Hair Rebonding in Palembang

Hair styles, treatment and trends are a huge part of any girl's life. Well, most girls. My mother is one of those practical ones and didn't do much in terms of hair and make up while I was growing up so I didn't pick up any of those habits. I don't exactly like my straight hair but in a way, boring, dead straight hair is easy to manage.

What I always wanted was curls. That would have been so much more interesting. Just a little bit of a wave in my hair would have made me happy. When I was in Grade 3, my mother took me to get my hair permed. I got teased for it at school but I secretly loved it. Unfortunately, I never got it done again. And somehow, when I was old enough to choose what to do with my hair, I've always avoided perming it. I don't know what it is. I'd love to have some nice big curls now but I just feel that its not me. Well, it wouldn't be me at all would it? All the curls would be fake. Thats the ridiculous sort of thinking that keeps my hair straight.

Anyway, at least I'm not so out of place here. One of the hair trends here is hair straightening, or as its called in South East Asia, hair rebonding. But, this doesn't make my long straight hair fashionable because the aim with the hair rebonding is to have super flat and straight as a needle hair. Rich or poor, it seems that everybody is getting this done to their hair. Even those with straight hair is getting it made straighter.

A friend of mine who works at a "hair salon" told me that there is two hours each day allocated to cutting hair and the rest of the day is just for hair rebonding. Supposedly, this is a very famous "hair salon" for rebonding and people from a couple of hours away will come here to get their hair done.

Here is what the place looks like. Its seems messy and old fashioned but its raking in a lot of money for the owner. Actually, all the traditional hair salons look like this. The ones in malls appear to be like hair salons in Malaysia but most operate the same way as these traditional ones.



The place was so noisy and there was so much going on. This is the inside of the shop and you can see a lady sitting on a stool right in the middle. The place was L-shaped and to the right of this photo were another 4 customers being worked on. There were at least five other girls waiting for their turn outside. And just take a look at that girl in the pink shirt, she's having some instant noodles while her hair is being worked on! I'd love to just sit there for a morning and watch all this but I don't think I'm brave enough to actually have anything done to my hair.

Well, thats all for today's peek into life in Palembang :)