Dan's Adventure

When travelling for a long time there are certain tasks that need to be done once in a while that break you out of the tourist zone as you need to rely on local services to accomplish them. Although simple, sometimes they can prove to be a challenge, whether its going for a hair cut, buying new clothes or getting laundry done, its often more difficult than it should be.

Hair cuts

After almost 6 months, I’ve not managed to get the dreadlocked traveller look, I’ve been for a few haircuts along the way. Explaining what I want is the most problematic bit. Through broken English and pointing I usually manage to get roughly what I want and if that fails there is always the choosing a haircut from a magazine option and hoping for the best. In Bangkok however, I ended up getting my hair cut way shorter than I wanted, my face shaved and a neck massage after asking for the sides to be shaved and the top to be half the length it was.

Laundry

In almost every town and city there are signs everywhere for laundry to be done, most charging by the kilo. Most guesthouses also offer a laundry service, but unlike back home its almost impossible to get your laundry back the same day, as it gets washed in the morning or early afternoon and hung out to dry for the remainder of the day and overnight. This means that you need to plan when you do your laundry so that its ready for when you want to leave. It shouldn’t be a big deal but I always forget until the last minute when I’ve got a full bag of laundry and plan to leave the following morning.

Buying new clothes

Until Thailand I had not bought any new clothes at all, so everything I had with me was beginning to look rather worn. Fortunately Chiang Mai and Bangkok were both full of markets aimed at tourists where shorts and tshirts were plentiful. Back in the UK I buy all my tshirts from threadless as they offer some pretty unique designs. To my surprise both Chiang Mai and Bangkok were full of rip off threadless tshirts all being sold for a fraction of the price that the website offers them for. For around $30 I managed to buy 4 new tshirts, new ‘volcom’ shorts and new ‘billabong’ board shorts. The difficult thing is getting a good price at the markets. If you are buying one item the price offered is always greatly inflated, but if you buy multiple items it is very easy to knock the price down and strike a fair deal. In the end, if you are happy to pay what is offered, its all good, there isn’t much point haggling over an extra dollar.