the fantastic bidet in our hotel room in Athens, Greece,  the tiny bathroom in our rented room of a house in Belize City, Belize, the incredibly filthy bathroom of the apartment over a bar in Lille, France (several men in their 20s were living there), and the sparkling mall bathroom in Brussels, Belgium.

I’ve misplaced my France and Belgium photo album. I didn’t take any photos of bathrooms in Amsterdam or Hong Kong. I really wish I had taken a photo of the freestanding pay toilet $.25) in San Francisco that completely sanitized the entire interior after you walked out. I wish I had taken those photos.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my tour of toilets or it at least got you to look at them in a different light! I’m willing to bet you’ll notice toilets more often.

I’ll leave you with a little bathroom philosophy.

Tour of Toilets Around the World | Life as a Field Trip
Dickinson County Fair, Norway, Michigan, 2013

5 Comments

  1. The squat toilet took me right back to China.Oh my aching knees and trying to stabilize myself with one hand and holding my pants out of the way with the other. Wait a minute…I need a third hand for, you know.

  2. Now this is too funny and oddly fascinating. I suppose the toilet type says something about the culture it is in. I did take a photo of a toilet once in Eureka Springs, Ark., or maybe it was Cripple Creek. Anyway, it had a really tall back and a pull cord to flush it, an old timey one. I thought it was cool.

  3. Oh yeah, traveling has definitely taught me to appreciate a clean and comfortable bathroom when I come across one! Although, two of the houses I’ve lived in had shower/toilet combos with no separation…you just get used to a constantly wet bathroom!

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