Oh my goodness! It's like a bad dream! You know the one I am talking about! The one where you have to go really bad, and there are either NO toilets, all the available ones are GROSS, or they are simply a hole in the floor! AAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!

Oh great, now I am going to have that dream tonight. Thanks, dear.

It's called a Turkish toilet, or a squat toilet for the more P.C. people out there. It's pretty common to see those when traveling.

Yup, it's a toilet. Although it may not be what most of us are used to, it definitely would suffice in a pinch (no pun intended).

I'm not sure why this is a surprise. it's very common all over asia

if you want to see some really gnarly ones check out this post:
that guy has some frightening pictures...

I could hit that thing from accross the room. (this mentality is why you don't see these often in the US, by the way.)

But seriously, I bet I could pee in that from the other side of the restroom.

People are MEANT to squat when they go to the washroom, that is how the human body works. Sitting is just not the ideal position to s**t in.

I love toilets though. This one included.

I would have to straddle and pray. Squatting is not something this old gal can do.

That one looks fairly luxurious compared to some that I've seen in France, they seem to love the things, and more disgustingly they seem to love having a simple straight down pipe to the sewer with no trap, smelly!

If you think that toilet is bad, you obviously haven't been to Africa!

LAWL!

That one's actually nice!

Like everyone else has said, this is pretty common overseas (outside America).

In Iraq, there's actually a "closet" you go into with just a hole in the ground about 6" across. The nicer ones actually have a faucet inside to rinse the floor.

Afghanistan was even worse. With the scattered farming communities that most poeple live, and the intense difficulty of digging that ground, towns are usually fitted with a large underground aqueduct system. The toilets are then built somewhere, oh, around the town commons. So, if you wanna do your business, just pop a squat right in the middle of the city.

And if THAT wasn't bad enough, the Army has one even better for ya! We lacked any kind of facilities and running water. s**t was easy. It got burned every day. To piss, though, we would dig a 4ft hole about 4ft deep, position 4 - 6 large diamter PVC pipes around it and then fill it in with rocks and dirt. Talk about the WORST smell in 120­° heat...

As awkward as this looks, it might actually be a lot more sanitary to use. As long as you don't fall in, you never actually touch anything with your bits... so no germ transfer. Think about how gross it is that we all put our naked a$$es on a plastic or ceramic seat that a bajillion other people have used. *shudder*

Yes, this is extremely common in Asia! I do believe it's more hygienic than normal toilets. In shopping malls in Singapore, I always prefer to use the squat toilets. When I'm using normal public toilets, I always make it a point to cover the seat with toilet paper. With the squat toilets, I don't need to do that.

When my friend was about 2, she saw a squat toilet for the first time in an airport, and she was so enamored by it that she stayed in the restroom for a whole hour peering at it. Later on, she threw a tantrum when her parents tried to drag her away for their flight.

Which other countries use squat toilets?
I know about Greece and Albania, I have heard it about some Indian states like Gujarati, but I am not sure about this one. the countries that have it seem to be either very sanitary minded like Japan or not giving a crap about sanitary like Albania.
In the middle range folks like to flush.
Well, that might not always be true, when I traveled around in the South, I have seen some interesting toilets in Louisiana and Mississippi. This is not a completely fair note because a Mississippi toilet actually is in the top 5 in the country:

===edit===
Sorry, I have misread something, they are not in the top 5.

Isn't squat toilet bad for hemorrhoids?

I saw these all over Malaysia when I was there...

They have these in India as well. Now that I think about it...dropping a bomb in that porcelain hole in the ground was the best sh*t I ever had.

I just looked at that pic again and LOLed 'cause it looks like a urinal that fell over.

I hope you don't like your shoes too much when you use this thing. Can you imagine the splatter possibilities?