New Hair Color

So after a very long day of going to Pattaya, a floating market, and seeing Man of Steel, we decided to take Sunday easy. Well, actually my students had to cancel our plans due to a lab class at their university, but still. So as Kate settled into updating Facebook and attempting to download a movie on Thai wifi (estimated download 2000 hours later…) I decided to go out and dye my hair.

I arrived at the salon only two blocks from Santisuk in Lat Krabang and spontaneously choose a color via pointing. Then the real fun began. Hair stylists in America find my hair a challenge: it’s thick, curly, and particularly unmanageable. Well, in Thailand some of them have never even seen hair like mine in person, let alone worked with it.

It took less than ten minutes before a second stylist was recruited because of how much hair I had. And this is still the pre-wash and drying stage. During the actual dying part I learned how to count from 1-30 in Thai.  (Now I’ll actually understand how much money the coffee lady wants from me!) Well, after patiently listening to the Thai lottery on the television and letting the dye sit I was beckoned over to the hair washing station.

First, it’s not like America’s. It’s very strange. It feels more like a doctor’s examination table, except once you get over that it’s actually more comfortable than ours. This is the closest thing I could find to a picture like it. Well, as I’m laying back I see my stylist gesture to the one next to her and point to my hair. And then she re-soaps it and rinses again before calling over another stylist. After they look, say something in Thai, and wander off, another employee walks next to me.

Now I’m pretty proud of my ability to communicate with someone who speaks almost no English, and she could clearly form sentences, but she was trying to talk to me while someone was spraying water and scrubbing my head right around my ears. I thought I could make out the phrase, “200 baht to fix” and the word “fix” a few more times. Awesome; exactly what you want to hear. In what felt like a decade I finally made it back in the salon chair. My hair was Ariel red and my roots looked yellow-pink. Now, I have stylists all hovering around me looking concerned, nervous, and some attempting to say something. My stylist finally just points to my head. Me? I was just cracking up laughing. I seriously could not stop grinning.

All I could think about was my late nights of panic throughout this past year of college when my friend would try and dye my hair. During the worst part I looked like Rainbow Brite gone wrong and had ended up calling an ADPi sister I had never really talked to before. (She always had really pretty red hair, and I knew she had experience dying it.) That sister offered to take me to Walmart at one in the morning on a school night and then dyed it when we returned back to the dorm, saving me the embarrassment of wearing a head wrap until I found a better solution. (I still owe Kaitlyn dearly for that.) That's true sisterhood for you.

But these memories just started flooding back. Compared to that night my hair looked like a masterpiece! Besides, the faces of all of the salon employees were just too funny. I mean, I think they thought I was going to throw a tantrum. I knew my hair was going to turn out bright red. I had picked a red color and their dye is designed for extremelly dark hair. I couldn’t blame them, I just felt bad for them.

And I’m sure it didn’t help that I really did just keep giggling as they attempted to style it after I affirmed I didn’t hate the color. They were clueless. After a combination of attempts involving some sort of foam, gel, spray, air drying, combing, a diffuser, and a hairdryer, I knew that my hair was not going to turn out. But they didn’t. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone look guiltier about taking my money. Still, I was just chuckling and extremelly amused with their wonder and confusion.

After I returned to Santisuk I quickly re-rinsed my hair, added my own product, and let it air dry. After it did I ended up with a style and a color that I actually love (not the colors I described earlier). And even if I didn’t love it, torturing those poor stylist wouldn’t have changed anything. I got rid of my prior roots, and had a fantastic laugh in the process.

Be grateful the next time you go to a salon and you can actually communicate with the person who is in control of your appearance for the next few months or so. But regardless of your situation, always take it with a grain of salt and find humor in everything. You never know when a trip to the hair salon will turn into an adventure in itself.