With the recent launch of Visit Malaysia Year 2007 and the new ‘clean’ automatic public toilets in the city centre, I am indeed very impressed with how Malaysians will go to the extend of making plain simple things into sophisticated gadgets.

My experience came when I was in Ipoh last night. When we were on our way back to KL from Penang, we made a quick stop over in Ipoh. We stopped by this little corner kopitiam somewhere in town and after filling up our stomach, I felt the urge to take a leak. I quickly make my way to the gents and luckily it was vacant. Just like any typical chinese kopitiam, the toilet wasn’t like any of those automatic toilets you’ve seen in city centre. It’s not squeaky clean but at least there’s still some civilised Malaysian out there knowing how to flush.

As I was about to step into the toilet, something caught my eye from afar. There’s this long cable dangling from the ceiling right through the lid of the toilet tank. For a moment, I thought that it was some power cable that connects to an electric pump inside the tank.

But as I look up to the ceiling I found that the cable wasn’t really an electric cable after all.

It was just a rope going through a pulley which acts as a toilet flush. It’s another ingenious (cheap) way to get patrons to flush especially when the flush handle is no longer is working condition.

It’s either the owner is a damn cheapo or he/she is just plain genius. The owner chose to drill a hole through the tank lid, tie one end of the rope to the flush valve and the other end over a pulley which was secured to the ceiling. The owner even makes a loop on the end for ease of pulling. Makeshift toilets flush while waiting for the new tank?

No matter what, it definitely fixed the problem. Yes! Yet another MALAYSIA BOLEH! moment.