The Second Saigon Shoe Debacle

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Almost immediately after Dick had thought, “the best thing I have done since arriving in Vietnam is to have walked on through the pain and the blisters. Now my feet and these thongs are in comfortable accord. Praise be,” Jeff repossessed his own footwear.

So Dick had to go through the miserable and hateful process of trying to buy items specifically overpriced for dickhead tourists, a month later than he should have and begin again the ugly and painful process of teaching his feet and flip-flops how to live together in some kind of harmony. To avoid the pain of seeking and shopping, he entered the first shop he came across selling such items, and bought the most suitable at the cheapest possible price: fake Timberlands, 80K. Ugly, uncomfortable rip-offs.

Within twenty minutes and/or about 400m, he was ‘crippled’.

Three days later, like a Chinese Infanta, he decided to have another crack at footwear purchase. One cannot wear Chelsea boots with shorts, even in Saigon, and nothing can be achieved here in jeans. James Caan-like he hobbled up and down Bui Vien becoming enraged, by prices and attitudes. He sees two kinds of people: Vietnamese people, who universally wear cheap, vacuum-molded open footwear that must cost about a dollar; plus funny foreigners, of whom every man-jack be-sports a pair of grossly over-priced, unnecessarily complicated, unreasonably coloured badges of alien stupidity. All the locals had what he wanted. None of the foreigners did. He had limped hither and thither seeking the most ubiquitous product in the whole fucking nation and all he found was hot salty tears of frustration and more sores. He has been assailed by hustlers selling everything, except of course, what he wanted - even a Canaletto (fake, he assumed).

Some new cunt starts shouting at him and trying to make him interested in some plastic crap off his barrow. Dick thinks, is he the one? Is he the poor fuckwit who will bear the brunt of a discontent nursed for twenty years through 40 countries? No. He is not. He is a bloke with a barrow entirely festooned with plastic sandals… Interestingly, according to numbers this gentleman scrawls on a sweet wrapper, a typical Vietnamese rickshaw driver (for such are the normal users of such footwear) is prepared to pay 120,000 VND for his pedaling gear. Being an intelligent foreigner and not an illiterate Vietnamese Transit Operative, I expect to pay substantially less. In fact, I intend to pay 90%!l(MISSING)ess. Under his 120,000 Dick writes “10”. The plasticmonger stares at the number quizzically. Foreigners really are stupid. Kindly, he takes the pen and inserts the missing zero for Dick. 100. The he underlines the 100, adds three zeros (100,000) underlines again, snorts and meticulously scribbles over all six digits. He draws a circle around his 120,000, points at it, taps it with the pen and smiles. He says, “Shoe. YOU!”

"Are you trying to scare me? As if I were a chicken?"

Can you write better than this? Click here to prove it.

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