While there wasn't any rain the morning we saw the dam, there was a lot of haze/mist

and we only spent several hours hours to use before we had to be museum displaying artifacts river that the dam would flood. bronzes, and some arrowheads. known and undiscovered that the artifacts were slim pickings. was the display of a private stones, and fossils. CC loves hundred different ones there,

there. That left another four at the airport. We visited a removed from a portion of the There were little pots, some Compared to the antiquities both river will forever flood, these Much more interesting, however, entrepreneur who sold rocks, rocks and there were several from two-fisted size to two feet

across. We looked around and found what was not only a beautiful rock (a rock as black as obsidian, but not obsidian, shot through with white marble) but also a great piece of sculpture. [CC note: Peter zeroed in on it immediately; I was still trying to take all of the display in.] The picture doesn't do the sculpture portion of it justice, but the artist coaxed something like an abstract cascade of peonies, a dragonfly and a small bird out of the white marble. The black rock part is smooth and polished, not sculpted.

The stone weighed about 40 pounds. Our guide, not to mention the shop owner, tried to convince us we could carry it on the airplane. We tried lifting it and there was no way we could carry it, or the airline would let us on with it. We asked if there was any shipping service and they said no. Unfortunately, there did not appear to be any way that we could get the piece to US. We passed it up. On the way to lunch CC had the idea of trying to get the museum upstairs, which sold "antiquities" including porcelain vases and furniture to tourists, to handle shipping. We asked the guide to call the museum. Instead, the guide wanted us to eat lunch (this was what was on the schedule and she was afraid that she would get into trouble if we didn't eat). We finally convinced her that we would rather have the piece of sculpture than lunch, but not before I talked to her boss on the phone and CC wrote the boss a note about it being our choice to skip lunch. The rest of the story is long and complicated, but in the end we arranged to have to piece shipped to the US.