" story # 6: my little river of pee "

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at virtually all gas stations in thailand, there are public restrooms readily available to utilize. most of them are somewhat cleaned on a daily basis and kempt.

i am standing at one of the lucky ones; the clean very sanitary one. i'm walking up to doorway where the bathroom entrances bisect into male and female facilities. there is a man taking 2 baht admission fees. he has three teeth missing in his glowing smile.

i walk through the small maze of wooden-doored stalls, looking for a urinal or some sort of normal pee-hole apparatus with which to use. there is a completely different sense of "normal" here in thailand, and i'm used to it by now.

i walk past the open-doored asian-style "squat" toilet, complete with waterhose and pail of water with a plastic bowl floating merrily. a smile stretches across my face as i see a white dude looking perplexed as all hell at one of these open doors. "hey, it's going to be okay," i sort of want to tell him, but decide to leave him to his adventuresome sense of discovery, as is the style of travel.

i am rounding around the back of the lavatory complex and find along the back wall a brilliant display of multiple semi-private pseudo urinal stalls. the small walls separating the pee-standing slots, are a shiny metal and they glint spectacularly in the afternoon sun.

as i set out to do my business, i am casually noticing that the back wall is completely exposed to the outside of the building. at this point in my trip, i know this is the norm. it still seems kinda weird that there could be some dudes all hanging out in the back lot behind the pee-stalls, checking out the intermittent show of people urinating.

i am looking down at this cascading miniature waterfall that is happening on the facing wall or the channeled loo; there is a pleasant trickling sound reflecting between the metallic walls which makes the job-at-hand much much easier.

i am noticing as i am about to leave, that there is no splash-guard nearer to the ground; if one were to be all letting loose without a care to his stall-mates, then the consequences of not having a splash-guard could very well be dire indeed.

below, there is a small delta of a river, transporting the cascading pee into some underground water transfer facility. the seemingly tropical breeze is blowing across the back of my neck; its cool waft gently welcomed.

i am walking back to the mini-van; the quiet distant gurgles of the river of pee echo in the distance.

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