Bird flu threatens SE Asia. Fires from Sumatra blanket the south. Pollution rise to poisonous levels. Government officials have responded to these challenges by promoting ‘HAPPY TOILETS’ to instill Thailand with the will to keep their toilets clean.

This policy is reminiscent of Singapore’s drive to insure the island’s citizens wash their hands after doing either # 1 or # 2. I often wondered if they hired officials to smell the hands of visitors to the water closet. Maybe they trained dogs to do it, but a Singaporean associate assured me that the government has opened a School of Toilet Cleaning to help the toilet police ferret out offenders

“99.9% of men don’t wash their hands when drinking at a bar.”

And you wonder why Thais don’t like shaking hands.

The Thai campaign is a brainchild of the Ministry of Public Health in collaboration with the Sangha Supreme Council and the ministries of Interior and Education. Obviously more than one genius was needed to come up with this idea, whose crowning glory will be the cleanest throne of Thailand award with the expressed goal of having every WC spotless from Mai Sai to Yala.

Love your toilet or Suam na chai is the motto.

A dirty toilet only belongs in a backward country.

My three dirtiest toilets was a maggot feces covered WC in Tibet, a wooden shack in Guatemala with dead monkeys ageing from the rafters, and a constantly overflowing bog at the infamous Mudd Club in New York.

The bog in Thailand are more annoying, since they’re squat.

Rarely dirty unless a farang whose aim was off went ahead of you.

There was an old joke.

How do you know when you’ve been in Thailand too long?

When the shoeprints on the toilet seat are your own.