People may be too embarrassed to openly talk about it, but everyone does it, toilet or not. World Toilet Day helps people celebrate the importance of sanitation and raise awareness for the 2.5 billion people who don't have access to toilets and proper sanitation. This video by the nonprofit WaterAid highlights the luxury of having a toilet.

Celebrating your can may seem silly, but not having one can not only lead to embarrassment, lack of dignity and safety issues, but also preventable diseases and even death. When people don't have toilets, they're forced to relieve themselves in open streets, fields, or back alleys. The result? The contamination of drinking water and food sources, which leads to a slew of health risks. Lack of sanitation is the world’s biggest cause of infection and kills 1.8 million people, mostly children, a year. Even countries with abundant toilets have to deal with problems ranging from unhygienic public toilets to waterway-destroying sewage disposal.

Vanilla, blogging on Let's Look At It This Way from Singapore, says that people should care about toilets:

“I know this is a crappy topic to most people. It is unfortunate that it is a ‘taboo' topic to talk about openly and many people remain ignorant about the scale of the problem. I fail to understand how this can be an unimportant topic when, on an average, we visit the toilet 2500 times a year, or 6-8 times a day. In our life time, we would have spent 3 years in the toilet.”

Organized by the nonprofit The World Toilet Organization, World Toilet Day is being celebrated globally with various events. To further increase awareness, WaterAid announced the launch of its new ToiletFinder UK App for iPhone users this week. The free app helps Brits find the nearest public toilet while reminding them how lucky they are to have clean and safe toilets. The largest event today, called The Big Squat, asks people to stop and squat for one minute in a public place to raise awareness. These photos show people squatting globally, including this one of preschoolers in Singapore:

A blog from Brunei, the world according to panyaluru …, also shows appreciation for the toilet by putting it into perspective:

“Imagine if we are walking along in the row of shops in Kiulap or Gadong. Suddenly the tummy grumbles, just like the worst ribut you can think off. No rest bite. Grumble and grumble. Rumblings. The light is on amber and ready to turn green. But no toilets in sight. Not a single public toilet in the rows of shops…Add to that no water, no tissue, nothing! That could be the worst day of your life, your worst nightmare, ever worse than the nightmares those kids have in the Nightmare on Elm Street Movies. On this day, let’s show our appreciation to our toilets.”

Despite its serious side, many people have used humor to celebrate World Toilet Day. In the U.K., the blog London City Drains features a 10-question toilet quiz, while in this video high school teacher Matt Cheplic sings about the day.

Some bloggers point out that toilets alone may not be the answer. Sandhya, blogging on Maradhi Manni in India, says many men don't use available toilets:

“In a city like Chennai, where the climate is hot nearly 10 months of the year, I see men urinating on the roadside all the time. When women can control and go home and relieve themselves, why can't men do so, I don't know. So, first of all people should be fined heavily for doing this crime (yes, it is crime) on the spot. I have seen them doing this on the wall of the public toilets! In Srirangam, I saw them urinating on the compound wall of the temple even though every street surrounding the temple had toilets, which were clean, but pay toilets!”

While lack of sanitation impacts everyone, the taboo around toilets can disproportionately affect women. In some countries, modesty forces women do their business in fields before sunrise or to hold it until after the sun sets, leading to health and safety concerns. Joanne Sprague, blogging on Overturning Boulders in India, observes that women are absent from the morning toilet run in Chennai, while in Ethiopia the blog AN ADVENTURE IN ADDIS notices a similar situation:

“I’ve heard so often about the lack of toilet facilities for women or lack of toilets in general; that teenage girls in the countryside get up at 4 am to go out in the dark to do their business so they don’t get bullied by the boys at school or stop going to school altogether. Men just pee anywhere, cigarette in hand and there’s an assumption that women don’t need to, if they are thought about at all….I want to see a huge billboard in Amharic saying ‘Girls go too’ with a picture of Barbie sitting on a toilet.”

To celebrate World Toilet Day, blogger Jonathan Stray, takes readers on an international tour of toilets he's visited, from Thailand and the U.K. to West Africa and Oman, concluding:

“We in the west with our flush toilets and toilet paper and sparkling shower stalls are the exception; the rest of the world thinks a bathroom is a wet, smelly place, when they have a bathroom at all. A good toilet means you probably have a very good quality of life, so enjoy yours. Happy World Toilet Day!”

Photo of Tiled Toilet by nedrichards on Flickr, Creative Commons.

This trend is encouraging since it gives ordinary citizens the chance to express a sense of belonging to their larger communities. However, there are also ultra-nationalist online initiatives which prevent the formation of regional solidarity in Southeast Asia.

Perhaps the most controversial website in Indochina today is ilovethailand.org. This website was created by Thailand’s Prime Minister to uplift the country's international reputation. The website also aims to unite and inspire Thais, many of whom are already disgruntled with the squabbles between the country’s major political forces.

Chang Noi identified the website campaign of the Thai government as a mass propaganda technique:

Neither campaign acknowledges that there might be some real causes underlying those divisions. Neither campaign suggests any solutions to such causes. Neither acknowledges that people may have plunged into political activism because they thought it was their civic duty and because they had the country's interest at heart. Both want to sweep real problems under the carpet where they will fester and ferment

The website has sparked controversy because it claims that parts of Cambodia are Thailand’s “lost territory.”

Cambodia and Thailand have been disputing the ownership of the ancient Preah Vihear Temple for several decades already. This territorial dispute has led to several violent skirmishes between the border patrols of the two neighboring countries.

Many bloggers have expressed disappointment that the Thai government has chosen to unite the country by provoking conflict with other nations in the region. They believe netizens should not advance this wrong version of nationalism.

As expected, the Cambodian government has filed a diplomatic protest over the creation of this website. It also led to the formation of a pro-Cambodia website: ilovekhmer.org. This website aims to expose the false statements which are allegedly found in ilovethailand.org.

Both websites, ilovethailand.org and ilovekhmer.org, have become very popular web portals in Thailand and Cambodia. While it is positive that the two countries have brought their border dispute into the cyber arena, it is unfortunate that this virtual war has also fueled racist sentiments in the two countries.

The Malaysian prime minister is another leader who has seen the potential of using the Internet to achieve unity in society. Aside from blogging and tweeting his everyday activities, Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak has launched 1Malaysia.com.my to serve as an “interactive platform” between the leader and his constituents. “1Malaysia: People first, performance now” is the campaign slogan of the prime minister.

Meanwhile, pro-democracy activists in Malaysia have launched their own cyber campaign with the theme “1BlackMalaysia: Democracy first, elections now.” They believe the new leader has undermined the democratic institutions of Malaysia. Early this month, the group set up Facebook and blog pages encouraging Malaysians to create and upload “Where is democracy?” placards in the web.

Indonesia has proven that a national tragedy can unite netizens. Hours after the deadly blasts hit Jakarta last month, Indonesian twitterrers started sending “We're not afraid” tweets. For several days, the #indonesiaunite hashtag became the most active trending topic on Twitter. Users of Plurk and Facebook changed their avatars by adopting the red and white symbols of Indonesia’s flag. Local bloggers discovered the convenience of using microblogging sites to inspire people to action. Analysts were impressed that apolitical young Indonesians joined other concerned Indonesians in condemning the Jakarta terror attacks.

Filipino plurkers collected donations for Mindanao flood victims through paypal early this year. To honor a former president who died last weekend, Twitter users added yellow twibbons in their profile pictures. Online petitions against the proposal to amend the country’s 1987 Constitution gathered hundreds of thousands of signatures and supporters, especially on Facebook.

There is a vigorous campaign and lobby effort to push for more Internet freedom in Vietnam. Web campaigns showing support for Myanmar’s opposition icon Aung San Suu Kyi are numerous. Brunei bloggers have organized various fundraising activities for the benefit of sports teams, flood victims and environmental groups.

The cause of nationalism is a popular but controversial theme on the Internet. Politicians and anti-government groups in Southeast Asia have been consistent and persistent in maximizing the Internet to advance nationalistic activities. This web phenomenon is positive in so far as it expands and improves the political participation of ordinary citizens. But it is counter-productive when it produces racism and xenophopia.

It is also distasteful when politicians use the web to hide their misdeeds by launching questionable nationalist advocacies. The Internet remains a great tool and platform for sincere individuals and groups to promote serious topics like nationalism. Netizens in the region should not allow some individuals to bastardize and defeat the emancipatory potential of the worldwide web.