FAST HAIRCUT in a Cooperative Farm

The tools: 1 comb and 1 scissors

SURPRISE PICKINGS from my NORTH KOREAN DIARY 11.–21. April 2011

My hairdresser at the Cooperative Model-Farm

A visit at a hairdresser is a travel experience to me I’m always looking forward to. I enjoy the special attention that comes with a hair cut or a shaving. There is also a difference in style from country to country.

Hair Salon, Cooperative Farm, Wonsan area, North Korea.

AFTER SEVERAL UNSUCCESSFUL attempts to get a haircut in Pyongyang, I got one at a Cooperative Model-Farm in the Wonsan area on the East Coast of North Korea.

Tong Hui, our female guide told me I could get a haircut at the hotel in Pyongyang but I wanted one in the City, a local one. She refused. Due to the fact that I could not leave the hotel in Pyongyang (nor in any other City we stayed overnight) and was not allowed to go for a walk on my own I saw no possibility to find a local hairdresser.

I told Tong Hui that I could move freely in China and could go to the hairdresser as I wished. She was sort of surprised. She wore Chinese cloths and had a Chinese handbag but could not grasp how worlds apart China and North Korea are. I don’t know if my China-remark helped.

North Korea exists like a hermit. In our interconnected world it looks like a proto-hermit country, totally sealed up to the outside world and tightly controlled within.

But where there are people there is flexibility! Two days later, my guide Tong Hui surprised me with a haircut offer in a very special location!

Haircut in progress

She was elated when she received the Go-ahead! from the woman in charge at the Cooperative Farm and even made some photos in the salon herself.

She was in charge of the hairdressing salon at the Cooperative Farm in the Wonsan area

It was the first haircut  she had organized for a foreigner 250km outside of the hotel in Pyongyang. She took good care, asked me if I felt satisfied and instructed the hairdresser girl. Yes, I had not expected that!

On the way out, the hair salon had a romantic bar

The salon had a romantic bar with liquor, beer, candies and dried fruit from the Cooperative Farm. Ursula bought some dried fruit, they tasted delicious.

One of my "permanent" guides together with the local guide are waiting at the bar. Who has an eye on whom? The Guides on me or the guides on each other?