> Roxana Cooper Wrote:

> Not many are aware that the Chinese were using
> toilet paper six hundred years before the west
> discovered its benefits.


Pity they didn't spread that particular idea a bit further.

It's not common practice anywhere in Asia to wipe your b*m with a bit of paper, and throw it down the hole - because the hole is only the entrance to a complex microbiological society normally known as a 'cess-pit': They'll look after your left-overs so long as you treat them well, and don't give them a whole lot of undigestable rubbish.

I haven't learned yet, after 20 yrs in the Middle East, and 10 in the Philippines, to use water instead of toilet paper. It's a normal cultural hang-over, and one I can't give up.

Tell me I'm more 'civilised'.

regards

Richard