This is one of those times when you must admit defeat and eventually just give up. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m currently BUILDING A HOUSE, so of course, the second I saw these urinals, all nestled into the cliffs and built right into the natural stone on the far side of this tiny island (this was the island adjacent/closest to James Bond Island), I wanted to understand how they were constructed. Maybe this is exactly what my new house needs, right?! Outside toilets built into a maze of stone enclaves! These urinals were so unbelievably cool.

I didn’t even need to use the facilities at this juncture (as sadly I’d just expended all my pee in a much less awesome tiki bathroom on the opposite side of the island), however, I started wondering about the logistics of these awesome rock urinals and decided to investigate. Are these little rock walls really made of naturally occurring stone, the way I first assumed? Or are they some kind of synthetic molds? Where are the pipes? Do they jet out the back on the other side? My need to know these things became insatiable. It also became very awkward, as other people were just there trying to pee. They found my investigation upsetting.

I started vigorously rubbing on all the different rocks, trying to viscerally compare them… trying to ascertain their authenticity. I also began weaving in and out of the toilets in an attempt to look behind and underneath them. I am trying to investigate, to learn, but clearly it didn’t come across that way to bystanders, and certainly not to the island’s janitorial staff.

I don’t know if someone went and retrieved these janitors? Possibly telling them that there was an idiot American that looked absolutely baffled at the SIGHT OF URINALS and was also frightening the other tourists? That I needed to be removed? But suddenly I had people very interested in “helping me.”

Understandably, they weren’t comprehending what it was I was trying to do, and this is a classic example of yet another time when I simply did not have the right foreign words to express myself clearly. Complicated and abstract concepts are the hardest, especially when you are not wanting to do something, but just to understand something. I talk more about this phenomenon HERE.

None of the janitorial staff spoke English and I don’t speak Thai, so they all just used their best deductive reasoning and decided that clearly what I was looking for must be a poop toilet. I must be looking for an alternative to all these pee-only toilets, so every time I tried to conduct my little investigation into the rock work logistics of these urinals, one of the janitors would come over to collect me. Then they would physically take me by the hand and lead me over to the commodes. They would point to it and say a works that sounded a lot like “turd.”

It was a little dance we did a total of three times before I finally gave up. I conceded that I probably wouldn’t ever be able to successfully communicate my questions about how these facilities were constructed. I kept insisting I didn’t need to make “turd,” that I was building a house in Texas and just wanted to understand their rock work and pipes. At some point, though, it became very apparent that they didn’t really care. They just wanted me to stop being creepy around the toilets and freaking out the other tourists. I decided that before they stopped being polite and our little dance escalated to a new choreography involving their security personnel, I would just drop it.

To this day, I still don’t know if the rock walls were existing and modified to accommodate the urinals or if they were built expressly for that purpose. My rock rubbing was interrupted before I could garner enough evidence one way or the other. My initial impression was that they were either genuine stone, or extremely well-done facsimiles. But due to constant interruptions my findings were inconclusive and further investigation is needed at this time.

Read here about a similar investigation I conducted in a JORDANIAN RESTROOM.