The End of My Shoes

I'm a girl but I hate shoes. Actually, they hate me. Despise me. Haunt me. Taunt me. Torture me. They take one look at me and start to laugh that cruel, evil laugh you equate with Disney. So, when a time comes that I actually find a pair of shoes I can wear, I hug them and love them and try my best to keep them around.

My last trip to the U.S. I acquired a pair or actual hiking boots! Okay, they're still Birkenstocks and they cost over $200, but they had laces and closed toes and actual tread so I wouldn't (and didn't) slip in in the snow. They were great - notice past tense...

Christmas day in Luang Prabang, Laos was cool and cloudy and I kayaked down the Mekong River past cliffs so impressive when you look at the sheer size and had lunch on a sand bar with a small peanut farm. Peanuts, who would have guessed? Then off to caves with 4000 Buddhas inside where the monks used to spend days in silent dark meditation. I had even spent sunrise of Christmas Day watching the monks collect food offerings along the streets of Laos among the hordes of tourists who assault them with long lenses and pre-dawn flashes. How obnoxious. But this is about shoes, not monks or tourists or pictures.

The next morning I was sick. Not puking, like so many others have along this last month, but a 15 hour flu with aches (partially from kayaking, but my toes and hair follicles?) fever, headache, runny nose and foul stomach. So I slept the day away glad I had nothing to do on the 26th and hopeful I would be fine for my flight to Hanoi on the 27th. Which I was, though a bit weak and light headed. Which directly resulted in the loss of my shoes...

The hotel maids are really eager to get done, so when I went downstairs to pay, they started cleaning and tossed the bed sheets over my shoes. And they are probably still there. All in all, it's a small sacrifice to the hotel room, and it is less to carry, which is pleasant, but when things are hard (actually impossible) to come by again, you need to take pause and remember.

So, goodbye shoes. I'll miss you. But I'll miss Laos more. What an amazing place!