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Globe Cutter:
A Brief Account of Haircuts I’ve Received (Survived) Around the World
by Greg Coyle

Most people like to acquire stuff when they travel, be it art, t-shirts, venereal diseases. I’m just as guilty as the next person, the only difference being I’ve never had any money when I hit the road. I couldn’t buy any of the endangered birds or archaeological artifacts or weapons-grade plutonium that seemed so popular with other travelers. No, my collection was much more modest. So what did I look for? Haircuts. For more than 15 years now, whenever I visit a new corner of the globe, I make it a point to seek out the local chop doctor, smile and gesture for him to make with the handsome. I’ve found it never fails to reward me with two things: a great story, and a sort of postcard you can wear.

Here, then, in chronological order, is a run-down of my top five international haircuts:

Lagos, Portugal
This was my first foray into the brisk and hilarious waters of global hairstyling. The cut was administered by the owner of the home in which I was renting a room. She was a rather dopey, if lovable, old spinster who loved Tom Jones’ music and mixed nuts, the latter which she carried in great numbers in the pocket of her housecoat.

On reflection, I should’ve turned down the wine she offered. I should’ve also been put on alert by the state of her hair, being, as it was, somewhere between a young George Harrison and an old Anthony Quinn. She sat me in a straight-backed chair in the kitchen, without a mirror in sight. For nearly 45 minutes she worked around my head with a pair of scissors, smiling sometimes, even giggling, and forever going on in an excited Portuguese. When I began feeling the draft a bit higher up my head than I expected, I became rather anxious to the see the result.

Finally, after serving me three or four glasses of a cheap local vintage, she tapped me on the shoulder and instructed me to stand. She led me to the bathroom. There, in a small oval mirror, with her wide-eyed, Aunt Bea face smiling behind me, I saw what looked like a stool sample sitting on top of my head. She then smoothed her hand over my new do as if I were a docile farm animal. In the end, I managed a smile of my own and insisted to be immediately returned to the bottle of wine in the kitchen.

Taipei, Taiwan
I was living in Taipei at the time, so in truth I had many haircuts in the years I was there. What I did not know before going in for my first was that in Taiwan "barber shops" were not what they appeared. They were, in truth, more of a, what shall we call them, "full-service" salon. But my hair was long and I was literally wilting beneath the diabolical Taiwan summer sun. So I ventured in.

You’d think I would’ve figured something was up when I saw that the windows of the place were covered. You’d think I would’ve got the picture when, upon entering, I was enthusiastically welcomed by a short man with silver-capped teeth and an eye patch, or by the dark and decidedly non-tonsorial splendor of the inside of the establishment. But none of that occurred to me. It wasn’t until the man led me to another room and directed me to pick my preferred "stylist" from among a panel of pouty-lipped candidates that I finally understood they didn’t know a blow dry from a blow job.

Too cowardly to turn and walk right out, I nervously made my selection. The woman, a lithesome, doe-eyed thing with long straight black hair, took me to a smaller room, complete with a bed, a small sink, and a TV, scissors nowhere in sight. By this point, I was quite distressed, totally confounded as to how to extricate myself. She handed me a robe and then retreated to, I guessed, prepare herself, whatever that could involve. That’s when simple instinct took over, the same instinct that helped me survive ding-dong ditching and TPing neighbors’ houses when I was kid. Quietly, but very hastily, I exited the room and took myself past the man and the other women, and then right out the door into the sun and down the block by the guy selling chicken feet on the corner.

For weeks afterward, the man with the eye patch seemed always to be standing out front of the place when I made my way to my apartment on the adjacent street. And each time he saw me, he proceeded to reel off a string of what I took to be juicy Mandarin obscenities and "tsk-tsked" me. It was no way to get my return business.

Kowloon, Hong Kong
This one was the result of a recommendation I received from another traveler. I had been on the road a few months and was in dire need of a good clean-em-up. I asked around if anyone in the hostel in which I was staying knew of a cheap barber, nearby. A German guy stopped showing off his new watch long enough to say yes and give me very detailed directions.

Later that day, I made my way out and immediately got myself hopelessly lost. For an hour, I wandered around circuitous streets and narrow, unnamed alleys. Finally, I saw a sign for a barber, and, figuring it must be the place, followed the arrows into a nearby building and up three flights of stairs.

The final landing led me right into the open doorway of very traditional-looking barbershop. I had found it! The familiar adjustable barber chairs, the large mirrors, the shallow shelf covered with soaking combs, scissors, clippers, hair tonics -- it was all there. What I didn’t see until fully entering and committing myself were the three gray-haired, sleeping, and -- by all appearances -- near-dead Chinese barbers sitting side by side in the chairs against the wall to my right. At my arrival, they all quickly awoke and jumped from their seats, chattering away at me like three of those cymbal-clanging wind-up monkeys.

At this point, I tried to pretend I was lost and just turn and go, but they wouldn’t permit it. Each grabbed me and with great urgency pulled me toward his respective area. All the while, they shouted at one another like girls, slapping at each other’s hands. I, meanwhile, probably a foot taller than any one of them, felt like a tree being gnawed at by beavers. At length, one of the men won out, and settled me into his chair, while the other two continued to curse nearby. Then, after all that, the lousy old bastard gave me the worst hack job I’ve ever had, failing to heed the half-inch order I made with forefinger and thumb. I looked like one of Mr. Miyagi’s banzai trees.

Hanoi, Vietnam
We were looking for the U.S. Embassy when we discovered "barbers’ row," a two-block collection of probably 30 enterprising haircutters all arrayed one after the other down the street. They had each brought a chair and staked out a ten foot-by-ten foot spot. Each had also nailed a small mirror onto the concrete wall that served as the gate to a neighboring consulate, arraying their tools on towels on the ground. To what vain, image-obsessed boob would this not scream "opportunity!"?

After some voluble negotiating between three or four of the guys, I selected a tall, stoop-shouldered fellow with a large head and a tattered NASCAR t-shirt. I instantly regretted my decision as once he won the business he seemed immediately uninterested in my attempts to describe what I wanted, which was only a simple crew cut. This particular cut promised the most bang for my dong. He began with the scissors and after cutting for only a few short minutes, started brushing my neck as if finished. I smiled and pointed at his hand-operated clippers on the ground, again demonstrating the look I sought. Uninspired, but cooperative, he took up the clippers, but finding them dull, just as quickly put then down again and returned to the scissors. After some minutes of this, he again prepared to release me from the chair. But my hair was still nowhere near as short as I wished. Once more I smiled and shrugged and pointed to the clippers, and the whole process started again, this time with him talking loudly to his friends as he did so.

Soon, about 15 of his colleagues, without any business of their own to distract them, congregated around us, watching. They saw as my man failed again to get the clippers working and for a third time went at my head with the scissors. I pointed at the tools of some of the other barbers, thinking perhaps their clippers might be more effective. Understanding my meaning, a number of the men scattered, rushing to offer their equipment. This triggered all sorts of laughing and cajoling among the men, except for my barber, who seemed increasingly surly and frustrated.

When another pair of clippers was settled on, he used these to bring my hair as close to my head as I had wanted. Nice and light for traveling. By this time, the crowd of onlookers had grown to maybe 20 or more, all snickering and pointing now. At last, my hair cut very short, he put down the borrowed clippers, brushed my neck and stood behind me. As we both reviewed the result in the mirror for a long moment, his face went very serious, eyes darkening, mouth turning downward. "Oh," he said, shaking his head gravely, "not very handsome."

Gőreme, Turkey
Maybe it was all the short, devil-may-care coifs on the heads of the Roman statues in Turkey, but I found I had a hankering for a new royal do of my own just as we entered Gőreme. After inquiring with some local merchants, I learned the small village had just one barber. I was directed to the dark, cave-like shop wherein I found a squat red-haired man with a prodigious red beard smoking a pipe. Ah, Middle Earth. …

The man ushered me in with great hospitality. Right away, he picked up his scissors and began obsessively opening and closing them even as he was sitting me in the chair and fixing a towel around my neck. I hoped the towel was not for the blood I imagined issuing from my soon-to-be scissor-mangled ears.

Without asking what I wanted or giving me a chance to point to one of the many pictures of swarthy Turkish men he had taped to his mirror, he set to work. With his right hand he plucked at my hair, while his left continued its feverish clicking with the scissors. These he would pass over my head like the moving blades of a fan, sending clumps of hair to the slate floor. Still maniacally, if now absently, working the scissors, he moved over to a small open fire pit atop which sat a teapot. He lit the kindling and blew the fire into a healthy flame. I wondered if he was simply going to scald the remaining hair from my head.

When the water was ready, he removed the towel from my neck and took another, which he saturated with the boiling water. This he, without preamble, applied directly to my neck, rubbing it so vigorously I was sure a skin graft would ultimately be necessary. Then he lathered up my neck and with a straight razor that scarily appeared from nowhere, started matter-of-factly shaving my neck. I allowed this because I knew the Turks could be hot tempered. But when he stopped and came back with a long, thin metal implement, tilted my head and made to plunge the tool into my ear, I brandished my watch and pretended I had a bus to catch. Sometimes survival is all we can hope for from an international haircut.