Travel Health

The Left Hand Toilet Technique and Spitting – World Hygiene

By Tom Thumb, Posted Nov 02, 2008

The toilet is the heart of the home

Really, it’s the kind of unique cultural experience that you travel for..

From Morocco to Bangladesh, use your left hand to eat with, pick stuff up in the grocery store or even worse, to shake someone else’s hand and you’ll be considered a filthy barbarian. You might be forgiven for your ignorance if the locals take into account that you’re a Westerner but most Arabs, Turks, Africans, Iranians, Indians and Thais could just never imagine sinking to your level of squalid personal hygiene.

What on earth am I talking about?

When travelers head to the bathroom in North Africa, the Middle East and most of Asia they’re often confounded by the lack of toilet paper. They’re presented with a tap and a jug or maybe even the luxury option of a little hose pipe but nothing in sight with which to clean their behinds. For most people in the above mentioned countries, however, nothing could be more disgusting than to think of wiping with paper.

When I first went to India at the tender age of 18 I was already aware that this small cultural leap of faith awaited me and I did my best to learn as much as I could about toilet etiquette. One particularly merciless friend fooled me by saying:

‘Yeah, you’ll see travelers everywhere in India comparing how brown their fingers are…’

But try as I might on that first day in Delhi, everyone’s hands looked perfectly clean. Then came the moment of truth after my first curry, squatting down over the Indian toilet, reaching around with the hand and… it felt surprisingly good. I discovered a part of my own body that had always been out of sight and out of mind, the least conversational area of the human anatomy – unless you happen to be a traveler in India in which case a discussion of your recent bouts of diarrhea is a normal topic at the breakfast table.

Within no time I was using my left hand and water to wash and soon couldn’t imagine doing otherwise. For one thing it marked apart the travelers from the tourists and I took great pride in pointing out:

‘Look, if you had some excrement under your armpit would you use tissue paper to clean it or water?’

With closets full of chemical cleaning products and electric trimmers for ‘unsightly nasal hair’ (God bless you, Mr Remington) most people in the West imagine they live a clean, hygienic lifestyle. It comes as a shock to most of them then to learn that the average Muslim, Hindu or South East Asian considers them to be rather dirty.

It’s been suggested that the British might never have lost control over India had they adopted the local culture of personal hygiene. For while Indian streets may be some of the most squalid in the world, Indians themselves spend hours everyday cleaning and purifying their bodies. Yes, they hawk up lumps of mucous in the morning and don’t hesitate before spitting it out into the gutter but the idea of wiping one’s nose with a handkerchief and then putting it back into the pocket would be almost inconceivable.

So when backpackers wear the same shirt two days in a row, blow their nose with tissue paper and, worse, block up the plumbing system with wads of toilet roll, small wonder that locals hold their breath when we pass.

It’s been 13 years since I first set foot in India and I haven’t used toilet paper since. I can’t even bring myself to sit down on a Western lavatory any more, preferring to lift the seat and squat on the rim Asian-style. I clean myself every morning with almost Indian thoroughness, scraping the gunk off my tongue and the back of my throat when I brush my teeth and keeping my nails short at all times.

Then again, my last girlfriend left me because she couldn’t stand to see me spitting in the gutter any more…

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RECENT COMMENTS

Nov 3, 04:17 AM Justruss said:

Before (if?) I leave Saudi Arabia to return to my home in Virginia, I’m having a sprayer installed next to the toilet. I can’t stand the idea of using dry TP ever again.
Happily, I haven’t had a skidmark in years.
Nov 3, 04:06 PM Dave said:

Least we forget about the dried clumps of thin Asian toilet paper that gets embedded into our cracks should we not be pure of water!
Enjoyed the Armpit comment!
Nov 7, 06:37 PM tom said:

I must admit it gets hard to explain to people why you enter the bathroom with a plastic bottle under your arm though… and if you try they look at you as though you’re about to infect them all with giardia..
Nov 26, 04:48 AM kk said:

How do you dry your nether regions off afterwards?
Dec 10, 05:32 AM jim said:

The water doesn’t go everywhere once you learn how to do it. You don’t need to dry.
Dec 19, 03:23 AM Rog said:

I live in Thailand and I have been doing it this way for years. Seriously, even though I am half-white myself, when I lived in the states, I nearly freaked out at the fact that theres only toilet paper. I ended up wetting the toilet paper before wiping my ass.

Oh and you dont have to dry it off. If you spray it correctly, the water will only be hitting the crack and the anus area. If you are hittin the asscheeks then you’re doing it all wrong.

I asked my dad (who is from Mass.) and he told me that in the northern parts of the US, it would be too cold to do this often.
Jan 1, 07:09 PM laura said:

Amongst the poor and especially in developing countries, diarrhoea is a major killer. In 1998, diarrhoea was estimated to have killed 2.2 million people, most of whom were under 5 years of age (WHO, 2000). Water contaminated with human faeces in latrines is of special concern, and commonly occurs in countries such as India, where using the left hand and water is preferred to the use of toilet paper.
Apr 27, 12:53 PM Randy said:

Wait, what do you do if you’re left-handed??? I’m screwed…
May 8, 01:24 AM Havah said:

Nice… I used to frown at my boyfriend for spitting and talking about poo; few years later after some time in asia i enjoy feeling my butt get clean with my fingers and make friends quicker if someone blows their nose on the ground in front of me.
May 25, 03:50 PM rocco said:

being a complete left handed i found very hard to learn how to do things with my right hand in the beginning of my travels, expecially eating , but I eventually made it! After travelling quite extensively around the world I can tell I find very useful both the tube with tap used in the Arab World and the bidet we have in every Italian house, something rather unknown to north-european culture: wiping with paper first then washing is the best for me!!!
Oct 6, 02:07 PM Mr Poopallion said:

for all you people sasying you don’t need to dry it you are wrong I myself will get JOCK itch if I don’t dry, I use both Western and Eastern ways,, I wipe my butt with a wet paper towel and use another dry paper towel to dry it off

Tom has been traveling non-stop since the age of 18 and co-founded Road Junky in 2004. Follow him @tomglaister

He’s the author of Hand to Mouth to India, an account of hitchhiking from England to India with no money and which will soon be rereleased by Road Junky Books.

Tales of a Road Junky featuring tales of breaking people out of jail in Delhi, selling fake Rolexes in Japan and other adventures in Israel and Brazil will be out later this year.

He also writes fiction for anyone who never really grew up and his latest novel is Bozo and the Storyteller – download the audio book for free or even buy a copy…

To Drink the Local Water?

Drinking the local water was something that I once felt set me apart from the other travelers who all needed their special water in a plastic bottle tapped god knows ...