Disgusting toilets provide tourists no relief

This awful toilet block at Long Hai Beach near Vung Tau is closed most of the time anyway.

Stepping into a slimy, rancid restroom is not anyone’s idea of a good holiday.

The stench is unbearable, the floors are wet and slippery and what’s not grimy is downright soiled.

Is it any mystery that people prefer sullying fields and abandoned buildings rather than enter a local public toilet?

For travelers new to the experience, this might unfortunately be all they remember about Vietnam.

Vu Ngoc Khiem, director of Hanoi-based Indochina Travelland, said his foreign customers often ranked the appalling toilets as “the most terrible thing about the country.”

Heritage and hygiene

Hang, a tourist from Ho Chi Minh City, said she couldn’t find a single toilet at the Lao Bao Jail, which is a National Cultural and Historic Site in the central province of Quang Tri.

“How could anyone dare to relieve themselves outdoors at such a heritage site?” she said.

But many tourists in the former feudal capital of Hue have to because public toilets are rare and clean ones are almost nowhere to be found. Most don’t have running water, and the banks of the Huong (Perfume) River are now the most common place for travelers to relieve themselves in the area.

On Vong Canh Hill, a scenic spot above the river, two blockhouses leftover from the war days are still the only toilets available.

Hue is home to 373 culture heritage sites, very few of which have proper toilets.

Charin Nukurnavarat of Thai Airways International Company told a seminar in Hue last month that foreign tourists would feel very uncomfortable having to choose between using a tree or a crumbling wall as a toilet.

‘No problem’

Locals near Sam Son Beach in the north central province of Thanh Hoa show visitors to the sea if they ask about lavatories.

A security guard on the beach who wished to remain anonymous said he didn’t see what the problem was.

“People can relieve themselves anywhere. The important thing is whether or not you’ve got money to have fun,” he said.

Dinh Cong Tran, a photographer who usually takes wedding photos at Do Son Beach in the northern port city of Hai Phong, usually tells the groom to use the beach or the pine forest while the bride is told to lift up her gown and squat.

“People can go right into the sea, no need for toilets.”

The city spent more than VND1 billion (US$56,117) building two toilet areas at the site in 2007. They were finished last year but one is usually closed except on the weekends.

Meanwhile the Phong Nha-Ke Bang ecology and culture tourism center in the central province of Quang Binh earned more than VND6.2 billion ($348,000) from more than 60,300 entrance tickets during the first half this year but there are no toilet rooms in Phong Nha Cave, which is more than 7.7 kilometers long.

Some tourists said they would hold their breath until they could bear no longer and relieve themselves right in there.

Also, brushwood on the top of Than Dinh Mountain in the province has been turned into a “public toilet” as travelers can’t wait to finish the 450-meter descent.

That smell

In the central city of Da Nang and the historic town of Hoi An in neighboring Quang Nam Province, the issue is not the lack of toilets, but the stench of those that do exist.

Last November at a tourism conference in Da Nang, general director Natjarlya Rodprukpoom of the Truly Asia Hub Travel & Tour Company in Phnom Penh said she was very impressed by the ao dai and the bamboo shoulder pole of Vietnamese street vendors—but she was dismayed by the toilets at the city’s Champa Sculpture Museum.

She said such dirty toilets ruin every good impression that visitors have gained about the country. She said one bad toilet could make travelers never want to return to Vietnam.

Dirtiest in Asia

Robert Tan, a Singaporean working in the Vietnamese tourism industry, said that in Singapore tourists were willing to pay for toilets so long as they were clean and pleasant.

Vietnam is becoming more attractive to tourists, he said, adding that its public toilets were among the dirtiest in Asia.

Truong Thi Thanh Nhan from Hanoi recalled that on her trip to Japan she was impressed by the public toilets: one located every 10 kilometers on the highway with friendly cleaners.

“But toilets right in the middle of Hanoi make me want to throw up every time I pass by.”

Visitors to the Thang Long Water Puppet Theater in the capital have even complained that the theater’s bathroom odors seep into the auditorium.

If one wants to use a public toilet in Vietnam, Nhan said, “You have to calm down, take a deep breath and just wait until you get home or to your hotel.”

She said restaurants are emerging everywhere at beach tourist sites in the north while toilets were still nowhere to be seen.

Nguyen Van My, general director of HCMC-based Lua Viet & Tavitour, said only toilets at hotels are managed properly these days while the most terrible ones are those at tourist destinations, which usually have no water or toilet paper and are only cleaned once a week.

“Vietnam tourism will never take off if the toilet system keeps terrorizing people at every turn.”

Reported by Thanh Nien staff

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