West Asian Toilets

First, a note on the name of the region — terms like "Middle East" and "Far East" only make sense from the vantage point of Britain. What is someone in India to make of a "Middle East" that is thousands of miles to their west? What I have here are toilets from Turkey and Syria (and I'll just ignore the fact that half of İstanbul is on the European side of the Bosphorus). Also see the North African Toilet page for examples from the Sinai peninsula of Egypt.

I've spent a fair amount of time in west Asia — eight trips to Turkey, a couple of trips to Syria, Cairo-to-İstanbul overland, etc. You realize that you have become a "West Asian Old Hand" when you find yourself discussing the relative merits of squatters over raised porcelain commodes.

Here we see a long-haul Syrian bus making a toilet stop along the road from Damascus to Aleppo, Syria.

This is probably close enough for photography...

Köse Pension, Göreme, Cappadocia, central Turkey.

A classic floor-mounted squatter with integrated plumbing. The shower head mounts on the wall of the room, and the toilet drains the entire room. The hose/sprayer also reaches the toilet itself for hygenic purposes.

One may find these facilities when trekking in Beşparmak Dağları, the Five Fingers mountain range in Turkey.

Note how the waist-high enclosure provides both stunning views of the mountains for a user, and stunning views of the user for a passerby.

Also compare this to the pit toilet on Mt Sinai, and see the Loos with Views page.

Really focussing on the shower in this case, in my room in the Otel Derviş in Konya, in Turkey.

The fabulous Doy-Doy Restaurant, Sultanahmet district, İstanbul, Turkey.

Or, for those in the know, çok iyi kebap ve lahmacun salonu. Sifa Hamam Sokak #13, +90-212-517-15-88.

Note the classic spigot on the wall and the red plastic mini-pitcher. For some reason the pitcher is almost always red....

The Mavi House guesthouse, Sultanahmet district, İstanbul, Turkey.

Another great spigot-and-pitcher example.

And this one's red, too...

The Mavi House is just across the street from the back side of the Four Seasons hotel. That extremely expensive luxury hotel was originally the prison featured in the film "Midnight Express" (which, it must be pointed out, was a blatant propaganda film funded by the Greek government, with a screenplay by that master of conspiracies, Oliver Stone).

The toilet at a gas station along the highway in central Turkey.

This image is unfortunately not documented in detail, but it's from somewhere along the highway north-east of Konya.

It's not as if there's all that much difference in Turkish gas station toilets!

A well-labeled squatter at the Meltem Pension in Pamukkale village, north of Denizli, in Turkey.

Yes, that's a mirror above the sink, and this is a semi-outdoor facility.

The Orange Guesthouse, treehouses near the ruins at Olimpos, along the south-western coast of Turkey.

You sleep in elevated platforms in the orange orchards, but at least the toilets are on solid ground. Or, as the Romans put it when they ruled the area, commodia firma beneficius est.

The very nice bathroom in a renovated room in the ANZ Guesthouse in Selçuk, Turkey, overlooking the Temple of Artemis and walking distance to Ephesus. Also see the page of Biblical Toilets, New Testament.

The Bosfor Ekspresi is a Turkish train that runs from İstanbul to Bucharest, Romania. It leaves İstanbul with a sleeper car, a couchette car, and a coach car.

In Gorna Oryahovitsa, in central Bulgaria, it merges with a train out of Sofia. The train from Sofia is based on one that originated in Thessaloniki, Greece, and left its sleeper cars back in Sofia. The Bulgarian coaches and the Turkish sleeper and couchette are combined and pulled north toward Bucharest by a Bulgarian locomotive. Before crossing the Danube River into Romania, the Bulgarian locomotive is replaced by a Romanian one.

So, is this a Turkish train, a Bulgarian train, or a Romanian train? Yes!

The sleeper and couchette are definitely Turkish as they're owned by TCDD, the Turkish national rail company. And, its toilet at the end of the couchette car is in the Turkish style.

If you get on at Veliko Târnovo, you take a temporary seat in the coach. You're herded out onto the platform at Gorna Oryahovitsa as the Turkish coach is pulled off the train to wait to be connected to the next Bosfor Ekspresi bound back to İstanbul.

You're then told by the Bulgarian conductor to sit in an empty seat in the couchette car, as it will be an hour or so before the joining train arrives from Sofia. That gives the Turkish conductor plenty of time to try to scam you into paying a couchette supplement as, according to him, there will be no coaches arriving. Ignore him, it's a scam, and a rather clumsily attempted one at that.

Eventually the train from Sofia arrives and the two trains are merged. Then you find a Bulgarian owned coach with your assigned seat. And, the typically blue Bulgarian train toilet.

Turkish 1st-class yataklı vagon, or sleeper car, on the Pamukkale Ekspresi between İstanbul and Denizli.

Note the distinctively Turkish (and somewhat intrusive) thin copper line providing water in lieu of any disposable dry abrasive. It's controlled by the valve immediately to the user's right, thus leaving the left hand free for, uh, the sort of activity that means left-handed eaters are viewed with horror in the Middle East.

This image is from the late 1990's, see the three below for more recent Turkish train toilet developments.

The Pamukkale Eksprsei in 2004 — Turkish toiletology had changed significantly in the past four years! The toilet itself is largely unchanged.

Flush it! On board the Pamukkale Eksprsei in 2004.

This was the strange thing in 2004 — Turkish toilets, even on board the Pamukkale Eksprsei, were largely equipped with toilet paper! OK, fine, a dumpy hotel that calls itself an Otel and doesn't really cater to foreign visitors was still uncontaminated by TP, but changes were underway.

Also the Pamukkale Ekspresi overnight train between İstanbul and Denizli, but this is in a second-class coach car. And back in 2000 or so. A toilet compartment built largely from stainless steel.

This is from the Izmir Ekspresi overnight train between Ankara and Izmir. A somewhat downscale overnight train as Turkish trains go, but still a nice way to travel.

Note the great similarity between this toilet and the one from the Pammukale Ekspresi above. Basically the same cars, the first-class yataklı vagon.

The toilet in the fabulous Ankara Ekspresi overnight train running between İstanbul and Ankara.

The first-class yataklı vagon (sleeping car) is the nicest overnight train I've ridden anywhere.

Brand-new high-tech sleeping compartments, comfortable beds, these clean toilets, and even a shower at one end of the car! The service is fantastic — each compartment has a refrigerator with a bottle of mineral water and a box of juice, plus a candy bar, for each passenger. A nice ride for about US$ 35.

Egyptian ferry on Nuweiba-Aqaba route between the Sinai and Jordan.

No sprayer, but at least there's a hose.

Actually pretty nice by Egyptian public toilet standards.

And I must emphasize that it's rust you see there!

Rose George's The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters is a fascinating description of sanitation conditions around the world. "2.6 billion people don't have sanitation. [....] Four in ten people have no access to any latrine, toilet, bucket, or box."

In September 2009, Morna Gregory and Sian James published a book titled Toilets of the World. It's pretty much the same theme that you find here — photographs and commentary on other people's plumbing.

If you're not bored yet, you might be interested in (or at least tolerate):

• Travel suggestions
• Back to Bob's home page....