THE BAD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY: BOOT SHOPPING FOR A GIANT

I have never owned a pair of hiking boots. Other than undertaking numerous detailed internet searches for information on how find the perfect hiking boot (you can take a PhD graduate out of a uni, but you can’t take…. etc) I have no notable experience in such specialist footwear. And so, I enter outdoor shops with some degree of trepidation. Furthermore, as many of you know (and often like to remind me) I am tall, and as such my foot size matches my height (read: *canoe-like*). My experience of shoe shopping is that if it fits it’s a rare strike of luck. But if it fits and I found it in the women’s shoe section I must be a woman…right? And if it looks attractive, well it’s nothing short of a miracle.

Therefore, you can see how I might approach shoe shopping with the kind of enthusiasm one might muster for eating a bowl of slugs. The same applies to shopping for trousers. After a rather fruitless and frenzied ascent on Birmingham’s outdoor shops followed by a Bodego burrito (All Hail! the Burrito), I surrendered my credit card to Cotswolds to purchase a pair of not-quite-right boots. In the cold daylight of New Street I realised that these were to be returned at the next opportune moment... but the store was closed, and it was in fact night time, so it was more like the cold streetlight of New Street. Oh my blistered hands! If I have learned from this process one thing beyond the results of my thorough online meta-analysis of boot fitting advice it is that you should, at the most, only ever tie a set of hiking boot laces no more than 50 times in one day. I now know this. You now know this. Let us all know this.

Day two of my search was far more fruitful. I will be eternally grateful to the shoe specialist at the massive outdoor shop GoOutdoors in Kidderminster who helped match my feet with a pair of the comfiest yet butt-ugliest Mammut hiking boots I have ever seen (which I will refer to herein as Marmots, Mammoths or Mammaries depending on the context). She was very excited to hear of my plans, and along with giving me the ugliest Marmots of all time (in exchange for my money, of course), upon imparting the delightful news that my departure date is less than a week away, she also gave me the same ‘slightly disgusted but politely helpful’ facial expression that I had already encountered in Birmingham. You know the one: ‘You’re naughty, and I’m angry at you… but I wish I was you’. Well, she wouldn’t be so envious if she knew that last month I spent four simultaneous Friday nights in Tesco. And by this I mean, more than half an hour spent looking at things other than food… Oh, and I arrived after 9pm, which really does mean, ‘Friday Night’.

This week has also provided a smattering of delights that have followed intense periods of stress. For example, I found out that:

• After weeks of believing that I would need to make a (time and money depleting) trip to the Taipei Representative Office in London to apply for a visitor’s visa to be eligible for a resident and then alien resident certificate (ARC) in Taiwan (the latter allows me to work legally in Taiwan), I don’t need a visitor or resident visa at all. A call to the London office identified that the role of a TEFL teacher is classed as a white collar job, and thus I don’t need either to obtain an ARC. Us Brits can stroll on into Taiwan with a visa-exemption for 90 days... sawweeeeet!

• To get an ARC I need to provide my employer with a legalised copy of my degree certificate. This means a solicitor or notary has to sign my degree. Notaries can charge around £100 an hour, and then a fee for the service on top. My dad is connected, and we got it done for free.

• The Foreign and Commonwealth Office do not keep a record of the signatures of all solicitors on their database, and if you are on a time constrained schedule this WILL lead to symptoms of heart palpitations, night sweats, and chronic whinging. And that’s just my Dad. Government service departments being known for slow correspondence; we all know the automated email replies stating something along the line of “someone will read your email within the next 5 days. If you haven't heard anything within three weeks, please give up and put the kettle on.” However, I was kept informed within 24 hours of all emails being received, and I was delighted when the document was returned to me before I leave the country, let alone at all.

• I thought I might have to pack a dorky bulky suitcase to carry all my stuff to Taiwan, but after a practise run, it turns out that I might be able to resurrect the old beat-up Regatta backpack that saw me through two awesome trips to North America. It’s big, it’s bad, it’s ugly… so it will go really well with my new Mammaries, I mean Mammoths… I mean Mammuts.

• And finally, I tied pair of hiking boots up more than 50 times in one day and shredded my fingers. Okay, well spotted, we’ve already covered that one. Also, unfortunately the subsequent enlightening moment associated with this experience came as I washed my hair in the shower that night. As the water burned into the sores I realised that one should never EVER tie more than 50 pairs of hiking boot laces in a day. Let this be a lesson to you all.

#planning #taiwan #travel #hikingboots