No matter how long you've been in Taiwan, there eventually becomes a day when you've become assimilated. This day will come sooner for some and later for others, but it will come eventually. What is this day? What is the even which occurs that shows you have finally embraced the culture? Well it's the day you decide to wear flip flops everyday.
I fought it at first, I had a few years of holding onto my old ways, but i finally gave in. It's just too logical to wear them all the time. I know you're thinking it's because of the heat, but that's not it. The real reason is because of the sudden downpours. With it ready to rain heavily at a moment's notice and the poor drainage, the streets can become a maze of puddles. Eventually you get sick of soaking your shoes and walking around in wet socks and just embrace the practicality of flip flops. In flip flops you don't care if your feet get wet, and when they do, they dry off quickly.
So everybody in Taiwan wears flip flops. It basically started with the fact that in the home, everybody must wear slippers. Eventually people started wearing these slippers outside to run to the store or pick up the kids from school, especially on rainy days. This slowly evolved to people wearing the slippers all the time, then companies making more elaborate slippers so that your only option wasn't just the 30 cents (yes just 30 cents) home slippers.
This has evolved into a big market here. Young ladies where very fashionable flip flops. With a current trend being high heeled flip flops. Young guys where expensive designer flip flops to show off their status. Old people still wear the regular cheap house slippers.
Perhaps the biggest surprise for me is that the almost required footwear for riding a scooter, is flip flops. I guess it makes sense since you have to step in huge puddles when stopped at a traffic light. But also it seems dangerous as they are easy to come off. I've also seen people wearing flip flops when riding a motorcycle. They must have tough skin on top of their feet and strong toes, cause changing gears on motorcycle is no joke.
For myself I wear the cheapest generic flip flops. I get teased a lot but i stand by them. I like to point out that my cheap pair usually out last most of the expensive designer ones that my friends wear. Also if you can see, mine are "Made in Taiwan" so i'm happy to support Taiwan, or the chinese factory which stamps this on the flip flops.
The above picture is of the pair I just bought on the day of the photo. The store actually had a very cute pair of pink ones with hearts all over it. I really wanted to get those, but they were a bit too small. It's just as well, as in Taiwan people don't understand wearing something ironically. Too bad though, cause I would have loved for my flip flops to display my social commentary on a system which perpetually pushes things which are cute thus compelling people to be cute.
