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you should find decent public toilets in museums, art galleries and other public buildings. This is a new trend, but one that is to be welcomed. However, in none of these places will you find hot water, so you will have to get used to washing your hands under a cold tap.

Street toilets tend to be indescribable. Someone will be sitting at the door to take your money. They will give you about 18" of toilet paper. There will be no soap provided and probably only a dribble of cold water from the tap. That is if you are lucky: many public toilets have an oil drum full of cold water with a bowl floating on the top. Just help yourself. Needless to say, there will be no towels of any kind.

To make matters worse, even though most of the city toilets are now connected to the main sewer, the people who use them come from homes that only have a septic tank. So they are used to putting the used toilet paper into a bucket. Guess what? The bucket in public toilets only gets emptied every now and then...

Many women carry a small cake of soap in a little plastic bag as they go about their daily routines. The small soaps that hotels provide are perfect for this. I would also suggest that you buy a pack of baby wipes - they come in a resealable pack of about twenty.

Finally, and just for the ladies, what follows comes courtesy of a very good friend of mine who, when she knew that I was writing this article insisted on the following being added:

If you have to use a public toilet, always flush it before you use it. Often the toilets get blocked and this causes the water level in the bowl to rise. The last thing you want it is that filthy water touching your body while you are sat down. Flushing fills the bowl with slightly cleaner water, and hopefully lowers the level if the water is high. Slightly cleaner water, ladies, but probably not very much cleaner.

For that reason most women try to avoid actually sitting on any toilet that is not in their hotel room. If you absolutely have to sit, use the small amount of toilet paper that you have been given to create a seat.

As you can see, standards in Mexico are much lower than they are in Britain, but don't let that put you off. Just take the basic precautions that the Mexicans themselves take and enjoy your stay.

Learn more about this author, Kenneth Bell.
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