ciaou until 10 days from now

hey all-
Eric and I are about to launch into our hiking leg of the trip, which means no internet access. So don't think we're just copping out on the blog. I have really been enjoying doing this writing and love that some people are aparently reading it. :) Since we're back in China, we can *post* to our blog, but we cannot actually see it, so if anyone is writing comments, thank you and keep doing it because we'll try to read it from Mongolia. If anyone wants to post comments and you haven't figured it out yet, you just click the "comments" link at the end of a blog entry.

So. Lijiang is beautiful, but also turns out to be quite another tourist trap. So we are excited to be moving on. Its quite hard to navigate without speaking the language, so it took me about 20 minutes to buy 2 in 1 shampoo and conditioner last night. Eric was quite amused. It took abotu 4 Chinese women to help me figure out which bottle was which. Happily we made the right choice and my hair is all clean now (eric is also happy about that). What happened to the shampoo I had brought? Well actually, since you ask, its another story about toilets. See, here you don't throw your used TP in the toilet- you throw it in a trash can and empty it daily. Its their system (they make "night soil" and in some places use it for fertilizer). So,when we were in Nong Khai at the yoga retreat, my conditioner went missing. Finally I did the math and realized it had been on a little sill above the toilet trash. And it wasn't there anymore. Without digging, I realized it had fallen. So no more conditioner. After last nights' 20 minutes of charades, I happily had a new bottle (as I said). First thing I did was put it in the bathroom, on the sink. And the first thing that happened was... yep, it fell into the toilet trash.

sigh.

So I just sucked it up, pulled it out, and washed it with hot soapy water. It has been another form of "tourist tax." Eric has found it all to be quite funny. I'm much more careful now. MUCH.

I promise that the next time I write it won't be about toilets. It might be about nasty food though, because we have some stories about that too. Really tho, there is some beautiful scenery here- some snowcapped peaks and cherry trees and willows and beautiful clear streams with goldfish swimming in them. Keep that image in your head.

All be well,
Betsy and Eric