Tag Archives: Haircuts

Kayan Gets a Haircut on a Fifth Continent

Last night Kayan took a fist full of rice and smeared it into his hair. When it took longer than a minute to get all the grains out, we knew it was time for a haircut. In addition to aesthetics, there are practicalities of keeping Kayan’s hair short. Rice roll off short hair. Sand doesn’t get lodged in hidden corners. Ava’s hair accessories no longer become a source of competition. To keep Kayan’s hair away from trouble, we’ve been averaging a haircut every six weeks while on our trip.

In tandem with Kayan’s haircuts, we have maintained the International Toddler Haircut Index, a measure of the cost services around the world. Here is a summary of Kayan’s around the world haircut tour.

– North America – Greenwich village salon for $40. We still cringe at the price.
– Asia – Chiang Mai for $2 and Penang for $2.
– Europe – Turkey for $5
– Africa – Cape Town for $9.50

Today, South America became the fifth continent on which Kayan got a haircut. That leaves us with Australia, unless we figure out a way to purchase a haircut on Antarctica. However, when a two year old kid has had haircuts in five different continents, anything is possible.

Here is our neatly trimmed boy belting out yet another inappropriate Katy Perry item. He was obviously feeling rather confident in his new look, but is confusing Copacabana girls with California girls.

Kayan’s haircut at a random salon in Copacabana cost 14 Brazilian Reais ($7), putting Brazil in the middle of the pack in terms of service expense.

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Kayan Gets His Haircut in Four Continents

In April we introduced the International Toddler Haircut Index. A haircut is a good way to gauge the cost of services around the world. Our guinea pig is Kayan, whose hair grows at an alarming rate. Besides, Ava wont let us touch her hair, I can’t be bothered with mine, and Sandeep has none. Therefore, Kayan takes one for the team in the interest of travel research. Kayan has had his hair tended to in New York, Thailand, Malaysia, Turkey and today in Cape Town.

This is the hairdo Kayan sported this morning.

Here he is getting his haircut at Scar, whose tagline is “Good Hair for Bad People”. Kayan may be smiling in the picture above, but he is going through a phase of night terrors and tantrums so as far as his parents are concerned, he’s been bad. Scar was calling his name.

The haircut came to 80 South African Rand (US$9.5), which is the most we have paid for a haircut on our journey so far. Istanbul was $5 and South East Asia $2. The hairdresser was very impressed that Kayan stayed followed all her instructions. I realized that Kayan’s last several haircuts were given by people who spoke Thai, Malay, and Turkish. This was his first “English” haircut since leaving New York. “He’s just happy he understands what you’re saying,” I replied. She seem confused but Kayan was brushed clean before I could explain. This is Kayan after.

Now that I look closely, it’s probably time to subject Ava and Taniya to International Toddler Haircut Index research.

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