Think of it all as an adventure... Many of the most hillarious and memorable travel stories are toilet adventures....
As an older solo female traveller of many years, I have shifted from wearing long pants to longer length full skirts. It is infinitely easier to manage than dropping and holding on to your dacks with pocketfulls of of valuables while trying to maintain balance in the (swaying) squatting position. Squatting. Most westeners dont spend much time squatting, therefore lowering and raising yourself, and maintaining a squatting position is a muscular challenge. BUT with daily practice before you go any one can prime and strengthern those "squat muscles" more than you would believe possible. I have learnt to pull the crutch of my underdaks to the side so I dont have to drop them to go to the toilet. Alternatively , sometimes in the Indian trains I deftly slip my underpants off in the cabin which makes life easier in the toilet. Yes definitely take your own paper and let the comedy begin.
Happy travels Paula
For night travel and traversing long tunnels this may come in handy:
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/02/save-energy-with-glow-in-the-dark-toilet-paper.php
Haha! whatever will they come up with next?
In Istanbul this afternoon (swanking again, you see) a woman traveller and I got to exchanging our favourite toilet stories.
She managed to drop her new mobile phone down the hole a year or so back, while squatting.
Moral of the story - empty your back pockets before emptying your bladder.
Don't you find that whenever you meet up with other travellers in out-of-the-way places the topic of conversation usually, if not always, turns to internal plumbing problems?
And go_2: way to avoid the snow! :-)
One of my most memorable moments was travelling with canayjun on the canadian train from winnipeg to churchill. I was in the upper bunk in a section and the thing sways like anything because of the terrible line. I practically had to hang myself in the corridor to get down to go to the loo in the first place. Once there if you could hold on well enough things weren't too bad. I have been in many positions and conditions on and off trains and in the end well if you have got to go well you have to go...............I have found this thread really amusing! If I ever went to churchill again on that train I might invest in one of those female urinal things!
There's nothing like a pooping thread to get the old people all stirred up, their bowels in an uproar so to say.
Halong Bay @ http://ckjournal.blogspot.com/
I was like you wife when I first started to travel in the 60's.
Toilets and washing clothes were of my biggest worries. Having traveled for eons, I no longer give it a second thought, as things just seem to work out. The key issue is, does you wife really want to travel? I did.
no very true canayjun but I have made up for that with my visits to uganda and their long drops. When I was at the orphanage i used a bucket at night instead of having to trek to the long drop at night and with about 200 others using the same one when you went you often had to hold your nose and position your feet carefully! My knees also developed strength in the four months or so, although I mostly still had to hold on to the walls!
trusted partner
