Lovely Loos Make You Want to Go N
o longer content with your bog-standard travel guides, the Lonely Planet series has ventured into perhaps the loneliest planet of all…
Toilets: A Spotter’s Guide features more than 100 of the world’s most interesting places to answer nature’s call.
With pictures and stories, the book focuses on the hi-tech, the artistic, the gorgeously situated and the just plain weird.
The writers promise “porcelain pews with fantastic views, audacious urban outhouses, and eco-thrones made from sticks and stones in all sorts of wild settings”.
Some of the more interesting examples include:
THE FOUNTAIN — There’s a monument in a public park in Foshan, China, that’s basically a giant wall of “facilities”. The 100m-long work by Chinese artist Shu Yong is composed of 10 000 toilets, sinks and urinals — all factory seconds and second-hand goods. Euw.
THE SPACE BOG — As one can imagine, zero gravity probably isn’t the best for one’s aim so thank heavens for Nasa. A special toilet designed for use in space looks rather horrifyingly like a giant yellow suction cup — just the thing to avoid spills floating off into the atmosphere. A giant leap for mankind, indeed.
THE HAUNTED HOUSE — Bodie State Historic Park near Bridgeport is a genuine California gold-mining ghost town. In its heyday in the late 1800s it was home to 10 000 people. Now the government keeps it in a state of “arrested decay”, with interiors as they were left, stocked with goods. The more daring tourist may listen to the wind whistle from inside the single outhouse — the best place to be, we suppose, if you should happen to spot a ghost.
THE MOON UNIT — There’s a toilet in Haida Gwaii, British Columbia, Canada, with a flush system powered by the moon. Set on a dramatic rocky outcrop, the toilet has an automatic flush that washes its waste away twice a day … Okay, okay, it’s a longdrop over the sea. But still, it’s a pretty spectacular spot to go.
Toilets: A Spotter’s Guide will be released this week. You can order it from amazon.com at $9.98.