Waxing

After returning to Chiang Mai I had started to feel a bit grubby. Days of camping out in toilets as a result of my food poisoning was making me dubious about the cleanliness of my clothing, and my insides felt suitably hollow and acid-burned.

I also realised how hairy my legs had gotten. Since buying a pair of the ubiquitous 'baggy backpacker pants' (don't resist them; their coolness and practicality more than make up for the hideous designs) I've been very unselfconscious about them. I've been unselfconscious about underarm hair also as the general drop in the standard of hygeine amongst backpackers, the result of sharing ramshackle bathrooms with a full spectrum of wildlife, mean that lots of girls have it. Also, you learn to really not care. Body hair? Ha! When I have a bed for the night THEN I'll worry about how some stranger judges me on a small aspect of my appearance.

My legs didn't really start to bother me until Jackie and I went kayaking and the cut of my short leggings made me sport an impressive pair of hobbit feet. Dammit. Now the hairy toes are bothering me. It's actually really quite long.

So I decided, in true masochistic girl fashion, to get them waxed. There were several reasons for this; one because waxing lasts a long time- I could have up to 3 weeks before I have to do anything else to them, two because my razor is blunt and tearing up my legs everytime I use it and three because I haven't had it done in so long I've forgotten how immensly painful it is.

When I walk into the tiny salon, two smiling girls inform me I must wait a few minutes for the waxer to arrive. They bring me some 'ice tea'(sugar syrup with ice-cubes in it) in an old fashioned wood and metal bowl and invite me to put my feet up and wait for the master of my destiny to arrive. When she does she's a small middle-aged Thai lady wearing shocking pink. She rushes in clutching a mobile phone and slips off her shoes, then fixes me with a beady eye and says "wax" in the manner of the grim reaper pointing at someone and saying "soon."

I follow her through the curtains of the salon into the darkened treatment area as she swats at mosquitoes. She invites me to lie on a free treatment couch and speeds off into the depths of the salon to prepare. There's one other customer in the booth next door yowling with pain. I think he's getting a Thai massage; I can see his torturer driving her elbow into his back.

My therapist returns brandishing an electrified tennis racquet. She scans the room, catches my eye and growls "mosquito." She then pulls back the other curtain slaps the massage patient's couch and chants"don't cry! Don't cry! You will survive!"

I'm now feeling slightly nervous as the staff have revealed themselves to be a bunch of sadistic nutters, and one of them is about to come at me with a spatula of hot wax.

She rubs my legs with a strange smelling slightly numbing lotion. A special Thai secret? Does waxing not hurt in Thailand? I'm hopeful as she spatulas a layer of burning wax onto my shin and presses a strip of fabric firmly on top of it. This hope is then dashed as she violently rips the strip from my leg, throwing her arm back as though she's starting a speedboat engine, and causing me to gnash my teeth together as every folicle of my leg burns in protest. She pulls her glasses to her nose, inspects the strip and says "ohh!" impressed at the number of hairs ripped from my stinging shin. She does this for the next four or five strips. Jesus woman, if you're that impressed make a bleeding carpet.

At one point she hands me the electric racquet to defend myself from the mosquitoes. I can still hear the poor bastard howling next door as his agressor bends his back in half.

This place is mental and these women are gleeful sadists.

As she tears the last of my hairs from my toes, the therapist inspects my blotchy legs for any impudent remaining hairs and then rubs a lotion into the now smooth but red and sore skin. I return to the waiting area for another cup of syrup to pay and leave and wander back the hostel with slow, stingy steps.