The Horror of Wearing Flip Flops

Flip flops. Generally regarded as one of the most comfortable footwear styles ever known to (wo)man. Does not restrict blood flow. Won’t mould your foot into a triangular shape. Keeps your toes free to wiggle. And hey, they match with almost anything. Who would ever suspect the flip flop to have any negative sides??

But let me tell you, wearing flip flops in HK is a very. bad. idea… Why? Just imagine this. You’re in the middle of a massive, and I mean massive crowd of people who are rushing to their next destination, who don’t know or care about the concept of personal space, don’t give a rat's ass about you, everyone’s moving in different directions and you’re shuffling along, weaving past slow walkers (and glaring at them) while dodging the people who sprint from metro to metro, looking down at times to make sure no one’s pick pocketed you and looking up at times to make sure you’re still facing the right direction, when suddenly your back foot is STUCK, your body jerks forward and your foot feels like it’s literally being cut into 3 evenly sized pieces thanks to some dude/chick who’s stepped on or may even *still* be stepping on the back of your flip flop.

Every time this happens – and it happens a LOT (approximately 5x a day, no joke) – the same thought runs through my mind, “How freakin’ close do you have to be to step on the back of my flip flop as I’m walking?!?!!” and no matter how evil the look I shoot to the offender, they ignore me 99% of the time, pretending that it never even happened!! WTH!!!?!

It’s pretty stressful and annoying, I have to say, to go through the crazy “people jam” every morning and evening to and from work. I know I used to complain about having to bike to work in the rain/wind of Holland but at least there, it was just the weather that I was complaining about, which is actually uncontrollable. Here, it just boggles me that there is no effort by HK people to apologize for doing something so vicious, even if it was unintentional!! GRR!!