Toilet Training – Bangkok Version

 This post is the Bangkok Version of toilet training. I’m sure the time to talk about hill country toilet training will come soon enough. The two are not the same.

In the previous post I mentioned we had some issues with “Bangkok Belly”. One bout was deemed to be dysentery and they had me stay overnight in the hospital so they could pump in some fluids. I went to the Bangkok Nursing Home which is where I learned that in British English, nursing home means hospital. Or at least it did at the time the Bangkok Nursing Home was named.

Our cross cultural training somehow skipped over the part about the Asian style “squatty potty”. Even after arrival, I don’t recall anyone jumping to the front of the line to show us proper squatty potty technique. But as Plato is credited with saying, “necessity is the mother of invention” and as everyone has said at some time or other, “When you gotta go, you gotta go”. With Bangkok Belly, we had to go more often than we wanted and didn’t always have much time to choose the location. That meant like it or not, it was a necessity to use the squatty potty.

It's not like we needed an instruction manual. Simply put your feet on either side of the hole in the designated places, hunker down with your butt cheeks on your heels and let the good times roll. Flushing is also simple. If not a tank and dipper bowl as in the photo, there should at least be a bucket of water and a dipper handy so just pour water down the hole and say “goodbye”. If the bucket is dry and there is no spigot handy, then flushing is problematic but hopefully there is a water source handy. The toilet paper situation could be an issue (a tissue issue) as there often isn't any. So, we quickly caught on to the idea that we didn’t leave the house without some TP on our person.

As a side note, the English translation of toilet paper in Thai is “tissue”. The Thai word for toilet paper is also “tissue” just written phonetically in Thai script. When the Thai word is the same as the English word, it’s a good bet that the thing you are talking about didn’t exist in Thai culture before someone introduced it in more recent times. So, toilet paper is not a traditional Thai thing. Just what happened before fastidious westerners brought toilet paper I never investigated fully. But I understand it involves your left hand and water and is the reason people around the world aren’t happy if you hand them something with your left hand. As a left handed person, I feel I've been picked on.

Another point of interest about toilet paper in Thailand is that to the Thai, tissue is tissue. So, it is perfectly fine for rolled up tissue (ie. toilet paper) to be used as napkins at the table. Often, there are nicely decorated toilet paper covers sitting on the table. Inside is a roll of toilet paper with the cardboard center removed and the end of the “tissue” exposed out the top. Who ever needs a piece can tear off a few sections and clean their chin or dab at a dribble. In the photo, Marcia is strategically seated close to the pink tissue holder should she need it.

The worst problem I ever heard of a missionary having with a squatty potty occurred on a train. In the 1980s, the overnight train was the main mode of travel between Bangkok and Chiang Mai. It wasn’t a bad way to travel, though for me, the sleeper berths were too short and my head would bang into the wall with each bump and lurch of the train. At the end of each sleeper car though, were toilets. Some were western, sit on style and some were the Asian squatty potty style. Either way, when flushed, it all just splashed to the ground.  If the train was moving, the railroad ties and gravel flying along below were clearly visible. If the train was stopped, there were signs saying to please wait until the train got going again before flushing. Apparently, a flush going flop in the middle of a train station wasn't appreciated.

On one train ride a missionary (not from our Baptist group) needed to use the toilet and as it happened, a squatty potty was available. She went in and took care of her business. Upon starting to get up again however, the train took an unfortunate lurch and her foot went completely down the flush hole and was hanging in the breeze under the train. She was stuck. Pull and maneuver as she might, she couldn’t get her foot out of the tapered hole. She was also forced into some kind of one-legged hunker position that I’m sure has no yoga equivalent and would be very uncomfortable. She struggled a while, but then had to pull an emergency cord to get help. If you need a definition of embarrassing, that's it.

Gratefully, we got along OK with squatty potties at least until our knees reached the point it was hard to stand up again. But even in our more limber, youthful years, the squatty potty was not a place we wanted to spend much time or do much reading.