A Haircut in Hue

The lightning storms in Hue were truly astounding, and we were lucky enough to see one of the better displays on our first night. I can't help but post another photo from that night... Sitting on the north bank of the perfume river, with a plate of chicken wings and 500ml of huda beer, we watched the clouds burst with electricity. Oddly surreal as this was, the whole scene was made even stranger by the rainbow sequence of colored lights on the bridge. Someone with a little spare time decided to mount a couple hundred stage floods on the bottom of the bridge. The lights slowly cycled through about five or six different neon colors, brightly illumintating the sides of an otherwise dull grey structure.

We cut our time short in Hue because the end of our trip is quickly closing in on us. To occupy our only full day in Hue we wandered throught the local market - browsing through everything from meat to fruit to fabric to coffee to toys to you name it. Our mission was to find Vietnamese coffee filters. They're cheap, perforated aluminum cups that perch atop your mug. For only a dollar a piece we bought three, each one just a little different from the others. The perforations seem too large for fine western grind coffee. So we bought about a kilo of the super dark roast, super coarse ground Vietnamese goodness to bring home with us. We'll be throwing a coffee with sweet milk party later this fall. Don't miss it.
After a tiring bout in the public market, we revived our sweaty selves with a cupfull of said coffee (the woman who sold us the coffee grounds also sold us two ca phe sua da - coffee with milk and ice - with the same beans so we knew what we were buying.)
Wandering further from downtown we stumbled accross the sound equipment, lighting fixtures, and tooth whitening street. As logical as this may or may not seem to you, they all appeared to be running successfull businesses in harmony with eachother.
I was acting like a kid in a candy store, bouncing from one stereo shop to the next. Most were cheap rip-off brands, but more impressively, most shops carried a large supply of bargain parts and tools for repair! Oh how I long to have shops like these in the states.
The biggest surprise of all was when we neared the end of the street and stumbled upon a barber shop. Two middle aged men sat reclining in their barbers chairs, with eyes mostly shut, listening to the radio. It didn't take more than a few seconds for the men to notice us standing their and invite me in for a haircut. How much? He picks up a piece of paper and writes "50. VND" or 50,000 dong, or roughly three us dollars. I can afford that.
The man spoke no English, so there was no way to tell him how to cut my hair. It was all in his hands. And he did a spectacular job. Using the full array of barbers tools - scissors, electric buzzer, straight razor, thinning scissors, some other thingy mabob, comb and brush - he proceeded to give me the most precise and thorough haircut I have ever recieved. All the way down to the peach fuzz on my ear lobes. Add a shampoo, scalp massage, shoulder massage, and chiropractic adjustment for another 30,000 dong and you've got a whole new class of barber-shop experience.
I was so pleased with my haircut that I spent the rest of the afternoon blabbering on about flying that guy back to the states and opening a barber shop with him in Eugene. I'll never be satisfied with a haircut again!