Shanghai’s royal flush

I am prepared to believe that Shanghai Pudong airport’s new Terminal 2 is the most beautiful and tranquil airport in the world.

The soaring architecture, the serenity and the sparkling cleanliness of the place all play their part, but for the final astonishing touch, you have to see the washrooms in the Shanghai Airlines first class lounge.

So I am extending a big thankyou to British Airways for giving me a pass to the lounge on my homeward journey today. Was it because you lost my luggage on the outward leg of the journey last week? Was it maybe because I appeared a bit upset when you suddenly found it an hour later, while I was in a taxi halfway into the city in a thunderstorm?

If so, apology accepted, because the future of ablutions was revealed to me in those spotless and spacious washrooms today, and it is startling and spectacular.

Here you have the last word in hi-tech Toto toilets: heated seats, various angles and directions of water cleansing aimed at your lower torso, a choice of spurting or pulsing water jets, and such a variety of flush modes that I just didn’t have time to work my way through them all.

Thanks also to my travelling companion who took the time to check out my breathless account of the experience, and made this photographic record for posterity (gettit?)