Photo of the Day (6/26/08)

by Kent Wien on

If you are on the way to Essaouria, Morocco and you need to find a toilet, no problem. Could this sign be any more travel friendly? This shot by mce323 interests me for other reasons as well. See the man and the child in the background? Plus, there’s the coffee cup painted on the wall. What’s that about?

If you notice, the pink building has a crack in it. There are so many details that catch my eye. I’m also drawn in by the multiple textures. Don’t you know exactly how that wall would feel if you could reach in and touch it?

If you have an image of what you’ve seen in your travels, send it our way at Gadling’s Flickr photo pool. It might be chosen as Photo of the Day.

Japanese Aquarium Toilet

by Neil Woodburn on

It’s been almost two weeks since we’ve shared with our fine readers the location of yet another wild and crazy toilet found in some foreign country.

Today, we take you to the city of Akashi, Japan where the proprietor of Mumin Papa Cafe apparently dropped the equivalent of $270,000 building the ultimate bathroom so that the café’s patrons can relieve themselves within an actual aquarium.

It’s just a single toilet stall, but three-quarters of it is completely surrounded by an aquarium full of exotic fish and turtles, giving one the impression of peeing underwater.

Hmm… it sort of reminds me of my childhood days at the local public pool…

(via pinktentacle.com)

Packing out Last Night’s Dinner

by Neil Woodburn on

It’s not every day that the New York Times writes an entire article about poop.

And yet, they did exactly that last week when they sent a reporter to the top of Mt. Whitney to crap into a little plastic bag.

Fellow Gadling blogger Erik Olsen recently posted about the new environmental requirements for those scaling the largest peak in the contiguous United States: pack out what you pack in. And yes, that means your poop.

The Forest Service, tired of cleaning up after the slew of hikers who summit the peak every season and airlifting their poop down to the desert floor, has finally closed up the outhouses along the route and are now handing out baggies with climbing permits.

This change in policy was something the New York Times felt was worth some investigative journalism and therefore sent reporter Felicity Barringer and her bowels out to the West Coast to summit the peak and try out the bags.

The result is a rather engaging article accompanied by a cool video with some amazing footage–none of which, by the way, is of Barringer squatting, thank god!

Controversial Urinals in Vienna

by Neil Woodburn on

Having been in Vienna last summer, I was disappointed to learn a little too late about a most extraordinary bathroom.

The Toilet-Bar Vienna is a small public bathroom located in an underpass near the National Opera. As you can see from the photo above, this is no ordinary bathroom. For the small price of just 75 cents, patrons of the urinal arts can relieve themselves in some of the most decorative urinals ever conceived by man.

Unfortunately, someone blabbed their mouth off to the opposite gender and local women’s rights groups eventually forced the proprietors to remove the sexist objects.

The creator of the lip urinals eventually sold them on eBay, so who knows where they might appear next. If you happen to run across them in a bathroom located in some sexist corner of the globe, don’t tell anyone!

The World’s Largest Bathroom

by Justin Glow on

We really love toilets here at Gadling. Seriously, look at our previous coverage. It’s insane!

Iva found a better cleaning solution than toilet paper, Neil’s got a solution for urinating on-the-go, and I discovered that Japan’s All Nippon Airways is the first airline to install bidets in their planes. But wait, there’s more! You can find the nearest bathroom from your cell phone, read a funny story about squat toilets (and learn how to properly use one as well), learn the history of toilets from the toilet museum, and take a luxurious dump in the woods with the BioToi. Deep breath. Did you know that Silverjet has women-only toilets? It’s true. And what about the world’s most amazing bathrooms? We’ve got that too. We’ve also got Willy’s wonderful roundup of urinals with spectacular views. Speaking of urinals — what’s that fly doing in there? If you’re ever lost in China and needin’ to pee, have no fear: hire a toilet guide who will show you to a lovely outdoor urinal (be careful though — they’re running out of receipts). We’ve got the world’s best bathrooms, the world’s worst, and the world’s largest toilet that turned out to not be a toilet at all. And if you’re curious (I’m sure there’s someone out there who is), we’ve got coverage on the World Toilet Summit in Moscow. Did you know there are a lot of, um, people having sex in airport bathrooms? Is that even legal? Curious why your last flight was delayed? It may be because the air traffic controller needed to use the bathroom! And only because this has got to stop sometime (I gotta pee anyway), here’s the last one: did this woman die from a shaft of frozen urine that fell from an airplane? You decide.

With that, here’s another bit of toilet-related news to round out our coverage: It’s the world’s largest bathroom in China, spread out over four floors and 30,000 square feet.