Singapore Toilets
OK, you may think that I’m going to be gross, but I’m not, really! Toilets in Singapore come in both varieties: seats and holes-in-the-ground, and they are generally kept very clean and pleasant, except where someone has left footprints on a seat, not knowing what else to do with it. But there are a couple of remarkable aspects to public toilet culture here. The first one is exemplified in this sign:
That’s right: someone gives out Happy Toilet awards and the facilities at our local mall proudly display them. These are awarded not only on the basis of cleanliness, but also for good design. The placement of sinks and mirrors is the key to Happy Toilet triumph in Singapore.
Here are two examples of interesting sinks, from the Singapore Zoo and the Jurong Bird Park.
The important elements are access to the outdoor world (while maintaining privacy) and a nice design to the sinks themselves. If you can arrange for a waterfall or some other trickling brook just out of reach of your customers, so much the better. Of course, this outdoor approach can only work in a place that has uniformly warm weather. It doesn’t matter if a typhoon were to blow rain horizontally into a bathroom, after all, but you wouldn’t want snow.
The sinks in the women’s room at the Bird Park face a gently raining curtain of water with a stream running below it. My friend Todd assures me that in the men’s room there the sinks are just normal sinks, but the guys get to pee directly into the stream. I think I may be glad I didn’t know that at first.