One more notable mention...

At the entrance to the old town of Lijiang are a lot of beggars, vendors and pick pocketers. You know the kind, it really is a global industry within itself. You have people selling useless items, people performing lame acts or stunts and the people with the basic bump and take maneuver.

One particular act was truly depressing. A little girl had a short and small tripod like apparatus on the floor. The top of it was a spinning chin rest where she would do just that... she rested her chin on it, did a head stand of sorts (clearly resting on her chin rather than top of her head) and bent her body fully backwards. I am not sure if I am describing this well enough for you all to understand, but it was quite a crazy site. Resting on her chin, she was completely arched over backward and with her feet, she touched the ground and gave herself a spin as she balanced on her chin.

We also bought something from one of the extremely persistent vendors. They were a pair of flip sunglasses. The first set of lenses were yellow, the kind that block out all of the 'bad' light, and the top lenses were regular sunglasses. Wade tried them on as a joke, especially being that he had bought and wore his new old-school calculator watch (for the intense negotiating shopping trips). All I can say is that Wade looked like the coolest dork I have ever seen! The man would not leave us alone after that. We ended up buying to pairs of them, but before we had the chance to sport them about town, the man accosted us and tried to sell us two more pairs. Why on earth would we need more or even 1 set to begin with?! I thought Wade was going to flip, they were practically yelling at each other. We managed to dodge the guy and laughed at the poor tourist he next bombarded. It was a funny afternoon, full of giggles as we walked around in our new shades!