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s more and more foreign tourists visit the country, the need for cleaner and more comfortable public restrooms, especially in airports, is growing.

Anne Bodker, 34, a Danish backpacker who arrived in Jakarta last week, said that she was traveling in Indonesia for its nature and people, both of which she loved. Bodker said that she would love the country even more if its public facilities, including airport toilets, were cleaner.

'€œI don'€™t take cleanliness of public facilities into consideration when I want to travel abroad, but having beautiful nature and clean public facilities would be just perfect,'€ said Bodker, who had traveled to Balikpapan in East Kalimantan, Medan in North Sumatra and Manado in North Sulawesi.

Bodker said that she had found less than favorable restroom conditions in public facilities in each city she visited, except for in Jakarta'€™s Soekarno-Hatta International Airport. '€œI don'€™t know why, but toilets in the Soekarno-Hatta airport are cleaner than those in the other cities'€™ airports,'€ she said.

A 39-year-old Malaysian traveler, who wanted to be identified only as Lee and who was visiting Indonesia for the second time, said that toilets in Indonesian airports were no match for those in the Kuala Lumpur International Airport. '€œProbably because airports in Indonesia are quite old compared to the one we have in Kuala Lumpur,'€ he said.

Lee, who has traveled to Bali and North Sumatra, said that public toilets in Ngurah Rai International Airport in Denpasar and the Polonia Airport in Medan were off-putting. '€œI think it is really because of the people. In European countries, people have the awareness to keep the toilets clean,'€ he said.

Alfan Amiruddin, 27, an Indonesian national who often travels abroad, said that users were also responsible for keeping public toilets clean.

'€œWe can still find many dirty sitting toilets at the Indonesian airports. This is probably because people who use them don'€™t try to clean them,'€ he said.

Alfan, who currently lives in Sydney, Australia, said sometimes toilet cleanliness in an airport would not be uniform.

'€œAt the Soekarno-Hatta Airport, for example, I have found that the toilets in Terminal 2 are not as clean as the ones in other terminals. Some that are clean just need better lighting so that they don'€™t look so old,'€ he said.

Naning Adiwoso, the Indonesian Toilet Association chairperson, said on Monday that her organization had been campaigning to keep airports'€™ toilets clean. The association, in collaboration with the Tourism and Creative Industry Ministry, had recently awarded the Sapta Pesona award to the country'€™s airport with the cleanest toilets. (koi)