Royal Flush: The World's Best Bathrooms

Since we haven't given you a potty post  for months (gasp!), IT welcomes Andy Isaacson's  report on the world's best and worst toilets:

There are certain elements of travel that can be properly plotted and planned for (an aisle seat, ocean-view room) and those that cannot (good restaurant service, sunny weather). Unfortunately, the time and place of nature's call would fall into the latter category—making the Bathroom Diaries, a website that reviews over 8,000 of the world's public toilets, not the most practical travel resource. Nevertheless, the site is the world's most complete review on the sanitization, safety, and aesthetics of loos/WCs/little-boys-and-girls-rooms from Arkansas to Zimbabwe. What's more, the database—as yet unavailable in Zagat paperback form—can be downloaded to a cell phone, via Vindigo.

Travelers heading to McMurdo Station, Antarctica may find comfort that the toilet bowl in Movement Control Center, Building 140 (name unrelated to this discussion), steams with warm water in winter months. Other bathrooms receive less glowing reviews: if you find yourself walking by Modern Green Day and Night Bar on Latema Road  in Nairobi, it's advisable to hold it in. Posts one reviewer: "Virtually awash in human effluvia.... Quite simply, the most disgusting toilets I've ever had the misfortune to encounter." The Shoji Tabuchi Theater in Branson, Missouri, however, merits a visit regardless of urgency. Bathroom Diaries readers gave its women's room—with a fountain, stained glass, live orchids, and onyx pedestals—a '"Golden Plunger"  for World's Best Bathroom.