There are other places that do this in Southeast Asia, but it wasn’t a thing in Cambodia. Of course it’s a Thailand thing. You’d expect that. And it’s not the dominant model anywhere, but it’s still a noticeable component of the landscape here.

I am referring to the Barber Spa, where the services on offer go well beyond the haircut. They may include full massage, or mani-pedis, or facials, or earwax removal. A common design trope seems to be cute young women in high-hemline uniforms. In my ceaseless efforts to examine the soft, luxurious underbelly of Big Spa and trace the reach of its global tentacles, for you, dear reader, I have once again leapt into the breach.

You’re welcome.

I found 30Shine, a massive chain with nearly 200 locations all throughout Vietnam. I couldn’t make an appointment online, as they required a local phone number, so I made the 25 minute walk of a warm spring evening to the nearest shop. Thankfully, no appointment required. Also, no English. What little communication occurred was via Google Translate.

I had checked their website in advance, so I knew I wanted the Cutting & Washing Combo 2, with a side order of Remove Soft Earwax. Here are all of the steps in Remove Soft Earwax, which is where I started. The text has been mixmastered by Safari’s inline translation, as 30Shine doesn’t have an English version of their website.

This was, más o menos, what transpired, although not in precisely the order displayed above. My technician started right in on the earwax. The last time I went to an ENT he did the earwax thing, and when I asked him how to maintain it on my own he said not to, that I should just see him once a year and he’d take care of it. “Leave it to the trained professionals,” was the message. That seemed like pretty sound advice. It’s hard to dispute the notion that I am unqualified to shove sharp instruments into my ears.

Well, Shine30 offered earwax removal for money, so that made them trained professionals by definition. Right? What could possibly go wrong? Truthfully, I was more nervous than getting a tattoo, even the one with the bamboo stick. A tattoo mistake can be covered over, fixed, or even ignored. An earwax mishap could leave me deaf. No guts, no glory. And no clean ears. Excelsior!

My technician dove right in, and really took her time. I flinched a few times, but mostly from nerves. She was fine. And the process was almost pleasurable, like finally scratching an itch you couldn’t reach. But at the end of the day it seemed more a medical than spa procedure.

When she was done she displayed to me, I think so that I could share her revulsion, what she’d removed. It seemed like… a lot. I don’t really have any metrics here, but it looked like there was enough material to have sculpted a plausible, miniature Taj Mahal. If the unit of measure was Taj Mahal, she removed one Taj Mahal from my ears.

In my defense, which is weak, I blame the hearing aids. I think they block the exits and interfere with the natural earwax migration process, which usually occurs in the spring.

Once that was done we moved on to the other Service Process steps. She started by turning on the robotic massage chair I hadn’t realized I was strapped into. I was grateful that she’d waited until after the earwax adventure. Jostling would have been bad.

I’m pretty sure the machine was built for longer people. One of the rollers was, I thought, meant to hit the bottom of my spine. Instead, it seemed determined to make a new home in my butt. Then again, I fit right in, stature-wise, with the local population, so hard to say. One man’s bug is another man’s feature. Not sure yet where that experience fell on the spectrum for me.

I can’t say for a fact that I received the Relaxing Peacock Hairy Eyes. I did get the mask, so there might have been a peacock involved. Most of the rest of the time was spent on the steps from the Cutting & Washing Combo 2 Service Process. I think they just munged the two processes together.

I’m confident that my air conditioning hole was opened, and I know for certain that I enjoyed the Waterfall squeet. How could you not? The rest of my time upstairs, before the actual cut, was spent on various forms of massage. I got the Neck, shoulder and nape massage, the Face wash & Face massage, the Head acupressure massage, the Ear washing & Ear massage, and the Pulling the towel to stretch the muscles & punch the back. There was also quite a bit of shampooing involved, although that seemed more like soap-enabled head massage than actual shampooing. Still, neck up, I was clean.

Here’s my adorable earwax spelunker.

Downstairs to the haircut, which was comparatively straightforward. I entered the following into Google Translate: “There’s not a lot to work with. Do whatever you want.” And he did, to excellent effect.

I’d do the earwax thing regularly, but I’m not sure our next stop, Indonesia, offers similar services. And I don’t think it’s a weekly maintenance requirement. Still, not just clean ears and a good haircut, but a lovely experience all around. About a full hour of service was provided for a final bill of VND 288,000, or roughly $11 USD.