The Joys of Non-Linear Thinking

In many countries the toilet and the shower are the same room and there is little distinction between the two.  I was pleasently surprised that in the house I live in there was a seperation between the two.  However, the old school "self flush" toilet kept clogging (apparently it can't handle american craps) they decided they would add a toilet to the shower room which was a flushing toilet with bigger pipes that would easily handle the "load" so to speak. 

This seemed, at the time, like a splendid idea.  A flushing toilet, a secondary toilet in case and because its normal here to have toilets and showers in the same room- its no biggie.  Now, this would be true if Thailand had a culture of linear thinking... but this is rarely the case.  If one installs a toilet into a shower room you would automatically assume they would thinking about water drainage systems, pipe placement and the amount of room left for showering. You would think... .

After a weekend away in Chiang Mai I came home to a raised platform in our square 6x6 bathroom that took up a good three feet with a lovely toilet right in the middle of it.  This left about one foot in which to shower. The lovely (and albeit aesthetically pleasing) platform now rested atop our drain for the shower.  The people who put it in weren't completely oblivious to the fact that we had a shower in there and water would need to drain so the place a horizontal pipe on the front of platform that connected to the old drain in the back corner. 

The drain... can you see it?!

Oh! There's the drain.

Now, I'm not sure if you guys are aware of how gravity works but a verticle pipe will not drain water unless the water is pushed into it or the water in shower reaches a certain level.  Whats more the drain is slightly raised meaning that when the shower is done there is standing water left in the shower.

In a tropical climate full of mosquitos and mold I can tell you standing water is a very very bad idea.  Had the constructors of such a toilet had thought it through or fully envisioned what a verticle pipe would actually drained or realized that we can't shower in the other room because this is the only shower that has hot water then perhaps we wouldn't be in this situation.   Linear thinking just doesn't happen consistently in this country.  You see it in Thai establishments like hotels and restaurants all the time... they have certain foods on the menu but they don't have the ability to make them when ordered or a room is advertised on the internet and you can even reserve it online but when you get there its a completely different room because the one you reserved hasn't even been built yet.

I've found this predicament and odd one.  There is a lack of linear thinking-- rarely are ideas really formulated from start to finish and done so effectively and if they aren't done effectively there's no one out there to communicate as to why it was done that way.  The joys of living in Thailand.