I purchased a bidet

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sumfight wrote:

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Foreverhappychan wrote:

I loved being able to eat dinner in front of the tv and take a nice shit at the same time. ^_^

I'm guessing that there might be other advantages, if it's a cool evening the bag is probably nice and warm at times?

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Turtledove wrote:

I went to Taiwan for a month recently and enjoyed their toilets at floor level. My wife is from Taiwan. She said it can be hard to get used to the chair height western toilet if you're used to the more natural way. She said she even tried standing on the toilet and squatting there sometimes after first moving to the USA.

Genuinely curious where you went and where you stayed in Taiwan that had squatting toilets. They're rarer and rarer here nowadays, except for in some older buildings and some places in the countryside. I can't even remember the last time I saw one aside from in a couple of aging MRT and train stations I pass through occasionally.

Oh it had a heap of advantages. No constipation was a big one. No dealing with the cold toilet seat. And yes, bit like having a hot water bottle on your belly at times.

And, while this isn't an advantage per se, I discovered that the world of stomas has a *bunch* of young women making videos about living with them. Thousands of them. It's one of those worlds you'd never know about if you never had to.

But the social stigma and the CONSTANT fear that the smell was leaking more than made me happy to reverse it when I could. Having this bulge under your shirt was like having the world's biggest zit, even though there are tricks to concealing it. Showering was a bitch too -- you had to replace the whole thing if you wanted a nice 'naked' shower (you could shower with the bag on but then you had to dry it)...emptying was, well, a shit. And the whole thing would have been expensive without government subsidies: I paid 50 bucks a *year* to get all the supplies I needed delivered; in the US, stoma materials can run you several hundred a month.

Given my Crohn's it'll be back someday but until then I'm enjoying being relatively normal. :)

__

So we almost ran out of TP yesterday and I did some hefty bidet research. Thankfully a quick jaunt to the local scored us a huge pack (they're just either out of stock online or severely restricting them), but I'm still interested. The big problem is it's illegal to install your own in Australia due to health codes. And we don't have a power outlet near the loo so I can't look into a fancy one without also tapping an electrician.

Definitely keeping it in the back of my mind though. I don't imagine this will be the last time we struggle to get TP, and given both of us have...well, issues, we are gonna need an alternative to the bum tissues.

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aggromagnet wrote:

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Turtledove wrote:

I went to Taiwan for a month recently and enjoyed their toilets at floor level. My wife is from Taiwan. She said it can be hard to get used to the chair height western toilet if you're used to the more natural way. She said she even tried standing on the toilet and squatting there sometimes after first moving to the USA.

Genuinely curious where you went and where you stayed in Taiwan that had squatting toilets. They're rarer and rarer here nowadays, except for in some older buildings and some places in the countryside. I can't even remember the last time I saw one aside from in a couple of aging MRT and train stations I pass through occasionally.

We stayed in Taipei for part of the time. We also stayed on the eastern coast nearer the center of the island. We also stayed up in the mountains near some hot springs for a time. I forget where most of the floor level toilets were, probably on the eastern coast though.

The strangest thing to me was at a public restroom. They had urinals next to the sinks. What seemed unusual to me is that the sinks were for use by both men and women. Very practical but I'd never seen that kind of setup before.

The greatest thing about the trip though was the Taiwanese people, they were super friendly and nice. This was in stark contrast with the groups of mainland Chinese vacationers we meet. They were very rude by western standards. Pushing and shoving to get where they wanted to go. At a museum I got sick of it and found the proper response. It was to just push them back in like manner. After this apparently acceptable response they would just go around me. :-)