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.

Though we’re nowhere near that extreme, we’ve still always been pretty skeptical about the whole all-inclusive-resort thing. In my mind at least, 7-day packages have always fallen somewhere between processed cheese and paying someone to wipe your bum: totally artificial and unforgivably decadent.

That having been said, though, spending a week at a 4.5-star in Varadero was a total hoot, a tonic for workaday drudgery of the last few months, and a moderately guilt-free excuse for getting completely drunk before lunch.

The trick in a country like Cuba, where supplies and funding is scarce, is to pick a new hotel, even if it has fewer stars (the whole star-rating scheme is a total scam anyway). If you’re into cleanliness and functioning plumbing, a 2-year-old 4-star place will likely be a better experience than a 5-star hotel that’s been around 10 years. It’s all about upkeep. This place we were at, the Blau Varadero, had only been around 18 months or so. Everything was still spanky-new and the toilet still worked (vital). We managed to get a room high up and overlooking the ocean.

At first the worry was how we were going to spend 7 days doing nothing. Let me tell you: surprisingly easily. Here’s a rundown:

• Decide what to eat. There’s 2 buffets, a fancy restaurant, and a snack bar.
• Eat.
• Decide what to drink and where. There’s 3 different bars, not counting the beer in the fridge in our room. Here’s the travel mug I got from Ballard being put to good use. It might even have been noon already.
• Decide on either pool or white sandy beach.
• Find a free chair. (Here’s the only dicey part of the stay, and we noticed this with the German tourists that were staying there. People will get up obscenely early to reserve a shady beach chair: like 5am. Then they’ll hog the spot all day, to the point where they’ll physically stop you from sitting close to them, logging-protest-style. The more fervent ones built little chair-forts: I guess Germans are good at building walls. I kid, I kid.)
• Work on sudoku or tan, or multitask and do both simultaneously.
• Participate in or watch hotel entertainments. They employ a whole troop of unnaturally happy people to run dance classes, teach hopeless guests token Spanish phrases, etc.
• Nap.
• Eat.
• At night, watch the hotel evening show. They’ll do dance-offs or comedy nights or, on the Saturday we were there, bizarre water-ballet performances. Thankfully, the only time you’ll see male synchronized swimmers. Here’s Senor Phantom-of-the-Night romancing the ladies, complete with waterproof dickie (ahem).

  At one point in the evening, they starting having trouble with the floodlights, and one poor sod had to hold up the stand for the rest of the show. People talk about the legions of hardworking souls who make shows like this happen; apparently it only takes one guy to keep everyone from getting electrocuted. Nice.

And so, a week and many mojitos later, we were rested up, armed with blossoming sunburns and Nazma’s new salsa-dancing skills, and off to see what the country really looks like, outside of Disneyland Cuba.

Photos once I find a computer with a USB slot. And that post-title is the ubiquitous generic-Caribbean song they keep playing on the loudspeakers by the pool, not an editorial.

Internet will be slow (limited to 56k by the Revolucion) but I may post if I have the time. If not, take it easy, and if you don’t hear from us by the 9th April, call the consulate. Vaminos!

Anyway, we’ve opted for Cuba (i.e. Communism Lite), thinking about spending 7 days in a resort (which we’ve never done), then 7 days of the usual traipsing-around as we tend to do. Time to go now, before the Bushies get in and while Castro’s still around to preserve the 50’s-time-warp that is one of the last remaining Workers Paradises.