bert (you said better out of than into)...
I remember the first time I encountered a "Turkish toilet", the kind where you stand in the center of the bowl on raised foot platforms and eliminate waste to the surrounding lowlands. It was in Siberia, the summer of '68, up near Lake Baikal, and the cord to flush it was on the far side, and I was short (at age 14 even shorter than I am now) and I reached out and grabbed the cord (which I could not have reached had I stepped out of the toilet first) and pulled it and was immediately up to my ankles in swirling sewage. The next time I met such a contraption (a couple of weeks later in a campground at Versailles) I let the next tall user do the honours.

Liland

PS I think I'll have to add this to my "Siberian Memories" page. Thanks for the reminder!