Apr 20, 2017 -- 6:06PM, cardenden wrote:

fingers up the bum,,,a good wiggle around,,give it half an hour,

detraveller 21 Apr 17 21:53 

Which part will give me worms and parasites? Squatting or washing with water?

Not being privy to your, er, privy, it's hard to say.

Still, I'll open the *cough* proceedings by referring to the squat toilets used from eastern Europe to east Asia. The chamber of ease is often a hole in the floor with a couple of grab rails provided for the, um, convenience of the user.

Many of the users clean themselves with their left hand and then "clean" the left hand with the stones provided for that purpose. Sometimes they go so far as to dip a rag in a jar of water. Some even have their own rags and, luxury, their own jar of water. In certain sea ports, it's not uncommon to meet a sailor proudly toting his little jam jar which is tied round the neck with string and contains some brownish water and a piece of rag.

Should any of these cheerful chappies have neglected to clean under his fingernails, it's possible that his passage can be traced back (geddit?) to the various grab handles, door handles and so on that he has touched because he might have left tiny little eggs as a memorial. If anyone touches these handles, they might transfer the eggs to their mouth and form their own colony of intestinal worms.

That's just bad hygiene and squatting isn't the real problem, I hear you say, and you're right.

Now we come to squatting in the open air. More precisely, in the long grass, preferably near a swamp. You don't need to worry about another man's hygiene here. There are parts of the world where something will enter your system, lay its eggs and be gone before your eyes have started to water. Or the eggs might be already there on the long grass, waiting for you to discover that there's no Andrex handy.

As you guessed, it isn't squatting or washing with water that is a problem in and of itself. (Ahem.) The fact remains that people who use western lavatorial methods tend to suffer much less from unwanted visitors.