I haven’t come across the trough ones yet. I came across the half wall thing in Laos, yet, bizarrely, they’d put what looked like bidets behind the half wall. Not immensely looking forward to them, I have to say. Are you addicted to Chinese pickles yet?

I agree about the squat toilets—they take some getting used to. Still better are the trough toilets we have at school, with only a half wall covering them from view. My students like to pop in and talk with me while I’m using the facilities! There’s never a dull moment in China.

Not actually mine. I “borrowed it” from Stuart at http://www.travelfish.org…

Great post!

Vile, isn’t it? Maybe that’s what everyone uses it for…

Yes, it’s sweet, and the only use I’ve found for it is cleaning the microwave as it smells of apples, not a chip shop afterwards!!

The sweet stuff? Seriously? In SPAIN? Noooo…. I couldn’t believe it. It tasted like someone had added apple syrup to that high strength white rice vinegar. Absolutely disgusting. But, yes, not a patch on the toilets…

Yes! That’s what I found about it. I imagined it being like the ultra crispy bits of crispy duck, where you’re actually eating a bit of bone or cartilage and it doesn’t matter because it’s just sooo… crispy. But, like jellyfish, it’s all about the rubbery taste. With, in the ones I had, extra slime.

In the end I found Nescafe in the Parkson in one of the malls in town. AND washing-up liquid that was recognisably usable for dishes. I’ll keep an eye out for the whole cow’s livers…

It’s funny. Someone asked us the directions to a (different) Carrefour the other day, and I was wondering how you’d say it in Chinese. I would have gone with something like Ka-Fou. Which would have got me nowhere…