Expat’s experience: The shoeshine hustle in Hanoi
Wednesday, March 11, 2015, 17:05 GMT+7
I’m wearing a pair of new shoes – so new, in fact, that as I started to write this column I could still smell the glue, or maybe the polish.
So maybe they’re not really “new,” but they look new and feel a little funny – a bit tight, not yet broken in. That’s because my new shoes are really the same leather deck shoes I’ve been wearing nearly every day since last summer, when I bought them at a Payless store back in the U.S. – the shoes that became tired, worn and dirty and thus were targeted by a couple of shoe guys working along Xuan Dieu in Tay Ho District.
