Day 3 Beauty Salon - Yangon - Myanmar

Alrighty then. Today is the day Emily and I visited a Myanmar beauty salon.

Emily opted for a 45 minute nail treatment.  And I made my first mistake - the body scrub for me please. J

And so began a chain of unfortunate, but increasingly funny, events that 45 minutes later had me in hysterics. 

It started with the preparation – I left Emily comfortably reclined having her nails attended to and squeezed into a tiny little cubicle with a green vinyl bed, a flimsy screen and a sheet roof hanging down so low that even I had to duck.  And then – it was off with the threads and on with a freaky pair of black granny knickers. 

Then came the sand blasting.  Scrub, scrub, scrub with what felt like extra-course, industrial-grade, ultra-gritty P12 sandpaper. Not relaxing - things were not going according to plan.

And throughout the onslaught I kept thinking of Bear Grylls and his tips for surviving a sandstorm in the Sahara.  Take cover!  Seek protection!  Whatever you do - get out of the sand – it can strip your flesh, expose bone, it can KILL!!

Enough of the drama and on to stage 2.  Off with the ultra-course, super-abrasive, P12 grit and on with a (comparably) delightful menthol medium P120 grade grit that (comparably) felt like a cool velvet feather.  Following the cooling application came the cooling fanning, followed by some more cooling fanning and then a bit more.  A bit goosey by now.

Stage 3 – bubble contraption.  Still gritty and smelling like a eucalypt leaf it was off the bed and on to a small pouffe in what looked a bit like a kids plastic tee pee.  All ok except for the hair - a big black one.  For most people this would not be an issue, but for those who know me, stray hairs are so not my thing!  Things were moving quickly and it was only a the briefest of glances that revealed the hair, how many others were lurking?  Was I sitting on one?  What was that funny smell?  WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT NOISE? 

In amongst all this relaxation was a power explosion, yes that’s right – a power explosion.  Not a tiny little blip like you get in Australia when the fuse blows, that is no power explosion, THIS was a power explosion.  Needless to say the hairy steam bath was cut short.

And all through this time I had been wondering how my chilled gritty menthol nudey body was going to get clean. 

Which brings me to stage 4 – a shower of course, only one problem, no power, no shower J.  And during the transition from bubble to shower cubicle I happened to notice that not only was I gritty and mentholly, but also bright orange.  Sort of like a minty, sandy, naked Ooompa Loompa.  As you could imagine I was feeling a little vulnerable and couldn’t help thinking about Emily and her nails in the other room.

As the shower slowed from a cold trickle to a cold drip all was not lost, in came a big bucket of extra chilled water.  I emerged from stage 4 a bit gritty, a bit orange and and very goosey to find Miss M, complete with 20 trimmed, clean, hot pink nails, chatting to happily to Mick who’d been waiting for 10 minutes while I was otherwise engaged in stage 4.

That’s it for me and body scrubs, next time I’m in the beauty salon in Myanmar I’ll get my nails done J