Nowadays my life is on a track of calm, relaxed and bumbling. My main concern in life is how long Xss's eyebrow hairs will get when we are old and grey (they are pretty long and wild now), and the only time i feel anxiety is when a chip nearly falls off my dinner plate. So imagine the calamity which is my flipflops breaking!!!!! Arghhhhhh.
Really, it was funny and not stressful as we shuffled along the beautiful streets of Hoi An at a pace not even Xss could break a sweat in despite the 35 degree heat. The flipflop would stay on for about 8 steps before breaking again, or on particularly comical occasions, if i fell down a step on slight incline, both my shoes would break at the same time and we'd have to stop with me dancing on the very hot road trying to fix my shoes and minimise sole burnage.
Only hours before a shop worker had asked me if i wanted new shoes, to which i pointed to my at the time semi broken Haviana's and said, 'look i have these, i don't need more'. But now i do.
So having situated Xss at a cafe for lunch, i took his flipflops and set off to find anything i could to protect my feet. This is ironically a hard task in Hoi An, an old town filled with tailors and shoe makers. Since they make everything and it is their livelihood no-one sells the sort of plastic crops that are abundant elsewhere. I wasn't going to buy a pair or new leather boots so the search continued.
Eventually i found one stall in the market where they had a mountain of flipflops, of the swimming pool float variety, you know the ones which look like you would be able to walk on water in them. Helpfully everyone joins in in searching for a pair. After 3 minutes of searching, we had managed to find a left and a right foot of different designs and sizes, and it seemed like i would not be able to get anything better. So the bargaining began. She began at $7.5. haha.
It was hard to explain that i really did not want these mismatched (one was black with a tiger picture on the other was green with a dollar bill design) shoes, especially for this much, but i needed something. But need drives a market, so we continued in a jovial way, negotiating my rip off. Eventually we settled on $3 and i managed to find a matching pair!!!!!! Same size!
It is irrelevant that they have a picture of Lional Messi on, and that i am not sure who he is. But some of the kids i work with think he is cool, so i'm happy. i'm now bouncing around in my lovely Lional Messi shoes, who needs Haviana's!
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