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$15 in parts from your local hardware store gets you the basic tools you need to build a water-powered hygiene system.

All you need is the "spray head" with flexible hose [0], plus the adaptor to make a kitchen part fit the bathroom piping (for some reason, kitchen and bathroom have non-interchangeable parts).

You hang it on a hook next to the toilet, and you use it to clean yourself. I cannot live without these, and I intensely regret any overnight trips to a hotel or other place that does not have such an amenity. I regularly recommend and sometimes even buy and install these for friends and family.

The USA is still living in the dark ages when it comes to some parts of self-hygiene.

0: http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/21PJ48yqYmL._SL500_AA3...

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This is how they do it in Thailand, at least. Basically, imagine the sprayer in your kitchen sink attached to your toilet.

In areas without (edit: running) water, they'll have a bucket of clean water nearby with some sort of cup to use. I've heard this is pretty common in SE Asia.

Yup!

And people eat with their hands a lot too. This is why its considered disgusting to eat with the left hand in many places. Right hand for eating, left hand for washing your ass.

One of the benefits of having travelled a lot in Asia is you will never again be phased by running out of toilet paper.

People in SE Asia don't eat with their hands, you must be thinking about Central/South Asia. Spray cleaning really isn't that bad, you should be washing your hands after anyways.

No, we (Thai, Laos, and Cambodian) do eat with our hands. Chopsticks were a cultural import from the Chinese.

Really? I never saw anyone eating with their hands in SE Asia, well, anything but street food. Its hard to eat a rice or noodle dish with your hands, especially without bread!

Genuinely curious.

Rice based dishes are remarkably easy to eat by hand (it is extremely common in South India, see http://migrationology.com/2012/01/how-to-eat-with-your-hands... for a video), but your point holds true for noodles.

I know people eat with their hands in south/central Asia (including Burma), as well as in Muslim areas (Malaysia/Indonesia), I just never saw that in Tai areas of SE Asia. Well, you learn something everyday I guess.

We usually eat using our right hand when it involves rice. Otherwise we use spoon & fork.

Nice to know! Too bad I'm left handed :(

Go to more rural areas and villages, such as north east thailand (Issan, etc).

My wife grew up in Malaysia, eating mostly with her hands. Hand, rather, normally the right, but the practicality of this is not (no longer?) related to toilet hygiene -- more just that it's really useful to keep one hand clean to pick up your glass, hold serving dishes and implements, etc.. She was raised to be rather more hygienic than I was, interestingly, and has rules that I still forget and break occasionally.

Nowadays many people are westernized enough that they have switched to eating w/ utensils (either chopsticks or fork/spoon, depending on type of cuisine, and the Chinese segment of the population have been using chopsticks all along), but eating with the hands is still quite common.

The houses where I've spent time in Malaysia had western toilets but often with a bucket & cup or sprayer for cleaning; toilet paper sometimes also present, but not always.

Fazed. Sorry, it's not spelling, it's a different word.

Thanks for clearing that up. Apparently, it is a common misconception that it is 'phase' and 'faze' is the incorrect spelling: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/faze

Can someone point me to a product (preferably on Amazon) that's exactly like the sprayers in Thailand? One that can be screwed into a toilet's water supply, not a kitchen sink's.

As long as it says "bidet" and mentions the toilet and sells in the US, it'll have the connections for the toilet's water supply. Basically, these kind of bidets "man-in-the-middle" the water output from the wall to the toilet reservoir.

In my estimation water pressure seems to be higher in the US (maybe just because I'm in a big apartment and pressure is higher to compensate for altitude). What this means is that it will take some time to adjust to the.. um.. high pressure cleaning. Also beware that pressure cleaning yourself in the middle of january with near freezing water is an experience that will.. wake you up in the morning. It'll be awkward for the first week, but after then you'll be a pro.

EDIT: I think it's worth mentioning that the bidets in thailand tend to be kitchen sprayers. For a more ideal situation you want something with a more focused and narrow beam width, so to speak. The bidet I have is like that, but I haven't been able to find it on amazon after a quick search..

The kitchen sprayers work well for me because you can adjust the pressure by squeezing. The best situation would obviously be to have it hooked up to a heater water supply with the ability to adjust the heat (like a bath/shower). I was able to have this kind of setup rigged in our bathroom in China where it's not uncommon to have random pipes coming out of the walls.

It sounds like people are describing what are caller diaper sprayers:

http://www.amazon.com/bumGenius-890077002003-Diaper-Sprayer/...

But I wouldn't want to use these on a person, the water pressure and flux area are too large.

The handheld toilet sprayer is called a "shattaf" in the Eastern world.

http://brondell.com/blog/washing-with-water-around-the-world...

I saw a lot of those in Dubai. I have used a toilet such as the one in the article and the "UI" was less than intuitive. Because there were so many buttons, it took me a few tries to figure out how to turn on the water and the drying fan, and it had too many moving parts. Sometimes simple is better.

You aren't feeling like doing this yourself, several companies make systems like this for cleaning cloth diapers before dropping them in the pail.

http://www.handyspray.com/Cloth-Diaper-Sprayer.html

It should also have a vacuum breaker, which is required by code. Massachusetts plumbing code is typical:

>Approved backflow preventers or vacuum breakers shall be installed with any plumbing fixture or equipment, the potable water supply outlet of which may be submerged and which cannot be protected by a minimum air gap.

very common in south asia and the middle east too.

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