3rd January - Teeth Whitening & Handjob

Guess who gets which one?

I peroxided my eyebrows before I left (yes have already told you in previous post but it's so bewildering what it does to my face), I wanted them the colour of Sharon Stone’s in all those ads where you’d never know it’s her as the image has been manipulated so much to take 20 years off her. Now I need to buy a brown pencil because, in short, never take a call when you’re doing that and get distracted as your eyebrows end up white and invisible. D. shays her daughter has the opposite problem she’s a dyed black blond girl and when she darkens the eyebrows to match the hair. She looks like Groucho Marx for first week or so. Too funny. I don’t know what I look like but it’s doing strange things to my face definition. But where to find a brown eye pencil in Viet where their eyebrows are dark and there’s no need for brown pencils? Black is available but would be too harsh. I stay as is and Toph says ‘Wait till you’ll see the holiday snapshots’. Yes, well.

The day starts well, exploring Saigon again. It's still 33 degrees, there's the smell of fish sauce as you go past stalls and markets (fish sauce here is the barometer of 'doing well', equivalent to our use of fine wines) and there are still too many bikes and mopeds. My throat is tickling, my eyes get sore and there’s constant high decibel noise from all the horn and bell sounding. I’d have to live with earplugs if I stayed here long term. My headache could be attributed to jetlag but I don’t think so. I go to the clinic where I’ve arranged for teeth whitening, taking advantage of the less than half price local economy. Darn, the dentist says they’re white already and can’t do much for me but how is that possible? Surely they use other peroxide in Hollywood if I go by their teeth, maybe they’re veneers but my teeth are perfectly fine w/o them and I want them Tom Cruise’s white. She says she’ll do her best. Am tempted to say 'double the dose' but having lost eyebrows which re-grow, am less keen to risk losing teeth.
In the end they just appear cleaner but are not dazzling white and now I can’t drink coffee and wine for a week and where am I if not in the land of delicious coffee? Silly me.

Back at hotel we go for a massage to forget about the traffic and the sightseeing. Mine is fine and am leaving the tip when Toph emerges from his and seeing how much I’m leaving (10% of the price) says it’s too little. I start to give him one of the standard speeches ‘Man, treat them as you would in your own country, just because it’s all is cheaper here/they’re poor, doesn’t mean you have to start leaving 50%) but he insist on leaving a huge one for his an says ‘Tell you later’.
Which turns out to be he has had a hand job with his. What????
‘You sanctioned it’ he says giving me a half guilty smile. Eh??? When???? Turns out that my attitude of ‘Let’s try anything once/go for it’ (usually in relation to food /places/parachute jumps etc) has been conveniently interpreted as a permission to go with more outlandish propositions. It seems the French man Toph met in the changing room prior to his massage had explained all. ‘She will ask if you want extras, the only word of English she knows (apparently) and if you do, you take it, you must leave a large tip, these girls don’t make any money working here’.

And so it was that with much furtive looking at the door, (no towel had been hanged on the clear glass partition of Toph’s room but had been put up in mine) Toph’s massage changed course half way through. I ask him for details. He says, first he was showered and washed by ... a bloke which totally threw him (my massage didn’t require ablutions) and that in the waiting room there were many Asian men. Clearly am wrong in thinking it's the nasty westerners who abuse their position in these countries, the locals exploit them quite happily too. Toph says they looked like hotel workers...
He says she was 17 or so and tiny and she looked horrified when he said he was 37 (which means he knocked several years off himself and still she thought he was an old bloke, very funny!).

I ask more questions: how long did it take? how did she deal with the, ahem, outcome: tissue/towel? He looks at me like am crazy but I’m just being scientific about it. For some reason I thought he’d have his eyes closed whilst it took place, but he was looking at her. This troubles me more than what it actually was. I want to know how, sideways? Full on? He says there was not much eye contact from her, though she was on the table whilst, er... administering. They’re truly the size of a ten year old so v. light. He says he was actually enjoying the massage more than ‘that’ and he was sorry the actual massage ended as that was somehow more sensual, though he certainly does not regret the experience. But maybe next time he’ll want more time, a better shielded room etc. He says no. I say I agree as, to be honest, masseuse will never look at you as anything more than a bunch of dollars and want it over and done with as quickly as possible and so it can never compare with what I offer. Plus he couldn't touch her. But hey, I give you a few more years and for sure you’ll repeat it, perhaps you'll choose the more full on option where you can grab her and turn her this way and that. In an ideal world it stays at that first cigarette that nobody liked level and we all said 'Never again will I put this disgusting thing in my mouth', but then we did and we liked it...

‘Will you tell your friends?’ ‘No’. he says emphatically. ‘Well, it’s going in the blog’ I reply. ‘You can’t do that! Some of my friends read it’. ‘Well I don’t care, I write about what affects me.' He looks hurt ‘Well I won’t tell you anything any more then’. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll make it up if I want to’. I guess pretty well usually in any case.

I take him back to our room and establsh the difference between tipping for it and getting it for free with someone who truly knows you. I guess it's the kissing he'd miss the most. And I'd totally hate to have to do this for a living and for any kind of strangers. Life sucks for poor women the world over.

I wonder though where the massage room is where females could get a bloke to do the same for them. It always seems a one way street this sex business, unless you go the gay parlour route. That must be a whole different scene for that too.