One of my favorite aspects to living and traveling in Asia is that it is often far easier (and cheaper) to accomplish daily tasks. In Taiwan, for example, getting a new muffler on your scooter can take thirty minutes. You simply drive up to the shop, they remove the old muffler and put on the new one right away, and they generally don’t charge for the labor. You just pay for the new muffler. In Canada, the same task could take weeks as they have to order in the new muffler and schedule your repair for next month. And then they charge you a fortune.

And if your sandals are broken in Canada, the normal thing to do is to throw them away and buy new ones. It would cost more to repair them than to buy new ones. But in Asia, you can find small street-side repair stalls for just about anything. And on this day, I went in search of one of these stalls to have my sandals repaired. They are obviously worn out and it’s time to buy new sandals, but I figured that with some repairs, I could get use them for another month or two.