25: Going to the loo in Singapore

What you gotta know when you gotta go.

Perhaps the strangest fact about toilets in Singapore is that half of the restaurants, cafés, bars, doctor’s surgeries, karaoke rooms and department stores don’t actually have any. That’s because they’re located in malls, where the loos are communal. I call them communaloos.

Few contrasts are starker than moving from an evening of revelry in some low-lit, atmospheric negroni bar into the dazzling corridors of a mall, joining sober late-night shoppers on a quest for the restrooms while explaining to them that I call them communaloos no wait wait come back it’s for my Substack okay bye.

The fanciness of facilities that you find depends entirely on the fanciness of the mall you are frequenting. The entrance to the gents above is in super-swish Ion Orchard, a mall so posh that it has a Steinway shop for those millionaire impulse buys. Inside the gents is equally deluxe: everything is impeccably clean and shiny, with healthy-looking pot plants and thoughtful low-level services for the offspring of those millionaires.

It puts the loo in salubrious. The lighting is bright but flattering. Everything is automated: taps, soap dispensers and hand-dryers are all activated by proximity sensors. When you stand in front of the sinks, the little man that lives under the units pops out to shine your shoes. Or maybe that was the negronis.

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Of course, not all communaloos are this superior. At the bottom end, so to speak, there are some decidedly less desirable ones. They put the loo in insalubrious. But even the worst-case scenario in Singapore is vastly preferable to the literal cesspit of London train station toilets at 1am on a Saturday morning, or indeed at almost any time of day.

Take the example below.

This is the infamous Asian-style toilet. I call it the squatalot. I don’t think I need to explain what goes on here, but the tap and bucket is for the cleaning part. Toilet paper is at least available as an option in this particular dumping ground, but the idea is to use water instead, which is not only more logical when you think about it, but certainly more environmentally friendly.

For that reason, toilets of all denominations in Singapore usually feature a hose with a trigger nozzle, also known as a bum gun. This is a more convenient device for aiming purposes, although unpredictable levels of water pressure can be an educational experience.

A bum gun, as pictured on Wikipeedia.

But even in the lowliest loo, flushes are still automated - in the squatalot photo above, the rectangular sensor above the circular button triggers the flush automatically when you move away. An unflushed toilet simply doesn’t exist in Singapore.

Nor have I ever encountered the no-paper-and-no-water scenario that some travellers describe, and which Shakespeare knew as double-double toilet trouble. Such inconveniences may still be common in some countries, but Singapore is far too efficient to allow such an oversight.

Yes, the bog standard in Singapore means that going to the loo here is a generally stress-free experience. You just have to find them first.