Travel diary, part 4: Caution, it's about toilets. Stop eating now.

As I've traveled overseas, I've marveled at the human brain's ability to adapt to new situations, at how we initially react with shock and confusion to unfamiliar things, but over time we learn to accept different realities. We can even grow so accustomed to these new situations that we eventually regard them as normal. Culture shock doesn't last forever, and you can even reach a point where you forget what things were like at home or how you felt when you first encountered the new culture and all its trappings.

The thing is, when you're completely immersed in the culture, you don't notice the gradual shifting of your mental schema. You might not even discover how much you've changed until someone points it out to you, or you find yourself in the company of someone who is still in the initial stage of coping with the new situation.

Why am I rambling about culture shock and adaptation? Because, dear friends, I feel that there is one aspect of life in Turkey about which I cannot adequately present an American viewpoint. Traveling in India and southeast Asia has forever changed my definition of "gross," and Taiwan has given me a new sense of normalcy. I am speaking of this:


The bane of American travelers in any country where it might appear: the Turkish toilet. The squatty potty. The hole in the ground. Nothing is quite so shocking as when you walk in expecting a toilet and find only this. It's like your worst travel nightmare.

And yes, they're everywhere in Turkey.

However, they're also everywhere in Taiwan. I've heard arguments that they're actually more sanitary because there's no contact with a gross seat and that squatting is a healthier position. (Take this with a grain of salt; these are the same people who tell me that hitting myself repeatedly in the arm is good for my skin and that drinking cold water is unhealthy.) At any rate, after numerous occasions where the only choices were the squatty or a bush, I've ceased to regard it as an issue. The Taiwanese toilet came from Japan, so it has an anti-splashing design and always has a flushing mechanism, as you would expect of the high-tech, germaphobe Japanese. In Cambodia, instead of a flush, there was a cistern full of grimy looking water next to the toilet, with a small pitcher for scooping out this murky water to wash everything down. And sometimes a bidet. I won't even tell you about India.

The point is, these things don't faze me anymore. I'm sorry, I should have blogged about this a few years ago when I could have offered a more entertaining perspective. My poor flatmates, on the other hand, could probably give you a nice rant on the squat toilets, as they're both still reeling from the initial revulsion. They're probably not comforted by my assurance that after a while, the question "Is it a squat or a sit?" won't even come up when using public restrooms. However, there is another aspect of culture shock in this story, one which I haven't worked through and adapted to.

If there's one principle that I stand by, it's that two things in life should be free: drinking water and toilets. In Turkey, they charge you for both.

The water at least makes sense. Local water is so full of minerals that you wouldn't want to drink it, and so we order large bottles of water that are delivered to our house every week or so. I don't like it, but I can accept it.

But I haven't yet found it in my heart to forgive the bus company for their stinginess. It's a twelve hour bus ride to Trabzon, and the buses, while equipped with wireless internet and several television channels, lack facilities. There are a couple of rest stops along the way, full of overpriced cafes and gift shops. However, as you walk into the ladies' room, you'll be greeted by a man sitting behind a window in the entrance, asking you for an entrance fee. It's only one lira (US $.65), but still. It's not fun when the smallest bill you have is 50 lira and your coins total .75 lira, in a country where people hate making change. So I have to confess that when faced with this circumstance, I did something morally reprehensible: I didn't pay for the toilet. I happened to be walking in amongst a crowd of women, and in a state of panic, I simply slipped through without the guy noticing. It's probably a form of shoplifting, but that's what happened. Yikes.

The worst part is, the bus ride is setting you up. During the first leg of the bus ride, we were served drinks twice. Don't tell me this isn't some sort of scheme: fill up the customers with tea, bring them water after that, and then drop them off at a pay toilet? Please.

Just don't tell airline companies; we don't want to give them any ideas. The ocean is too wide for that.