What is this?

Here in Hanoi there is an old house that you can go and visit. I found a little room at the back. There are steps in the room that lead up to a platform and this is on the platform. What do you think it is?

Well, you take your pants off and you put your feet on the two blocks and you put your bum over the hole and you use this hole as a toilet. This is a very old Vietnamese toilet.

One night I was walking down a laneway with my friend. There was a little kid sitting in the lane on a pot. Only the pot wasn't a pot, it was a tin can big enough to hold the kid's bum. My friend told me that many of the little houses in the lane don't have toilets. People do it in a tin and then put it in a plastic bag. People put their garbage in plastic bags in the street every evening, including the poo. A street sweeper comes along each evening, sweeps the garbage and puts it in a big cart. They take all the carts to a corner where the garbage truck comes and collects it all.













If you go out walking before the street sweeper has been past you have to be careful of all the little bags of garbage.

love from your Grandpa