Have you noticed we are more willing to accept things abroad that we would not while at home? Is it that we are more relaxed when we are in another country, in another culture? Or is it because things are really better somewhere else, or at least different? Maybe that’s why I like to go to the barber when I travel. Apart from the fact that I never have time in the days preceding a trip, I also think I get a better treatment. Maybe it is because of the away-from-home state I am in. But there is also another reason: when sitting at the barber I don’t really want to talk to a person circling around me with chitchat that doesn’t really matter. However, abroad, a talk with the hairdresser is the ideal opportunity to enquire about all sorts of habits of the local population. That is, if the hairdresser speaks a language you understand. If not, I close my eyes without feeling guilty of lack of social behavior and relax
I am sitting at the poolside for a late breakfast at the hotel Atlanta, Bangkok’s first hotel with a swimming pool.
“Nyukwha, today you cut hair?” Moo asks me.
It is the phrase with which Moo greeted me in the morning for the past week. But I am not in for a haircut yet. It is 1977, and long hair is what you generally wear in Europe. Moo and her two friends are not only hairdressers. They also do pedicures, manicures, skin peelings and such. They are a lively bunch until the sun has warmed the tiles around the pool to the extent that you can’t walk on them barefooted. Then they fall into lethargy until the hotel casts its shadow over the pool. Last night my hair was bothering me in bed. When it grows over a certain length and it then starts annoying me. So before looking for a table to have my breakfast I walk up to the tiny room a bit above the pool to tell Moo:
