Today I...am shaking the Indonesian sand out of my knickers...

...and am wondering if there is some higher power trying to force me to get over my passion for clean feet.

First, a comment about my beautiful life: I have a really, undeniably, deliciously beautiful life. I went to Indonesia. For the weekend. Because I could. And when you can do something like go to Indonesia for the weekend there is just no excuse not to. And I am pleased to report that, while I silently got really excited about the fact that the entry visa takes an entire page in my passport plus an entry stamp and an exit stamp, 97.2% of the caucasian's in the ferry terminal were visibly and vocally very excited about this. There's a silly little thrill you get when entering a country consumes an entire page - or more - in your passport. I'm happy to report that I still get a thrill out of what the new stamps in my passport look like with every new country I visit. I hope that never changes.

Second, I am seriously beginning to wonder if there are forces at work that are greater than I saying "Yo! Lady! Get over your feet already!"

So, I can imagine my lovely parents reading this and thinking about all of the road trips we went on when I was a kid. I'm not sure if they were fully aware of my issues about clean, dry feet. But they were certainly aware of my issues with public washrooms. I hate them. When I was younger I loathed them with a deep and voracious passion. It cracks my parents up to no end to talk about all the times when I desperately needed to use the lou only to flatly refuse to do so because there was a fly in the washroom. Or dirty tiles. Or a spider. Or water leaking. Or an outrageous stench of death. But it didn't take much to get me to hold it for hours. A simple little housefly was more than enough to convince me I really didn't need to go after all.

I've managed to over come this to some extent. However, its actually more like I've evolved to have "acceptable bathroom radar". I am not ashamed to tell you that I plan my water intake around when and where I am most likely to encounter an acceptable bathroom. For instance, most bathrooms at a 5 star resort are likely to be acceptable. All bathrooms in a fishing village on the Island of Bintan are guaranteed not to be acceptable.

Somewhere along the way I also developed a need to always have clean, dry feet. Now, there are some exceptions to this rule - wet feet when in the shower or in a swimming pool are acceptable. Wet feet on cold, wet, change room floors are not.

Wet, sandy feet savoring the ocean are definitely acceptable. Wet, sandy feet stepping into an oil slick on the beach...you guessed it, NOT acceptable!! I was on a gorgeous beach on a gorgeous day. I was moving my lounger to allow myself to soak up some sun when I felt a squish. And I looked down. And I tried to speak and nothing came out. And then, in spite of wanting to hyperventilate, I managed to say "What did I step in?!?!?!" And it would not rub off in the sand. And it would not rub off in the grass. And when I reached down to try to pull it off my foot I realized it was oil. The kind you send to a refinery so that they can clean it all up nice so you can put it in your car. Sticky, black, thick, heavy oil soaked sand and various oil soaked flotsam was stuck to my foot.

Now I know this raises all kinds of horrifying questions about how we are poisoning our earth, but all I could really think about in that moment was "Get it off! Get it off! Get it off!!!" And then I spent the next 15 minutes using sand and ocean water to try to separate the oily schmengy from my feet and exfoliate it out of my skin...because it was now on my feet and my hands.

And so when I got back to the hotel in Singapore tonight the first thing I did was bolt straight to the pharmacy in the mall attached and buy a pumice stone. And then, in spite of the heat of the day, I had a wickedly hot shower and I pumiced the ever lovin' hell out of my feet.

They're clean now. And they're dry. But I think I will need to repeat this process daily for the next three days and have a pedicure before I truly am convinced of that.