What a Pigsty!

If you’re squeamish, this may be the time to look away, because we’re back on the subject of toilets and diarrhoea in this third and final anecdote in my mini-series of less glamorous travel experiences in China.

I’m on my way to The Huangguoshu Falls in Guizhou Province. At 74 metres tall and 81 metres wide the waterfall is said to be the largest in Asia and I’m looking forward to seeing the beast.

On the way I stop at a roadside restaurant for lunch. It’s a small place with only a few tables and could do with a bit of a clean, but some of the best meals I had in China were in places like this, so I’m not worried.

The owner of the place is really nice, and the food is great, but half way through my meal I feel the need to pay a visit to the ladies’. Or less delicately put, I’m suffering from yet another bout of diarrhoea, something I became very accustomed to during my stay in China. As anyone who has suffered from this very embarrassing condition will know, when you need to go, you need to go!

So I politely ask the owner where the toilet is, but he is surprisingly reluctant to tell me. At first I think, I’ve broken some etiquette by asking for the toilet before I’ve finished my meal, let’s face it, in most countries that is an odd request. Or maybe my Chinese is just throwing him, although at that point I had been in China long enough to be able to pronounce the word “Cèsuŏ”. Nevertheless, getting very desperate now, I write down the characters for toilet.

The characters don’t produce the “light bulb” expression on his face I was hoping for, but he does point in the direction of a small building across the road, suggesting that he knew all along what I was asking for. I have other more urgent matters to attend to than to ponder on the reasons why he was so reluctant, and walk across the road as gracefully as I possible can in my “condition”.

As I enter the toilet I’m met with an indescribable stench that makes me want to throw up. But I have no choice but to breath through my mouth and, pardon my bluntness, quickly get - or squat as it were - down to business.

A brief moment later I’m feeling a lot better, and as I stand up I’m faced with the reason for the unusually, even for Chinese toilets, powerful stench and the reason why the owner of the restaurant was so reluctant to tell me where the toilet was - a big, fat, filthy pig!

I’ve been squatting next to a pig! On the other side of the low wall where I thought was another squat toilet, this pig is just standing there looking at me with this content, goofy look that only pigs can produce.

I guess, when you think about it, a toilet in a pigsty makes perfect sense, and in the circumstances the pig is the one that should be complaining, not me!

So with that realisation, I walk back across the road to a very sheepish looking restaurant owner to finish my lunch!

My later visit to The Huangguoshu Falls with the roar of the gushing water seemed an appropriately “cleansing” finish to what might now seem like a surreal experience, but at the time was put down to yet another “only-in-China” moment!

TAGS: less glamorous travel experiences, travel

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