Sometimes we deserve spoiling. My turn was today. Toivo gave me a voucher as a mother's day gift to a wonderful spa called Exotical spa, here in  Hanoi. This voucher included services for 50 $ and it meant that I had to spend nearly a full day there to be able to spend that much money. Even though this particular spa is one of the most expensive one here.

It was lovely, sauna, steaming room, bubbles, massage, facial treatment … everything went well until the hairdresser. This was my 3rd time in a hairdresser here (and probably the last one). I asked a young boy (most hairdressers here are male) to cut my hair 2 cm and keep the look the same. After 1,5 hours work he had cut 7 cm of my hair and only ¼ of the head (as they cut a hair by hair and are really slow), I decided to call the manager. I explained her the situation that I am no happy at all, this is not at all what I wanted. I nearly cried. He let this youngster to continue for a while after another female hairdresser entered in and finished the work in 10 minutes. I got just about what I had asked, though 5 cm shorter. Needless to say, I was not happy at all. Got two dollars discount. Ridiculous. What did I learn – never go to a hairdresser here again. Last time I was fed  up as it took nearly 4 hours to color and cut my hair while Mia in Kajaani makes it 1,5 hours. Or may be I am just a difficult customer. Who knows. I think we have a pretty good reputation of reclamations here, I am afraid. But we keep joking that we are here to teach people to learn!!

Nevertheless, the spa was great and I really enjoyed it and felt spoiled. I should do it more often as services like that are relatively cheap here.

Tomorrow  we are going to celebrate Canada´s icehockey world champion as we get Canadian friends visiting. I try to be active and not to spend all my free time with the Finns only. I find it important. This particular family has similar background as MP´s assistant and that´s where it started. It is quite interesting how a friendship can start and build. You may just need one connecting issue and then it either matches or not. All the friendships have different stories – quite interesting if you start to analyse them. A school, girl guide, dog park, politics, osakunta, Bosnia, serbocroatian literature circle, serbocroatian course, Viet Nam, you never know where you can meet your next friend and that is one thing what makes life so exciting, doesn´t it!