Update 1.5 Months in: A Hole-in-the-wall Haircut

We have just arrived in Phong Nha in the middle of a rainstorm. The gentle rain patters steadily around the courtyard as I sit in our garden guesthouse. It is our first real day rained in. We have been working our way north through Vietnam after flying into Saigon two weeks ago, mostly taking night buses and stopping in towns along the way. We stayed a couple of days in the old city of Hoi An, known for its excellent tailor shops where you can get nice hand-tailored suits for very cheap. Highlights from here included getting our suits tailored, crab fishing and spinning in a coconut boat, and a very interesting haircut experience.

My never-ending search for a barber that can give me a fade haircut led me to this old Vietnamese man with a ponytail, who was cutting some local man’s hair. His shop didn’t even have a door (or walls, really); it was this little shelter between two buildings with a couple of chairs. I pointed to a poster on the wall with a fade haircut, and the man nodded, so I figured I would give him a shot. I wasn’t having much luck at other places I had asked even though they looked much more established.

I had a feeling I was in for a rather unique haircut experience, and boy was I right. As I go on, keep in mind that I speak zero Vietnamese, and the man didn’t speak English, so our communication consisted mostly of pointing, head shaking, and grunting 😂. The guy started off by offering me a cig (which I politely declined) before lighting one for himself. Then, after spending the next hour carefully cutting my hair, he got out his razor blade and cleaned up my sideburns and the back of my neck, even going as far down as my lower back underneath my shirt. He then pointed to my beard questioningly. I nodded, thinking he was just going to shave the areas around my mouth, but he proceeded to also shave my forehead and eyelids, trim my eyebrows and ears, and right when I thought it was over, I froze in terror when he stuck his scissors up my nose to trim my nose hair. I was afraid to move even slightly because I didn’t want him to cut me.

When he finally finished shaving, he started hitting—no, sorry, whacking—my face, back, and shoulders with a towel to get the hair off. I saw he had done the same to the local man who went before me; I presume this was a replacement for a blowdryer to blow off hair. He then rubbed my face with some cream and then some lotion, patted my face down (not very gently) with his hands. After all was said and done, the man had spent almost two hours on me and had charged me only 200,000 VND (less than $10 USD). He had given me one of the best haircuts I had ever received and also cut literally all the hair off my face aside from my eyelashes and newly trimmed eyebrows. All in all… I would definitely recommend this guy 😂.