Oh god, squatting toilets.
While theoretically more hygienic, they are also much cheaper to make, and many corners can be cut.

For instance, let's take a sleepy rural mountain village in Hong Kong, where electricity is a rarity. As well as toilets in houses. The only toilet available is a small, public restroom built by the lowest bidder.

These guys didn’t bother installing a flush mechanism. Nor a lightbulb. Instead, a constant trickle of water from the scarily polluted river is piped into the pan through a hole in the wall, washing away whatever droppings you care to leave.

This stream of water is not sufficient to clear away an entire village's worth of effluent.

Now imagine yourself, slightly drunk and stumbling through the darkness with a badly made chinese flashlight into this stinking hellhole. You depant. You unsteadily crouch over the humming, shitty mass and aim – and at the vital moment, a gust of wind through the hole in the wall kisses your chocolate spider, startling you, and causing you to slip, flashlight and all, into the mountain of day old fermented mushy crap.

Despite being upstream to another village who used it regularly, I started shitting in the river after that.

Length? 9 inches, sailing off into the horizon.
(kimini touches your shoulder gently on, Wed 2 Apr 2008, 20:36, Reply)