A rather cold snap has gripped Taiwan these last few weeks and as such my staple of thongs, shorts and tshirt isn’t really cutting it anymore.

I take Leela out for a daily walk in the morning to do her business and well, let’s just say if you lined me up with a bunch of toddlers, physically there wouldn’t be much of a difference.

Desperately needing to get some bummy but warm clothes to wear around the house, yesterday the two of us hightailed it to Hi-Mart.

I can’t say much about the quality of the clothes there, but they’re pretty cheap (nightmarket cheap) and for clothes I’m just going to wear around the house to keep warm – I don’t particularly care too much what they look like.

After an hour or so of trying on what felt like dozens of warm hooded tops, with the ones that fit having gaudy printed designs on them (too much even for just wearing around the house and on dog walks), and those that looked good being ill-fitting (Note to China: how about you make your cheap clothes arm lengths LONGER!), I finally found what I was looking for and we headed out.

With tracksuit pants to wear and a warm top to keep me warm, the only thing left to get was a pair of warm boots or slippers to keep my feet warm.

Walking into ABC-Mart (yes, sometimes it feels like every second shop in Taiwan is some derivative of XX-Mart), I browsed around until I stumbled on some very warm looking Vans Yeti boots (V8686) in the black.

I can’t seem to find any information on these boots outside of Taiwan, so they seem to be made for this specific market.

Yeah the pink is a bit homo but again, they’re just for wearing around the house and local dog walks so I can live with that. Oh, and my feet have never been toastier – no more day-long blog writing sessions in the freezing cold draped in a doona!

As I was trying the boots on a thought popped into my mind. Both of us had been a bit cold of later and I knew my girlfriend didn’t have any slipper type shoes at home either.

In one of those moments of lightning bolt clarity, after I’d had my boots put aside, I suggested we go have a look at what Vans had to offer in the female warm boot variety too.

Being women’s shoes she had a lot more variety but it didn’t take long to settle on these Vans Timothy 2Way St (V8819W EO) boots:

Again, nothing in English on these so I can only assume this entire Vans boots range is just for the Taiwanese (Asian?) market.

After getting her size and having a walkabout, as we made our way to the checkout I made my move.

‘Surprise, this is your Christmas present!’

I’ve always been a big fan of the practical Christmas present and warm boots seemed like just the ticket.

Of course it would have been nicer to be able to come back, buy the boots and actually give them to her on Christmas Day, but I couldn’t think of a reason to justify my own warm toastiness whilst making her stick out the next 13 days in the cold.

I’m not the most thoughtful person in the world but that would have been a bit much, even for me.

Despite me thinking I was a shoe-in for boyfriend of the year though, what happened next was completely unexpected.

‘What?’

‘These boots, I’ll pay for them – they can be your Christmas present!’

‘No… wait’

‘What?’

‘It’s just…’

‘Uh.. you don’t want them?’

‘No, no I do but…’

‘…’

‘You can’t give boots to someone as a present here.’

I forget exactly when it happened but as she told me why, I yet again had a cradling my head in my forehead moment as Taiwanese culture once again sought to suckerpunch me from behind.

Turns out if you give someone shoes as a gift in Taiwan, you’re basically telling them to fuck off out of your life. As in, literally – take these shoes and walk out of my life, I never want to see you again.

Well, perhaps not as dramatic as that but the idea is that this person sooner or later will walk out on you.

Of course, to get around this superstition the crafty Taiwanese came up with a solution. When somebody gives you shoes as a gift, you simply pay them $1.

That way you’re ‘buying’ the gift off them and all is well.

‘So… you give me $1, and we’re good?’

‘Pretty much.’

‘But if you don’t, I’m inadvertently telling you to get the hell out of my life?’

‘Yup…’

‘Riiiiiiiiiiiight’.

As of yet I haven’t accepted the dollar as I’m still trying to get my head around the idea of her paying me for my Christmas gift.

I mean, does that even count as a Christmas gift then? And what moron came up with this stupid superstitious rubbish anyway?!

…ARGH!



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