The next morning I feel like shit. I’ve been pissing out of my asshole for the last fourteen hours and I haven’t eaten a thing. I’m weak and I know I will be sleeping alone this evening for lack of “powa”. So I head out in search of some simple fried rice and soup. Pass through Nana area and cross Sukhumvit Road and wonder the Soi’s. I’m having a hard time finding a restaurant that just serves simple dishes. As I pass all the street vendors loaded with chicken livers, skinned hogs and a variety of freeze dried roach’s, frogs and crickets - my stomach gurgles. I just want something simple. I head down a side street and end up on a small street that contains many long distant call offices, travel agents, Barber shops and restaurants. It appears to be the African/Middle Eastern section of town. I look at a menu from a restaurant that is across the way from a barbershop. The menu has vegetarian fried rice and wonton soup. Perfect, I set my self up outside looking into the barber shop filled with eight cuties in tight fitting blue matching uniforms working away like bee’s.
I order my simple dishes, sit back and watch the show. As I look
through the floor to ceiling glass wall facing the street one man is
laid back in a barber’s chair getting steam shot in his face as one of
the cuties massages his head and another one is giving him a foot
massage. Across the room another dude is getting a pedicure by one
cutie and another one gives him an arm massage. Well, since I’m feeling
like shit, I look like shit and I’m definitely not going to get laid
this evening and I decide after dinner I will treat my self to a real
barber experience.
I finish my meal, which was perfect for my situation. I walk around the
block once to make sure I’m up for it. I come back around and walk into
the barbershop. I am greeted like a rock star and I ask if they can
make me pretty. “We make you even more handsome, handsome man”. They
saw me watching from across the way and new I would be in.
For me at this moment, this was better than going to the best soapie.
They asked what I wanted, negotiated prices and we ended up with a
haircut, foot massage, a shave, a facial, followed by a head and arm
massage all for 1000 baht ($25).
It was an hour and a half of bliss. Each girl in the shop has a
specialty and they rotate working on you based on your need and their
availability. I get a nice haircut first. Then onto the shave. I have
never been shaved like this before! Hot towel on face, followed by
cream, followed by a straight blade, followed by cream again, followed
by double edge razor part 1, cream again another double-edged razor,
cream again yet another double edge. My face was as soft as a baby’s
bottom by the time she was finished. This was a twenty-minute shave and
I shit you not.
Meanwhile while as the shave is going on I’m getting a foot massage the
entire time. After the shave she moisturizes my face and puts on a
frozen eye mask while another one starts massaging my arms. All three
women working on me with the focus like they are performing open-heart
surgery. My sickness is starting to fade away as they polish me off
with a pour cleansing and a face massage. One hour and a half later I
walk out feeling like a million bucks. The perfect treatments for
making me feel alive again. I wonder back to my hotel, I read for a
moment and I’m gone.
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