When I was your age, I had a flush toilet

Have you ever spent five minutes trying to get that log past the porcelain gate? I have. I've spent ten minutes. With a cup. Since the toilet does not flush here in beautiful (and I mean gorgeous) Thailand, the water pressure which is normally provided by the cistern of the toilet is not present. Therefore, to create that pressure, I have to fill a cup... again and again and again. And when I dump a cup of water into the toilet bowl, the contents are pathetically mixed and settle once again, the consistency wholly unchanged. At most there is tincture of color difference.


So here I was, the first time, dumping cup after cup of water, thinking, "What the @#$#%$%^&?" I tried different ways of pouring the water, down the side, from high above the bowl, slowly, quickly, in combination with the shower sprayer, everything. Nothing seemed to substitute for the simple, but unbe-effin'-lievably smart design of the flush lever. I finally decided to leave it, "The smell won't be too intrusive," I thought. Wrong. Awful. Thai food origin. Bad. (Sorry, all, for the grotesque imagery, but seriously, you need to understand.)

The worst--yes, there is worse--part of the toilet trouble is the complete and utter lack of toilet paper. Not that I don't have it, I just cannot use it, unless I throw the used paper into my trash bin. As you can imagine, that would not really eliminate the smell which was the original issue. There are many solutions to this, although none are entirely ideal.


I'll let you ponder this solution. Next post I will tell the most effective (in my opinion) solution. The tools: A toilet bowl, a spray hose, a cup, a spicket, a person--with a hand (as the Thais do it), toilet paper, and a refuse bin.

(P.S. The picture above this paragraph is definitely whole, dried octopi.)