The Dusty Sneakers: Kisah Kawan Di Ujung Sana

The Dusty Sneakers Review

My bestie, Celipu, lent me this book almost two months ago and I managed reading it this month only. It’s an Indonesian story book written by a Balinese man, Teddy W. Kusuma (his role as Twosocks in this book) and a Chinese Indonesian from Jakarta, Maesy Ang (her role as Gypsytoes). Find out more about the two authors here. They wrote a blog too (in bilingual languages: English and Indonesian language) that depicted their activities in their lives.

The book was written in Indonesian language, which I personally found the language they used was very formal and polite. There was a word that I kept wondering what it meant “surel”. After few chapters only I realized that it meant “email”. Hehehe… They both can write and speak English and somehow I wonder if they have any plan to translate this book into other languages. Go International, that’s what I thought!!! :)

Just like any other writers, they both like to write and read, also traveling! That’s what the book was about! Both of them took turn in writing their traveling stories. Gypsytoes wrote about her traveling journey when she was studying in Amsterdam while Twosocks wrote his stories when he traveled around Indonesia, and once they met up in Bangalore in India, when Gypsytoes had to travel there to do some research for her thesis.

Other than traveling stories, they also wrote about their hometown in Indonesia. As said above, they both came from different places: Twosocks was from Singaraja, Bali, while Gypsytoes was from North Jakarta. Different background, but they both shared the same passion: drinking tea, talking about book, traveling, etc.

It’s light and refreshing stories. Somehow, it’s just like sharing your travel experience with your loved ones when you both were separated. Not very details information about each destination that they went to, but it gave us some knowledge about the places they’d been to. Their friendship were so sweet and Twosocks’ story and language was sometimes funny and naïve. Very nostalgic, indeed!!! :)