Sunday, November 29, 2015

As far as the weather goes, I’m a bit of a broken record. It’s 8:30 in the morning, and it is raining. It has been raining for about two hours. I imagine it will stop, though. That has been the pattern. It rains at night and in the morning and then clears up during the day. That works out well enough for me at the moment, though it would be a problem were I cycling.

I was not as sick as I expected to be, which is wonderful. It’s not any kind of an infection for which I will need treatment. I was just ill for a bit and now I’m not. At least I think I’m not. These things can come on suddenly. I was well enough yesterday to head out into the city first on errands and then on a photo walkabout. My main goal was to get a haircut. I’ve been wanting to get a haircut since two or three weeks before my departure from Malaysia, and my hair was getting longer and longer.

A haircut is actually a standard small adventure of small trips like this. I remember my haircuts in Ethiopia to this day. It was a memorable experience, as were my haircuts in Guinea. I generally get my hair cut at a simple little roadside barbershop, and it is always a deeply cultural experience. It’s more than just a haircut. I have a picture of the roadside places in Guinea. I fully expected to get my hair cut here at a similar place. In fact, there was a place right on the corner near my hotel. It is open-air and fairly cheap looking and therefore interesting. I even went there one day to get my hair cut, but with my impeccable timing, I had arrived when all the barbers were gone for lunch. After that, I felt in the mood for more of a luxury cut. I remember seeing a salon on my walks, and it looked interesting inside. For one thing, it looked comfortable. It looked like a modern salon, and it might even have been air conditioned. I saw rows of chairs in front of big mirrors, and there were sinks where people were having their hair washed. A standard part of a good cut in many countries is to get a head and shoulder massage. I saw people getting massages, and after I was rejected from the budget place, I decided to go to this nice salon. In a lot of countries, the nice salon would actually be somewhat impersonal. The cheap place is where you go to meet people and have a laugh. But in Indonesia, everywhere is interesting. I’m sure that even at the nice salon, people would be happy and smiling, and they would all want to talk to me and we’d probably take pictures together. So I set off to go to this salon. The problem was that I couldn’t remember where it was. I had an idea of where it was, but no matter how long I walked, I couldn’t find it. With many other places, I had marked them on my GPS map on my phone. But I hadn’t marked the salon and no matter how long I looked, I couldn’t find it.

On that day, I just gave up. Yesterday, I renewed my efforts. I went to a new set of streets, but I couldn’t find my salon there either. But then I saw another salon. When I say salon, I mean that as distinct from a barbershop. I did see lots of simple barbershops around. I wanted the salon experience. This salon had darkened glass in its door and windows, so I couldn’t see inside. But I was frustrated with my long walks and I was getting hot and sweaty and I decided to just do it. Forget about making it an experience. Just get your hair cut. So I opened the door and stepped inside. I immediately regretted it. I assumed that since it said “salon” on the outside that it would be nice. But it wasn’t. It was actually much more grim than any of the barbershops I’d seen. It was plain and empty and rather dirty. Worse, the three women sitting in chairs near the door had no reaction to me. They didn’t smile. They didn’t greet me. Nothing happened. It was very unpleasant. But I didn’t want to just turn around and leave. I felt that would be rude, so I stuck it out.

I never did quite understand what was going on. I couldn’t tell who worked there and who didn’t. I didn’t know who was the stylist and who wasn’t. No one took charge of me. I felt I had just stood there looking like an idiot for long enough, so I made hand gestures to indicate I wanted a haircut. And then I took out my phone and showed them a picture of me with short hair to give them an idea of what kind of cut I wanted. But the woman waved away my phone and pointed to the back. Apparently, the hairstylist was in the back. Or maybe the English expert was in the back. Whatever she meant, I was clearly expected to just wait.

Eventually, a woman emerged from the back, and I was shown to a seat in front of a mirror. I tried to show this woman the picture on my phone, but she waved it away. In fact, she never asked me in any way what kind of haircut I wanted. She said nothing in any language – not even in body language. She just wrapped a big bib around my neck and got to work. That was fine with me. I hate having to describe how I want to look. I like it when the hairstylist takes over and just cuts my hair and makes it shorter. It’s not like I want a fancy style. Just shorter. In my experience, the only decision that is expected of me is to indicate if I want my hair above the ear or covering the ear.

So nothing much happened during my haircut. The woman used electric clippers most of the time. Then she switched to scissors for some cleanup and some layering. Then she got out a razor blade and cleaned up some areas around my ears where my sideburns used to be. And I was done. I generally close my eyes during haircuts. I feel it makes the hairstylist more comfortable to know that I’m not staring at their work all the time and judging them. Plus, it’s just easier. Just sitting there and staring is kind of weird. Where are you supposed to look? So I close my eyes, and I only open them when I feel like we’ve reached a major stage and the hairstylist expects me to do something. The one or two times I opened my eyes, I liked what I saw. The woman seemed to be giving me a simple cut and she was making it the right length – not too short and not too long.

I was hoping for a bit of pampering, but the whole process was utilitarian from beginning to end. She finished the cut and that was that. The bib was whipped off and the (now graying) cut hair was tossed to the floor. The woman retreated behind a desk and I went over to pay. I don’t know how to ask this in Indonesian, and I wouldn’t understand the answer anyway. It’s not like it was a great mystery what was supposed to happen next. I got out my wallet and looked questioningly at the woman. She did something with her hands, and I got the impression she said 40,000 rupiah. That took me by surprise. Rea had told me that a haircut would cost between 15 and 20 thousand rupiah. This was double the price. I could chalk that up to this being a salon. But it wasn’t really a salon. It was a barbershop – even worse than a barbershop. They’d just put the word salon on the outside. So I suspected that I was being charged double. I still wasn’t sure what she had said, though, so I just handed over a 50,000 rupiah note and waited to see how much change she gave me. She gave me 10,000 back, so the price really was 40,000.

My suspicion that this price was an inflated “foreigner price” was supported when a short time later I saw a sign outside a real salon, and this sign indicated that very complex hair procedures for women (rebonding and all kinds of things) cost 40,000 rupiah. A simple cut for a man shouldn’t cost that much. I haven’t asked anyone about this yet, but I think I was overcharged. This is always an issue in countries like Indonesia. Prices are rarely marked, so you are often left in doubt as to what is going on. As I see it, there are two basic strategies. The first is to settle the price beforehand. But I don’t like this strategy. When you ask about the price, you are telling the person that you have no idea what the real price is. Then they know they can overcharge you. The second is to simply go ahead with the transaction and then hand over money at the end. This gives the impression that you know what the real price is and this puts pressure on the seller to treat you fairly. It’s like bluffing in poker. But the risk is that by waiting to the end, you are at their mercy. You have given up your bargaining power. So this woman could have said 100,000 rupiah, and what could I do? I’d have to pay. She’d already cut my hair, so all the power was in her hands. Luckily, it is more of a moral or psychological issue than a financial one. 20,000 rupiah is $2 and 40,000 rupiah is $4. So even if this woman charged me double the real price, I only lost $2. So it’s hard to get too upset about that.

(Update: Much later, I went to a far better place and I got a beautiful haircut, hair wash, head, neck and shoulder massage, shave, and lots of products in my hair plus a selfie session for 39,000 rupiah.)

 

 

Tags: Sumatra Part 01