(In which Taro continues in his quest to provide Way Way Way Too Much Information)
Steve: "He's a fountain of knowledge on squat toilets"
Taro: "I'm a bidet of knowledge"
There are lots of cultural differences to get over, and toilets have definitely been one.
In Southeast Asia, toilets -- both squat and western -- were accompanied by a hose, sprayer, or dipper; you either don't use toilet paper, or use only a small amount to dry yourself. Paper isn't flushed since it's likely to clog. Instead, a bin is provided, preferably with lid. Almost every Southeast Asian toilet I've used has been relatively clean, and once I got the hang of things, I've found them preferable to western toilets since there's no contact. Chinese squat toilets have been another matter. Southeast Asian toilets were pretty much always accompanied by water -- even if I had to fill a bucket outside. Outside of hotel rooms, Chinese toilets rarely are, which means their lidless bins are often overflowing and rank.
The first toilet we encountered, on a cliffside between Heikou and Kunming was bad - one festering room for each gender, reeking of ammonia and excrement. It was essentially a long drop toilet, except that the long drop was preceded by a slope, so there was residue. The next toilet was worse: Multiple long-drops with slopes preceding them, each toilet separated only by a waist-high divider. The concrete slopes in this one had accreted the leavings of previous users. The toilet at the entrance to Tiger Leaping Gorge had one long slope, shared by all users. This trough had running water, at least, but apparently noone had cleaned the place thoroughly in a while: What passed for air was thick with ammonia.
To be fair, there are public toilets on the other end of the scale: The ones at the Great Wall and the Forbidden City, for instance, are both fine. In Beijing, there's actually a star rating for public toilets; there was one at the Forbidden City with Four Stars awarded. Quite what this means I can't say: Perhaps they provide towel and toiletries; perhaps a spa or mints on a pillow. I've too, have started awarding ratings to toilets. One, on the way to Xiahe got a Three Brown Star Rating: No slope, just a sunlit pit below the hole. The only thing keeping it from receiving a coveted Four Brown Star Rating was that there weren't any pigs below. Apparently the one at the restaurant we didn't go to was worse!!
In places where there's no public toilets, public urination is common. This is particularly true in Cambodia, where wandering mines ensure that wandering people may never wander again, but elsewhere it's not entirely uncommon to see sober locals relieving themselves against random walls. In China, babies don't wear nappies. Instead, their clothing is designed for easy clearance - it's split so that a parent only has to pull the sides apart and point the kid towards the gutter. Apparently they're trained to go when they hear a soft whistling. In Kunming, there was even a kid clutching a toilet roll who was squatting in the dirt under a kerbside tree...
Just two things of which you must beware:
Don't drink the water and don't breathe the air
("Pollution"/Tom Lehrer)
Littering appears to be socially acceptable. Perhaps it's because there are quite a lot of workers whose job it is to sweep streets. At the dock for the Three Gorges cruise, there was a net below the gangway between the funicular lift and the dock; "It's to stop rubbish getting in the water", suggested someone. It was a surprise therefore, when the lift attendant ripped up some rubbish as she crossed the gangway and threw it into the water. Apparently there are forty-something boats plying the gorges to sweep garbage from the water.
Few places' water is potable (safely drinkable); Singapore's is and so is Dalat's, where they proudly advertise that they were the first city in Vietnam to have it. Instead you normally rely on bottled water. I have been cleaning my teeth with tap water in most cleanish-looking places on the theory that I'll only be getting a few of the local germs since I spit thoroughly, and that having a few germs is likely to make me less suceptable to diarrhoea. It's a risk, but a calculated one. By and large it appears to have paid off as I've only had one bout since Southern Thailand, and we're pretty sure that that was from group dinners -- first one member had it, then half the group had it -- but more on that elsewhere.
Water quality is not the only problem. Air quality can also be extremely poor, with smog reducing visibility severely, and causing respiratory problems - many of us have come down with persistant coughs and runny noses. Beijing's air quality is actually not so bad (they're planting a lot of trees to ameliorate the problem), Xian's is fairly awful, and Lan Zhou (which we only stopped in long enough for breakfast) supposedly has the most polluted air in China. When it's dry, however, Xian's smog does have a bright side -- literally: There's a lot of light pollution at night, and all the neon signage suffuses the place with quite a nice glow.
Almost Godly
Since starting tours I've normally had the benefit of hot water showers, which has been particularly nice lately since the weather has been coolish. Back in Indonesia (and again in Luang Prabang in Laos) showers were a rarity. Instead you used a mandi, a tub filled with cold water which you scoop out with a dipper. This sounds worse than it is. The weather -- in Indonesia at least -- is generally warm so cold water is refreshing, the tub allows impurities to settle out, and it means that you use less water than you would in a shower. A cold mandi in Laos was preferable to a cold shower, since you can easily target body areas!
Someone - I can't recall who - advised me before I left that I'd have to get used to the fact that I would stink. Deodorant was hard to find in Southern China - only large supermarkets or chemists with lots of western-oriented toiletries had it, and their range was inevitably small (whereas there was normally a wide range of other products - toothpaste in particular). Perhaps southern Chinese are low in apocrine sweat glands. Showering helps, of course, but hot water showers in humid cities can be perilous: You have a shower, get out and dry yourself, dress, and are immediately sweaty again. Hopefully a thing of the past until I get to India is when dehydration means that unexcreted urea ends up being converted to ammonia and put out in sweat.
I gave up washing my own clothing in Southeast Asia as laundries are cheap and my own poor efforts generally left clothes smelling little fresher than when I'd started. In major cities in China I have washed a few things out as laundries can be tricky to find and hotel laundry can be ridiculously expensive - A$3 for a pair of trousers, for instance? The peril of laundries in Southeast Asia was that outside of major cities, machine wash was rare. Instead "Rub and Scrub" was often the primary method used. This, for those who've not had the pleasure, involves the laundress taking a scrubbing brush and trying to remove as much fabric from your clothing as possible. Worse, about a third of the time, the amount of residual body odour removed was little better than if I'd done it myself. In cooler climates, whether clothing requires a wash is determined by the smell test: if it doesn't, it can be reworn.
Some possible uncommon but serious side effects of doxycycline include:
-- a life-threatening allergic reaction (symptoms are trouble breathing; closing of the throat; swelling of the lips, tongue, or face; hives)
-- blood problems (symptoms are unusual bleeding or bruising)
-- liver damage (symptoms are yellowing of the skin or eyes, dark urine, nausea ,vomiting, loss of appetite, abdominal pain)
-- irritation of the esophagus
(FDA Advisory)It was a relief to reach southern China, as it meant that I could finally stop taking Doxycycline (which I've been on since before leaving home). Doxy is an antimalerial prophelapsis; if you're lucky the strain of malaria that you get infected with isn't yet immune to it. In addition to rare but serious problems it has three common side effects. The first is that you may burn more easily, but I've only burnt three times so far on travel, and never badly. The second is that it kills your gut bacteria, so it's a good idea to take yoghurt to replenish, otherwise stomach upsets are expected. The third (so I'm led to believe) is that if you get hit with malaria it only suppresses the symptoms, and doesn't actually kill the parasite, so you end up with malaria anyway.
