Monday, January 16, 2012

All the TP in China
Day 23 of our (kind of southeast) Asia odyssey

So, one thing about China is that you have to bring tissue along with you to a lot of public bathrooms. Not all, but, you know, it's better to be safe than sorry. This isn't really that big a deal, in the traveling scheme of things (for example, there are multiple other China bathroom issues I would address long before plentiful toilet paper restocking) but it's something to keep in mind, and widely known/advised among travelers. Carry toilet tissue with you everywhere.

Well, there we were in Chongqing (aka as Chungking back in the day) and I headed to the post office to ship off to Arizona some t-shirts I had purchased in Cambodia for my nieces and nephews but didn't have time to mail from Siem Reap. The people in the Chongqing post office were very helpful and nice despite my terrible language barrier and everything went off without a hitch. But here's the funny part: first, I took my t-shirts over to the packing table where a postal worker found an appropriate-sized box and packing materials. And there she was, stuffing the remaining space in the box  -- with toilet paper! 

She just busted a roll of it out from under her little packing counter and pulled off wads to pack them into the box. You know the drill; you've probably seen it done with newspaper or plastic in the U.S. But in Chongqing? Toilet paper.  There's never any toilet paper to be had IN THE BATHROOMS...because apparently it is all at the post office.

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