I love getting my hair cut on the road. Not only is it necessary—to avoid looking too hippie-ish (important when you’re living the life of one by backpacking for months on end)—but it can be the start of all kinds of wacky adventures. We were in Đà Lạt, Vietnam, drowning my sorrows after a disastrous clearcutting, when the owner came and took us on a tour of the other, closed-off floors in his bar. He’d turned them into an enormous Gaudi-esque indoor concrete cave complex—complete with rivers and secret passageways. At one point we lit candles and clambered down into a cavern below street level, where he was working on installing a lake. Why he was doing all this we couldn’t divine from him, but who cares—it was a fantastical experience and it all started with a botched crop.

* The Cuban government apparently gets somewhat nervous about locals interacting with foreigners outside of hotels, giftshops, and other touristy venues. By “nervous”, I mean one day you might realise “Hey, where did JC go? Haven’t seen him or his family in a while”. So I’m changing the names of any Cubans we met. In this case though, I’ve conveniently forgotten his name anyway.In Cuba, in the old Havana slum, JC* runs a tatty but proud shop, with his bare-fluorescent lighting and torn Chevy benchseat-cum-waiting-lounge. He was a hoot, an astute political commentator, and a magician with the scissors to boot. In a country where you make do with what you have, JC crops your chops with the creakiest pair of shears you’ve ever seen. And he had more than a few cutting remarks about Castro. Not just Fidel (”Liar!”) but his heir-apparent too (”He’s worse. Fidel, at least he talks. But Raul, he doesn’t talk: he just does!” Ominous.). An enlightening chat while the scissors whizzed away: he’s learning English at night-school, for the day Cuba finally opens up, and he has to pay for his textbooks in pesos convertibles—that pesky double-currency that keeps the people poor and the tourist-dollars flowing straight to the government. Even though we were probably paying 10 times the going rate, what’s CAD$4 to us? “I can buy books now. Because you come to my shop, I can live.” Yikes.

In Luxor, wheel-and-deal-capital of Egypt, I was getting a bit shaggy, so off we pop to the local barber. Borat-lookalike but a meek fellow, not a word of English, and our Arabic wasn’t up to snuff, but the customer he’s working on obligingly chimes in, and so the negotiations begin. I don’t even remember how much we finally paid (something like CAD$4 again), but we knew we’d been E-gypped when he finished up and gave Borat a fraction of what we’d just agreed to. Whatever: he looked like he’d been working for 16 hours straight (I mean, we wandered in around 1030 at night) and he seemed like he appreciated the money. As a result, he took his time getting it right: I’ve never had someone take so much effort before. Kept asking if it was okay and would adjust on the fly as requested. Another pruning pro. Snipping away as the old black-and-white tv blared its song out of our well-lighted chopshop and into the night. Great success!

If you know me, you know that all good things must come to an end. Uganda was my follicular Waterloo. On the advice of Nazma’s mom I head out to their barberman a block from the house. Recall that myopia means when the glasses come off, I’m effectively relinquishing all control. He was an earnest sort: brimming with enthusiasm, he makes like he knows exactly what I want. I couldn’t see a damned thing but I knew something was up when the scissors never once made an appearance. No trace of a comb either. Just a succession of increasingly smaller clipper guards. Now to be fair, I’m probably the first Chinese customer he’s ever had, so granted he doesn’t know what to do with my hair. This is Uganda, and without a trace of racism, everybody—I mean everybody— has the same close-cropped do. And so after a half-hour of old-growth littering the floor and an icing-on-the-cake application of Jerri-Curl oil (no kidding), I was sporting my own Asian mini-fro. You may think this helped me blend in with the locals more, but astonishingly, it didn’t. Nazma’s mother was very proud: a cut that short means longer till the next visit, which makes it good value for my (strangely again) CAD$4.

In the end, no Samson-like rampage ensued; no bitter tears; just the usual histrionics-via-blog-entry. You take the good with the bad and something as mundane as a haircut becomes a great way to meet the locals, and it may make for a good story. In this case, now we’re several weeks on: I’m sporting a hastily bought Fidel-style hat these days (funnily enough), hiding the remnants of what I’ve come to call the Changing-of the-Guards haircut, and waiting for that day when it finally grows out and I can run the Barbicide gauntlet once again.

We arrived at the last of three hotels we’d inspected and found wanting, and trudged dutifully up the stairs to look at the room before committing. The room looked like most others — faded glamour, dainty lace canopy/mosquito net above the bed, vaguely grimy undusted corners — but what clinched our $6 was the soft-porn tiling in the bathroom.

After the incredulity had subsided, two questions sprang to mind:

• Why did the hotel designers decide to include this? They even had to rework the rest of the tiling in the bathroom extensively to do so.
• You can’t one-off these things: who’s buying these things in sufficient quantities to justify their mass-production?

I could understand a poster, even a naughty lithograph, but having pornographic ceramic tiles doesn’t quite smack of strong long-term-planning abilities.

I thought the man looked rather skanky with his long greasy Fabio hair and half-shaven chest, but Nazma was quick to point out that she’s not the classiest dame either. A match made in heaven, fornicating in our shower.

The bus cruises, astride the centre-line; horn is relentless, every few seconds; we dip back into safety if we meet something oncoming, but the driver makes sure to blare his indignance. The trucks rush past, horns dopplering plaintively in return.

Here and there we pass a house, derelict, slate and brown in the green paddy; or a Chinese cemetery on a green slope, graves festive with orange and teal plaster. They peel as years pass, but not as much as one would think.

With >80million people one has to put them all somewhere. Apart from mountain roads, there isn’t a stretch of highway that doesn’t show some sign of habitation: roadside cafes, a shack, a farm. Kids in blue ponchos, some without; on bicycles on the way home, some without. The constant sprawl of humanity disorients me: I have no idea when we’ve left the city, nor when we’ve arrived at the destination.

A slash of red from the tilled earth; a lonely pagoda on the hillside: everything dashes out of the fog at us and retreats. The myopia from the mist doesn’t let you see very far.

I fell asleep as we left Hoi An in sun, and woke up to this two hours later. The end of our trip draws nearer: 19 days left.

1. Put all foreigners at the back of the bus.
2. Never replace the shocks on the bus.

But at least I have posted again – scroll down to March 6th. Funny thing: I actually haven’t been able to access cheesybeefpizza myself since we entered Vietnam, but I can edit it for some reason. In most of the hotel rooms we’ve stayed at, there’s been a list of “regulations”; being one of the last Communist countries, these very often have included a ban on “subversive materials”. Maybe cheesybeefpizza is a corrupting influence on the fertile minds of the youth: I should inject some content to get myself back in the good books. Progress through technology! The Party is Life!

Will post more later when I get a decent computer (with cardreader) – have to catch up Malaysia, Cambodia AND Vietnam now, errant boy that I am. For now, we’ve been published in last Saturday’s Vancouver Sun. You can look it up on www.vancouversun.com for the next while. This may be our last article; too busy to write these days. Mind you, we’re on the bus for 16 hours tomorrow heading north, so maybe I’ll feel inspired at 4 in the morning.