Soggy Footprints

Try finding a new pair of shoes in S.E. Asia, where even circus clowns wear nothing larger than a size 9.

I wear a size 12, so unless I’m willing to curl my toes under my feet and walk with crutches, finding a new pair of shoes is like the quest for the Holy Grail. I went to 15 stores and finally found a pair that fit. Four days later I got caught in a rainstorm and they were completely soaked.

Stepping in a puddle and getting your shoes and socks wet is no big deal. You simply leave them in the sun until they dry out. Problem solved.  But traveling with wet shoes is an entirely different matter. Particularly if you’re in a climate where the humidity is 150% and your only other choice of footwear is a pair of flip flops with all the tread worn off.

All the options are pretty undesirable:

1. Sliding and stumbling around in your flip flops...embarrassing and dangerous.

2. Wearing your wet shoes and contracting trench foot...painful and hard to cure if you're always wearing wet shoes.

3. Keeping your shoes in a plastic bag where they quickly mildew and/or begin to stink to high heaven. The inside of your backpack becomes a petri dish, teeming with primordial life and pterodactyl eggs.

I couldn’t leave my brand new, soaking wet shoes outside to dry, because here in Indonesia, there’s likely to be a torrential downpour at any minute. Plus, hotel managers tend not to like it when you leave a pair of soaking wet size 12 Nikes outside your door for all the other hotel guests to trip over.

I managed to get my shoes to dry to a semi-soggy state, and at each of my subsequent destinations, would immediately unpack them so they could dry further. In the meantime I skated and slid around in my flip flops, providing lots of entertainment to passersby and collecting a number of self-inflicted injuries in the process. Finally, after 10 days, my shoes were dry again.

Just in the nick of time, because the next day's itinerary included a hike up a treacherous rocky path up to the rim of a sulphur spewing volcanic crater. Slippery flip flops were not really ideal footwear. The alarm clock went off a 3:30 a.m., and I donned my now dry Nikes for our 4 a.m. departure. The hike went smoothly and I was thankful to have reliable, comfortable footwear while ascending a trail that would have given a mountain goat second thoughts.

No shower, no sleep and 36 hours on a bus later, I disembarked late at night in heavy traffic in a semi-catatonic state. I hailed a cab and made it to a hotel without further incident. I was delighted to find that they had a clean room with a queen size bed and a hot shower available. As I left the brightly lit reception area to cross the pitch dark expanse to my room, I stepped into ankle deep water, completely drenching my shoes.

I sloshed my way to higher ground, and took one step up onto a moss-covered, rain-soaked concrete surface. Had there been a security camera, it would have shown me in mid-air, parallel with the ground, wide-eyed, flailing like a penguin attempting to fly.

Immediately following this would be a scene of me lying face down in the mud, all of the meat from both shins shaved off like thinly sliced sashimi, my backpack crushing my spine, and my glasses lying just out of arm’s reach, accompanied by the sound of me groaning in agony. And then the sound of maniacal laughter as I replayed in my mind what had just happened.

It is inconceivable to me that no one heard the unmistakable sound of a human body sustaining a bone-crushing fall onto a concrete surface, nor the primordial sounds of pain emanating from a mortally wounded, beaten and battered, sleep-deprived, delirious traveler...but nobody came to see what all the commotion was about.

Alone in the dark I crawled around on all fours until I found my glasses, stood up and staggered the rest of the way to my room where I showered, liberally applied antibiotic ointment to my shins, and left my shoes out to dry. Again.