French Aire toilets

Yes we have those in Greece too! Know where they are and avoid them like the plague! Only useable if you are good at yoga and have a skirt on.

A real nightmare, especially if the floor is wet - the French must be able to hover

Travelled to Morocco in the sixties.

The cafes in Tangier had a hole in the ground.
I have never forgotten that trip, what a surprise.

The hose, Silver lining is for cleaning - and in some cases that means ones self! In Afghanistan for instance (so I understand), ladies remove the clothing on the lower half of the body, folding them on a stool, windowsill or clean part of the floor, use the "hole in the floor" and clean themselves with the hose (not usually a very strong pressure). No paper or towels are available unless it is a very wealthy home. Then dress again. Generally (except in winter) it is quite hot, so clothes and self dry very quickly! I have to admit that I'm not very keen on finding out the veracity of this for myself!

I have vivid memories of a holiday in the Dordogne about 30 years ago, when every place we went seemed to have one of these. I was 7 months pregnant at the time...

Visited Cuba two or three years ago and the toilets (outside of the hotels) were memorable for all the wrong reasons. In most of them you were required to pay in exchange for one square of loo roll from the attendant - even in some restaurants where you were eating a meal! Usually the flush had stopped working about the time of the revolution and the loo attendant job included tipping a bucket of water down the pan. We encountered a few holes in the ground, a service station with four toilets in cubicles, but with no doors and one toilet where you were handed a large rusty nail to put through a string loop to keep the door shut. Although the loo attendants earned their living from tending to the toilets, virtually none of them seemed have thought about doing any cleaning, possibly because there was usually no running water. We got through gallons of hand sanitiser. When at last our group found a toilet where the attendant had cleaned and put plastic flowers on the counters we sighed with relief and gave her a handsome tip.

I first encountered these awful things some years ago in Italy.

I was in Florence, in a queue for the public loo when an American woman came out and said "Oh my Gaaaaard that was unbelievable"

I assumed she had meant that it was dirty, but no, when it was my turn there was the infamous hole in the ground.

I couldn't do it, I really couldn't even though it was Summer so I would have been wearing a dress or skirt, which of course is much easier to deal with than trousers.

I remember wandering into a smart looking hotel and using their ladies loo. They are always somewhere near the reception area and as I have found on many occasions, the reception staff take no notice if we wander in as if we were staying there.

This even works in Venice which of course is notorious for its shortage of public loos. I can recommend the Danieli if anyone is 'caught short' there!!!

My OH used to use hotel loos. If you walk in confidently and look as if you have every right to be there, no questions are asked.

Try a SHEWEE or similar. Great for travelling and festivals when having to contend with less than sanitary conditions are the norm ?. I got mine from Amazon.

I have a shewee that I left in the car. Had one opportunity to use it and found that OH had taken it out - as I had never used it! We were stuck for about five hours on a motorway when we were going down to a funeral following an accident further up the motorway. All the men were ok peeing when they needed to but no cover for the women. Once the traffic started moving there was a mad dash for the services and a huge queue for the ladies. Several of us used the Gents sit down loo to avoid another long queue.

Actually squatting is much healthier than sitting on a conventional toilet, because it releases the puborectalis muscle which helps us be continent.
See www.squattypotty.co.uk/

If the toilets are really wet, smelly and horrible then I prefer a hole in the ground. I can’t squat so have perfected the knees bent, bottom out method. Handbag and camera strung around my neck and trousers rolled up and a piece of loo roll to avoid direct contact with the flush.

And Shewee’s are great. Wonderful for outdoor weeing where there isn’t much cover. The advice given to me when I got one was to practice in the shower first! Oh, and be careful if you have to ‘go’ uphill as it needs to be at the right angle!

I'm all for giving me old puborectalis muscle a work out, but not in public.

In the late 40s a friend of my parents' brought home a bride from an exotic country. She was shown the toilet. Minutes later there was a crash. Bless her, she had stood on seat and knocked herself out on the cistern.

Nope, I can't, I just can't ’go’.
Not on/above holes in the ground, no nature wee’s, not if the loo is unclean. Nope.
I can't relax to get the stream flowing regardless of how full my bladder is.
I held it for two and a half days once - yes I was in considerable pain and was quite ill.
I'm not sure how or if I could use a she pee. Knowing how I am with toilets probably not.
I need hand gel just thinking about this. ?

There are far fewer 'Turk toilets' as they are known these days. Thirty years ago, they were all like this. Basically pretend you are camping and literally using a hole in the ground....squat. We travel from Dover south to just short of the Spanish border and rarely come across any. You will find them if you stop in an Aire that is literally a camping stopover....ie. an Aire without petrol or restaurants. The bigger the Aire, the more modern.

We also lived in Cyprus for a time and were not allowed to put loo paper in the toilet. Had to have a bin which was obviously cleaned out very frequently. Got used to it, and was second nature when we were back that way or in Greece for holidays.The reason is that their sewage pipes are a lot narrower and get blocked easily.

I may have been lucky but all the holes in the ground I have used have been quite clean and the flushes have worked. Doubt if I would be mobile enough to use one now but the flat surface seemed very easy to clean compared with some of ours.

They are standard in rural Far East. Did find them difficult to begin with but eventually developer a technique. Think wearing short dresses or shorts definitely makes it easier but on the other hand it is difficult to hold your nose given the 'fragrance' due to the exceptional heat.

I was aged about 8 the first time I went to France in the 1960’s. I can still recall my horror at finding the loo was a hole in the ground. Unfortunately, practically every loo we came across was a hole. After a couple of days of squatting I told my mum that what I hated most was the thought that I might fall head first down the stinking hole. Turned out, I had been facing the wrong way round thus making a bad situation far worse.

I'm going to China tomorrow for 2 weeks I'm dreading the toilets. I was so ashamed in Vietnam last year I had a terrible tum and missed the hole completely. Do you stand facing forward or back? And is it OK to take your trousers and undies off so they don't get wet?

Big hotels LorraineDobson. They'll have western loos. I don't think it matters which way you stand. Stand whichever way you can balance best. Sometimes, holding onto the flush mechanism helps you balance.

IF they have them marked in English, go for the 'Maimed Person Toilet'. It'll be a western loo!

There’s one by the river in Dinan which my host found great fun directing me to! Thankfully it was a joke and I used one in a café nearby.

We used to travel abroad a lot when i was a child, the 'hole in the floor' was the only type of toilet available in France - even in private homes.
My Dad gave them the perfect name - crouch and crap toilets!

The worst i ever experienced was at the top of Mt Sinai in Egypt, someone with a bad tum had plastered the whole interior of the wooden shack. Even the Bedouin guides wouldn't go near it.

Luxury compared to the ‘long drop’ toilet I used in Namibia . The small hut easily distinguishable by the cloud of flies surrounding it , and I had to wrap my t shirt fond my head for the ‘odour ‘ meanwhile, a guy with rifle stood outside as ‘ the hippos could get a bit nasty’! Never peed so quickly in my life!!