They are usually rooms with small partition walls without doors between each hole. The mere fact that they are watching you while you do your needs does not matter much either, but what is really disgusting is the fact that there is no water!
At least in Cambodia, a much more backward country, you had a bucket next to it with water. Even in Angkor Wat there were toilets where you could sit and a very funny little sign with two drawings explaining how to sit properly to throw the remains.
In countries like Thailand and Vietnam, they reach a state-of-the-art technology with cool jet sleeves to clean your butt. In China there is no tap, no tank, no bucket, no hose, nothing at all! Well, yes, there is something, an accumulation of insane shit of days fermenting worms and arcades!
And curiously they take pride in having been the inventors of the cistern! And I wonder: where they have hidden the p **** cistern!