Bathroom Lessons...

Here's something the we haven't brought up yet, not proper blogging material we were thinking. But then we thought more about it, and we got a great picture from a restaurant that explains it all to us and we figured that we need to share with you all. As far as we can tell, this explains why the Chinese all squat to pee.

First, other then the new apartments, which are basically designed for westerners, and the hotels, you will not find a western toilet. That means no toilets as we know them, just a hole in the floor with two places to put your feet.

Second, most of these toilets do not have toilet paper, nor do they have towels out front by the sinks. You learn really quickly to have a small packet of tissues with you at all times.

Third, the cleanliness of said toilet depends on where it is. In a nice restaurant you're in luck it will be fairly clean, and it may actually have tissues. In a busier area such as the mall, supermarket, someplace like that, you're going to run into a bit of a mess about 50% of the time. If you're at a public one, well you'll never go to a public one so let's not even discuss that...

We have been out before and suddenly been "Ok, I'm done, I'm going back to the hotel. No, now." We've both said this at times, and we both understood what it meant. That's part of the first two weeks of your body adjusting to the food, we both feel that we are better now.

In addition, you will see little children walking around in crotchless pants, which in itself seems wrong, but they just squat and empty wherever they are at the time. Usually the parents will direct them to a tree or the grass, and sometimes the parents will lift the child up and hold them over some bushes. I will try to get a picture of this sometime before I leave, as it really is an odd sight to behold...