Toilets around the world

Globe-trotting correspondent Winda Benedetti says that if you travel to exotic places, you'll run into lots of exotic toilets, too (to put it kindly). She offers some useful survival tips in No. 1 problem with traveling can be going No. 2.

This is the side of travel rarely discussed in those glossy magazines touting the latest package tours to pretty places. When planning our foreign holidays from a postcard-perfect distance we prefer to imagine that our waste products will be mercifully and messlessly teleported in a blinding white light away from our bodies to some distant and uninhabited corner of the planet.

The harsh reality is, when traveling abroad nature will call and there'll be no familiar toilet to retreat to. The intrepid traveler has no choice but to explore strange and unfamiliar facilities, to do this most private business in the most alien of privies. ...

My year of in-depth experience has shown me that all it takes to survive the toilets of the world is a bit of common sense and the ability to learn from your mistakes or, better yet, the mistakes of others. Prepared to discuss the undiscussable, I offer you a few nuggets of hard-earned water closet wisdom.

Also check out Winda's photos of toilets from all over.