I bought a bottle of a life-changing leave-in hair conditioner in Cambodia.
I woke up in Phnom Penh one day with very misbehaving hair from dry, hot air and lots of dancing the night before. So I went to a supermarket across the street and bought the first bottle with the word “conditioner” interspersed with the Khmer letters on which I set my eyes. It was produced in Thailand by Pantene. It worked wonders for my hair and I took it with me upon returning to Hong Kong. When I realized I was running out, an excursion to the hair-product aisle at a local supermarket proved futile. Pantene offered a variety of hair conditioners to its Hong Kong customers. Some of them of the leave-in kind, but none of them had the desired texture and efficiency. I took a picture of the bottle and sent it to my friends in Thailand. They said nothing similar could be found in Bangkok or anywhere else in Thailand for that matter. My American friends said they could not help, either. Google did not yield a response to my desperate request. I gave up.
Went I went to Russia for the summer break, I saw a familiar-looking bottle in a hair salon. With a slightly modified shape and with Russian instead of Khmer, it was that very same hair conditioner! I bought three bottles on the spot and took two of them with me when packing to go to the US to school. However, what I did forget to pack was my favorite razor. I learned from an online search that the brand (Schick) did not offer the exact same kind, so I settled for a four-bladed “Quattro.”
I was pretty happy with it until I went to Russia for the winter break. I needed a new cartridge and encountered raised eyebrows aplenty upon inquiring for it at the stores. “Four razors? In a *female* razor?” Left with no choice, I bought an environmentally-unfriendly disposable kind.
I am going back to Hong Kong this summer for a summer job/internship. I haven’t checked yet, but I am very sure the exact kind of a razor is not sold there. The kind I have in Russia is not sold there, either.
I have to have three different razor models – made by the same brand – in three different countries if I want to maintain basic hygiene. Apparently, the globalized world has a lot of unwanted body hair!