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.
