Really? Another post about haircuts?

So there's this tiny neighborhood barber shop around the corner that Lian and I pass on our way to the good duck soup & noodle shop on Thapae Road. The owner waits expectantly at the door, casting puppy-dog eyes on passers-by. His eyes are all we can see of his face, as he wears a white surgical mask on the job. He and Lian chat briefly and the price sounds pretty decent -- did I hear him say 150 baht? What the heck, all I need is a quick clipper-cut, so I decide to give him a try.

Awaiting my turn in the chair.

After selecting my style preference from the gallery of male celebrity photos clipped from magazines and taped to the wall (I go for the close-cropped Sam Worthington look), I plop down in the chair and he sets to work. Ever ... so ... slowly. He seems to be progressing hair by hair, always asking after every snip: "Is this OK? Is this OK?" At last we are finished. Or not: this barber then proceeds to give me a scalp massage, followed by a shoulder massage. And then he breaks out the shears again for a few finicky touches.

Rising, I pull out my wallet and ask how much. He replies almost apologetically: "Ha-sip baht, khrep?" Fifty baht, roughly a buck-sixty. In other words, ten times less than a Super Cuts slash job back in Oregon. I hand him a 100-baht note and signal to keep the change. He is overcome with astonished gratitude and will not let me leave the shop until he can do more for me -- "Shampoo? I give you shampoo!" So it's into the reclining sink-chair for a long, luxurious wash-and-rinse, followed by yet another scalp massage.

Lian watches this extended pampering and announces: "I have a wash hair, too." So then it's my turn to wait and wait.

---

A haircut reminder for Lian's son.

In the Thai school system, when a teacher is dissatisfied with the length of a male students hair, he informs the parents not with a written note or a phone call, but by shaving a divot into the student's scalp! One night Dao comes home with these mangy-looking gashes cut into his hair, and I ask Lian if she is OK with this. She has no idea what I'm getting at. "Every secondary school in Thailand, children cannot long hair," she says. "Is not polite."

Thai parents do not see it as a personal violation the way most American moms and dads would. Thais simply have a different relationship to authority and it's always fascinating to note how it manifests itself, from deference to teachers to reverence for their king.

---

For the longest time I've stuck (pretty much) to a "when in Rome ..." policy about food, eschewing western cuisine in favor of noodle joints and open-air markets. I would stroll smugly past the sidewalk diners at the fancy American restaurant, The Duke's, and think: "Just look at those wide load farang in there scarfing on ribs and burgers and pizza," while on my way for a steaming, spicy bowl of tom yum or som tam or whatever Thai food name I'm forever mispronouncing. 

A dessert so huge, it requires two utensils.

But you can deny who you are and what you're made of for only so long. And lately my thoughts about The Duke's have taken on a Homer Simpson voice: "Mmm, ribs and burgers and pizza ..." Finally I relent and drag poor Lian along for a mid-afternoon American-style dessert.

Keep in mind, a Thai "dessert" comes in a small dish and might include kidney beans, water chestnuts, squash and other such salad-bar detritus, only modestly sweetened. So Lian is unprepared for the massive sugar-bomb apple pie and softball-size scoop of vanilla ice cream set before her. She gamely picks at it but prefers my carrot cake, also mega-portioned.

Am I satisfied? Not yet! A few nights later I up the ante.

Lian has a two-hour customer in the evening, so I promise to take charge of dinner. After she leaves, I ask Dao: "Ghin pizza, dai mai?" He grins and nods. I know that his mother has never tasted the stuff, but she's about to get her first opportunity.

Before ...

Waiting in the bar at The Duke's for my pie -- large pepperoni, Italian sausage and garlic chicken pizza, to go -- I bask in the Stanford's-like vibe, watching the parade of comfort food float by: medium-rare steaks and mashed potatoes, ginormous burgers and fries, racks of ribs from the real smoker out back, spaghetti and meatballs, all my favorite culinary porn. Twenty minutes later my pizza arrives and it is ridiculously huge but beautiful.

... and after.

"Oh boy, lots of leftovers for me," I think. But no: the pizza, which I doctor with sauteed onions, Thai peppers and tomatoes, is enthusiastically received. The 100-pound Thai lady and the skinny child manage to consume all but two slices; OK, I helped a little.

---

That's it for another episode. Tomorrow evening I enter the big silver cocoon once again to begin my 24-hour transformation from sweaty farang into freezing Oregonian. Sawat dii khrep, Merry Christmas and see you soon.

Festive Christmas attire from sidewalk vendor.

Dude looks like a lady-boy

One day after lunch I follow Lian to her haircut appointment -- she arrives on her motor-bike and I come huffing along on foot a few minutes later. I walk in and Lian is talking to what I think are two people at the back of the shop: a fetching young woman with flowing dark hair in a delightfully short dress, and some fellow with a booming baritone voice, just out of sight.

Uh, my mistake: the girl and the guy turn out to be one and the same individual.

Thailand has a warm and tolerant place in its heart for its kathoey, the Thai word for transgendered or effeminate gay men, better known in English as lady-boys. Many Thais consider kathoey to be a sort of third gender.

On Thai TV, most sitcom casts include at least one screamingly flamboyant gay/cross-dressing comic-relief character. Night after night at Anusan Market, farang male tourists pose nervously with the gaudily costumed Thai lady-boys outside their nightly revue. Kathoey use the feminine polite particle of speech, ending sentences with "kaa" instead of the male "khrep," and they often work in occupations dominated by women.  Lian herself uses the pronoun "she" when referring to her lady-boy stylist.

Sure, we farang come from the land of clean drinking water at the tap, not-treacherous sidewalks and artisan bakeries. But I might not live to see red-state America ever catch up to the so-called developing world in this one cultural attitude.

---

Carrot cake and vanilla ice cream. The fifth season of "Breaking Bad." Really good pizza. Driving my own car with my kick-ass sound system reinstalled. Cooking in my own kitchen. Blu-Ray on a 92" projection screen. 21st century broadband. Conversance in the written and spoken language around me.

I am ready to come home. Home.

Fire, I'll take you to burn

Not stars -- lanterns

My iPhone camera cannot possibly capture the trippy theatricality of a night sky dotted with Thai fire lanterns – especially as they rise into the burst zone of a tremendous fireworks display alarmingly close overhead. For the hundreds of revelers packed onto the narrow Iron Bridge at the climax of Loi Krathong, there is no lag time between flash and boom as cinders rain down our upturned faces. "Gangnam Style" blasting from the Bus Bar next door totally works for this spectacle.

Everyone else is playing with fire, so we join in the fun: I buy a 40-baht paper lantern from a street vendor – there’s one every 10 feet, and they’re all mobbed with customers. He assembles the contraption for me: each lantern includes a solid fuel ring suspended by cross-wires at the base of a flame-resistant fabric hood. You ignite the fuel ring, wait for the hot air to fully inflate the hood, and then let go. The important word is “wait” – Lian and I launch our lantern off the bridge too soon and it plummets into the river, fizzling out. A while later we try our hand at the small floral Loi Krathong candle boats that people set adrift on the river to honor the water spirits. But our candles sputter out before we can even get our boats to the river’s edge. We would suck as pyromaniacs.

Awwww!

Lian is intent on not missing “the profession” and for the longest time I have no idea what she is talking about. Once again our very dog-eared Thai-English dictionary clears things up: proCESsion, i.e., parade. But she still calls it the profession.

Loi Krathong rocks Chiang Mai long into the evening, but after four days of music and pyrotechnics we can pretty much tune it out, like living near train tracks. By Friday the entire town looks like The Morning After, a landscape of fallen fire lantern carcasses strewn everywhere.

The Mae Ping River is clogged with banana-leaf floral boats. Serf-class street sweepers with their twig brooms are scraping spent bottle rockets and firecracker remains into loose piles that someone eventually will pick up, or maybe the rains will wash them away.

---

Amazing crispy fish, one of many courses.

Friday evening we meet up with our old friend Mr. Tong at the terrific open-air restaurant he turned us onto a few months back. We feast with abandon over beers and scotch. This time it’s my treat and the entire evening, including tip, comes to $24. We get home around 11 and I check email before turning in. Surprise! A client has scheduled a last-minute phone conference that begins 3:30 a.m., Thailand time, which I force myself to stay up for. I predict that there’s an afternoon nap in my future.