FROM ASSOCIATED PRESS

When you've got to go, you've got to go and now young people at one rural Thai school, who need to "spend a baht", have a choice of three facilities

Young Thai male students who prefer to dress as girls no longer have to choose between "male" and "female" facilities. There is now a toilet specifically for "lady boys".

The Kampang School in northeastern Thailand conducted a survey last term that showed more than 200 of the school's 2,600 students considered themselves transgender, said school director Sitisak Sumontha.

So, when classes resumed in May, the school unveiled a unisex restroom designated by a unique sign—a human figure split in half—part man in blue and part woman in red. Below it are the words "Transvestite Toilet."

Three transgender students praised the new restroom as they plucked their eyebrows and applied face powder in front of the mirror outside the stalls.

"I'm so happy about this," Vichai Sangsakul, a teenager with a pixie hairdo pulled back with a pink barrette, told Thailand's PBS new channel on Tuesday. "It looks bad going to female restrooms. What would other people think?"

"These students want to be able to go to the restroom in peace without fear of being watched, laughed at or groped," said school director Sitisak Sumontha. Transgenders who opted to use female restrooms made some of the other students uncomfortable, and those who chose the men's room often were harassed, he said.

Kampang is not Thailand's first educational institution to set up unisex washrooms, though Sitisak said he believed it was a first for a secondary school. A 1,500-student technical college in the northern province of Chiang Mai set up a "Pink Lotus Bathroom" for its 15 transvestite students in 2003.

Source: http://ap.google.com