Lonely Planet Has Published A Book About Toilets From Around The World
You guys, prepare yourselves for a very different kind of ‘Game of Thrones’.
Lonely Planet has published a new book and it’s all about toilets. Or, to be specific, unique toilets from all over the world (and, in one case, even space).
Titled Toilets: A Spotter’s Guide (or should that be A Squatter’s Guide?); the collection of dunnies, bog holes, loos and lavatories ranges from luxurious European water closets fit for a king, to whiz-bang how-do-I-even-work-this prototypes for space use, to Aussie eco-toilets with a view.
“As any experienced traveller knows,” Lonely Planet says in the book’s introduction, “you can tell a whole lot about a place by its bathrooms. Whatever you prefer to call them — lavatory, loo, bog, khasi, thunderbox, dunny, washroom or water closet — toilets are a (sometimes opaque, often wide-open) window into the secret soul of a destination”.
“It’s not just how well they’re looked after that’s revealing, but where they are positioned and the way they’ve been conceptualised, designed and decorated. Toilets so often transcend their primary function of being a convenience to become a work of art in their own right, or to make a cultural statement about the priorities, traditions and values of the venues, locations and communities they serve.”
“In these pages,” Lonely Planet continues, “you’ll find porcelain pews with fantastic views, audacious attention-seeking urban outhouses, and eco-thrones made from sticks and stones in all sorts of wild settings, from precipitous mountain peaks to dusty deserts”.