How You Find a Barbershop in Chiang Mai, Thailand

You get your hair cut in Chiang Mai, Thailand for a buck fifty at a barber shop with only two walls on Tasatoi Alley.

It’s a thirty second walk from your apartment. Anyone else would need to go north along Route 106, then turn into the narrow alley which has no name. It’s just after Iron Bridge and just before Duke’s. It’s too narrow for a car, so they’d have to walk or guide a scooter through it.

The alley is on the right, obviously. On the left is the river.

That narrow path opens to Tasatoi Alley, facing a large gated building which Google Maps insists is a government pawn shop. You have your doubts.

Go north along Tasatoi Alley. In less than a minute down the road—just past the fire station—he’ll be on your left. He’s across the road from the street food vendor grilling meat kebab for thirty cents a stick.

He invites you to sit in his one barber chair. You do so, and you are perfectly at ease. You are proud that you are at ease. You did not feel this way during the first haircut abroad.

It was in South Korea and you were fresh out of college working a gig as a preschool English teacher.

You didn’t speak Korean and the hair stylist didn’t speak English. After a few futile attempts of trying to communicate, you simply began saying yes to every question. You put the fate of your hair in her hands.

Another time, after you learned enough Korean to say numbers and make basic requests, you asked a hair stylist to cut 5cm off. You must have misspoke and told him to cut your hair down to only 5 cm left. It was the first time you’ve been able to see your scalp.

Another time, a hair stylist refused to accept number measurements and instead wanted you to tell her when was the last time you got a haircut. Another time, a hair stylist wouldn’t cut your hair until you chose a style from a magazine. You didn’t want a style. You wanted what you had, but shorter.

After years of living abroad, you’ve developed a system. The first time you came to the barbershop with two walls on Tasatoi Alley and he asked what you wanted, you pulled out your phone and showed him a picture of yourself. It’s a picture you took immediately after a time when you got a good haircut.

You have copies of this picture on five different devices. This picture is valuable to your life abroad.

You showed him the picture and he said, “Okay.” And then he cut your hair.

Easy. No hassle. You don’t like hassle at the hair shop because you have no idea what you’re doing with your hair.

Growing up, you had the Sunday school haircut. Hair neatly combed to the side. Part on the left.

You didn’t think it was a hairstyle. It was just hair, and this is what you did with it.

One day on a camping trip during your years in high school in Alaska, you didn’t shower or comb your hair. Some girls from your class said it looked good.

And that was it. You’ve never combed your hair again since.

That change in hairstyle revitalized you. It showed you that you can take control of your life. Thanks Nicole and Rachel. Or was it Lauren and Katrina? It was so long ago. Their faces swap in your memory each time you think of their names.

As you sit at your laptop right now, sipping whiskey and writing this story, you have a yearning to go back to being a high school student in Alaska. Adventures during summer vacation. Youthful excitement for the expanse of time that lay ahead. Bones that didn’t crackle when you walked up stairs.

The yearning is so consuming that you stop typing. At 1 a.m., you walk up and down the hallway/balcony of the hotel/apartment where you stay/live as you sip/gulp whiskey and remember about how it used to be.

You’re not far off from the freedom you had back then, you know? No wife, no kids. No home address, no car, no job. Working for yourself on your own schedule. Twilight zone dimension in Thailand where the vastness of the universe has shrunk down to the size of your apartment and an internet connection.

You do already exist in suspended time, don’t you? You live inside your head. Your universe expands inwards instead of outwards.

One day, you walk by the mirror. You look at it this time, and you’re shocked to see a grown man looking back at you. In your mind, you thought you were still seven years old. You’d hope tonight you could watch Christmas specials on the TV with your family as Dad kept the fireplace burning warm. Mom had just finished giving you a haircut.

But as you walk along that balcony, you step light on your right knee. That’s the one that crackles. A reminder that linear time marches on, whether you mentally march with it or not. You’re a 35 year old man in a studio apartment in Thailand, and there is no going back to then.

Instead, how about the next best thing? How about a new hairstyle? That’ll revitalize you. It worked in high school.

Sitting at the barbershop on Tasatoi Alley, today you pull out a new picture. It’s not that picture of you. It’s a picture of a fashion model.

The model’s hair is short on the sides and medium on the top. You got this idea from a forum online. They said short hair on the sides was good for people with long faces. Your face is long. Or at least, that’s the impression you got when you looked at the mirror a month ago.

“Oh, very handsome,” the barber says.

“I hope so,” you say.

He lays the nylon gown over you. You adjust within it, trying to find a position in which you can sit comfortably without moving so you don’t disturb his work.

He begins with the electric clippers. That’s how you knew he was the barber for you. If someone begins with those comb-toothed scissors that cut your hair without it getting shorter, you never go back to them.

You don’t get haircuts often because you don’t remember you have hair often. You live in your head. It’s not until your hair obstructs vision that you remember you should get a haircut. Not until you can feel the weight of the hair on your head.

So when you sit down for a haircut, you’re not looking for maintenance. You’re looking for deforestation. Fill the chainsaw with gasoline and start chopping.

What you’ve learned is that the simpler a barbershop looks, the better the barber will understand your goal.

If a place has fluorescent lights, if they call the employees “hair artists,” if they have a wall dedicated to elite hair gels, then you’re out. They’ll do some fancy treatment, but you’ll leave with your hair no shorter than when you came in. It’ll just smell better.

As the barber on Tasatoi Alley chops your hair, you realize he’s one of the good ones. Another good one was the lady in Shanghai, China who lived in a room above her shop and cut your hair down to manageable lengths for three bucks.

The other good one was a shop you found when you lived in the California desert behind a motel in a white shed on a dirt lot with no neighbors. Back there, you went to a barber at a place called “Barber Shop.”

It was owned by a 70 year old man with no employees. You’d go in for a haircut on your lunch break. He was asleep every time you walked in the door. Opening the door would wake him.

He’d welcome you and ask if you wanted the regular and you’d say yes. He’d pull out the electric clippers and start chopping. That man knew how to chop some hair.

His haircuts were $12. With the tip, $14

When you walked by the barbershop on Tasatoi Alley and saw it had only two walls, you knew it was the place for you. This is a shop with no pretension.

He orbits you as he chops and slices with the electric clippers. Your hair falls to the floor like a blanket.

Through the wall-mounted mirror, you watch Chiang Mai life move on. Cars and scooters pass by on Tasatoi Alley. Folks walk along the street. Some stop to buy from the kebab shop.

The barber apologizes for the heat. You tell him it’s no problem. You like the heat.

You think of the date and realize that it’s winter. You had forgotten that winter was a thing. Now, you feel a little better about not being able to go back to being a high school student in Alaska.

The brrr of the clippers and snipping of the scissors close to your ears works as an ASMR experience, lulling you into a meditative state as you reflect on Alaska and Thailand, youth and age, barbershops and meat kebab. The barber speaks and snaps you back to now.

“Is it okay?” The haircut has finished.

“Yes. Good, good,” you say. You always say that it’s good. You have no idea what you’re doing with hair, from Sunday school haircuts given by your mom to bed-head hairstyles suggested by girls from school.

But now for the first time, you’ve got a hairstyle of your own choosing. It’s only a small change, but it’s your change. And it does look good.

Or at least, you feel like it looks good. You have no idea what you’re doing with hair, but you believe you’ve found a good barbershop in Chiang Mai, Thailand.