A Mani and a Pedi in the Land of Smiles

Sometimes I do things for the experience of the doing more than the actual thing. Case in point is manicures and pedicures in foreign countries. This is something I like to do when I travel for the experience and because it is usually cheap. One thing I always know, no mater what it is like, it won’t be like a Waialae Avenue pedicure.

Larry the Metro Man and I set out in search of nail services and compromised on a spot that was not too expensive or too uggy and it had a working, spinning, rotating barber pole out front (when in doubt pick a cool feature).

The procedure began with a towel being placed on my lap, followed by a pink tub of warm water. I was expecting the Palmolive commercial to begin, but instead the girl vigorously rubbed a nail brush on a bar of green soap, which was followed by the same procedure being performed on my hands. While my finger nails were attended to, another pink tub was placed on the floor and another girl began a similar procedure on my feet.

The girl doing my hands was very pretty and clearly did not speak any English, she smiled a lot, but never uttered a single word, so I was not sure if she spoke any language. If you are really really sweet you don’t actually have to talk. However, she eventually broke her silence when she presented me with a container of nail polish bottles and said “you pick color.” Kind of just like on Waialae Ave. As I do for all nail treatments, I picked the same red color that I have picked since I was fifteen years old. Both the manicure and the pedicure girl said “No!” simultaneously. Ok, so I made my second choice, an 80’s hot pink. This received a look of utter disgust followed by “here, I show you.” Ms. Smiley who was rapidly developing an English vocabulary in her effort to protect me from myself, proceeded to paint each of the fingers on my left hand a different mature, yet subdued, color of her choosing. We finally agreed on a frosty guava juice pink color that I never would have picked left to my own devices, but which both girls gave their seal of approval. Larry also liked it and told them he wanted the same color. To this Ms. Smiley said, “No, for you I have green.”