Bathroom Survival Course 101

The first time I came to Indonesia, I remember that my biggest culture shock was getting used to going to the bathrooms here. After a total of seven months living in Indonesia, I am finally at peace with the process. And as such, I feel that it is my duty to warn would-be visitors before they find themselves in an unfamiliar, potentially undesirable, situation.

The first thing you’ll notice when you walk into a bathroom is that there is water everywhere. It’s as if someone walked into the room and just started pouring buckets of water onto everything in the room. Actually that’s pretty close to the truth. You see, in Indonesia, there is a well-known adage: Wet is clean, and clean is wet. So, if you want to leave the bathroom neat and tidy after you leave, just spray everything down with the handy little hose…you’ll find it right next to the toilet. Or use the small dipper, which is oftentimes floating in a large bucket of water that also serves as the sink. (The traditional western variation of the sink is rarely found in Indonesian bathrooms, except in the wealthier homes.)

The downside of this "wet is clean" philosophy is that you will probably never sit down on a toilet for the rest of the time you are Indonesia. My one American friend solves this problem by leaving a towel in the bathroom to wipe down the seat before each toilet use. She is convinced that her Indonesian roommates remain unaware of the towel’s mysterious purpose in the bathroom. This method, however, only works from the comfort of your own home. The other disadvantage to a continual flood on the bathroom floor is that if you are wearing pants, the cuffs will most certainly be drenched. So don't forget to roll up your pant legs before entering the bathroom. On the same token, never, ever enter a bathroom in socks. I cannot stress this enough.

After you’ve done your business, or perhaps beforehand if you are a very observant person, the next thing you will notice is that there is no toilet paper to be found anywhere within at least fifty yards of the bathroom. And even if there is, it is most certainly soaked through. Hopefully you remembered to bring your handy-dandy stash of tissues or toilet paper, whichever you prefer, and that you carry at all times. Personally, I prefer the tissues; they’re more diversifiable. And try not to think about what other people use…it makes life just a little bit easier that way.

Ok, so that’s the basics of what it takes to survive in the toilet world… Now let’s see how well Bathroom Survival Course 101 has prepared you for adventures a bit further from home. As my one Indonesian teacher at the University of Wisconsin was fond of saying… “Contoh, contoh, contoh.” For example!

It’s a Thursday night and you’re tired of the usual Indonesian nightly activities, which often consists of squatting on a crowded, noisy sidewalk, drinking the strongest, sweetest coffee that exists anywhere on these formerly nine-now eight-planets. So you decide to broaden your horizons and spend the evening at a village festival. Everything is amazing, the atmosphere is “cukup ramai” (just the right amount of busyness,) and the music is rockin’ in a traditional Sundanese sort of way. About 10pm though, you decide to frequent the facilities, confidently armed with tissues in hand. You tentatively ask for directions and are told something that only vaguely makes sense. Don’t worry though, because only a finely tuned instinct and/or the grace of God will ever help you make sense of a Sundanese person giving you directions, no matter how strong your command of the language is.

You find the place. It’s a dark building with two doors. You choose one at random to be the ladies or the men’s room, depending on your particular preference. You comb the walls for the light, until a lurking man tells you that this area does not have electricity yet. It is pitch black. There appears to be a labyrinth of rooms, and you can’t even see in which one lies the toilet. For some strange reason, the idea of going into a dark building and closing the door behind you (a door that almost certainly doesn’t lock,) with a lurking dude outside does not appeal to you. For a second, you think about leaving the door open and letting the moonlight assist in the process, but then you come to your senses about that idea too. So here you are at the perempatan, your crossroads of decision-making. You can either:

A) Go back and find a friend to guard the door and distract Lurking Man. Maybe leave the door open just a crack?
B) Try the “mind over matter” way… You really don’t have to use the bathroom, do you?
C) Brave the dark alone. You can feel your way to the probably not-so-clean toilet.
D) Trust your Indonesian brethren. Bergaul (talk slang)with Lurking Man until divine inspiration strikes.

The first time I was in this situation, I stood at my crossroads for a long time, talking to Lurking Man as he smoked a cigarette. Where was he from? What was he doing so far away from the event? After a few moments passed and he realized that I could speak Indonesian, he warmed up a bit, and told me there was a house down the street; I could try to borrow a candle there. Nice Indonesian Man, Formerly Known As Lurking Man (NIMFMALM) had hit the jackpot. I knocked on the door, gave the 8-year old son about ten cents for the temporary use of a candle, borrowed NIMFMALM’s lighter, and have lived happily ever since. Well, to be honest, I did manage to spill quite a bit of wax on me in the process.

Thus ends my overly descriptive introduction to the world of Indonesian bathrooms. Stay tuned for Bathroom Survival 102, where we move on to discuss the finer points of taking a shower in a room with only a bucket, a cold-water faucet, a dipper, and a drain in the floor, while still making it an enjoyable, refreshing experience. Don’t worry; it doesn’t involve singing!