Taiwan

I was in Taipei a few years back and we were walking around at night. I was struck by how many shops were open at 10 o'clock: watch shops, little stand-up eateries, department stores, newstands, etc. Here's my question: we walked past a couple of places that looked like barber shops, I think they may have even had the spinning barber poles outside. If you looked in the big plate glass windows, there were nice plush carpets laid down, like Persian rugs. Some rugs didn't look like they fit quite right, wrong dimensions. Inside looked like a row of barber chairs, but I think they had fabric coverings draped over them.

The amazing thing, though, was maybe 5 or 6 hot Chinese girls standing there in the colorful kimono-like silk gowns. They all made eye contact and the vibe was unmistakable--it seemed to me that they were offering more than a haircut. I stopped in my tracks and wanted to investigate. Our party had women in it, so it was a little uncomfortable, and we had to keep moving. To this day, I am not sure what was exactly going on. Anybody have experience with this? Do these barbershops become something else after-hours? Are there backrooms? Would they really just cut your hair, give a shave, pamper you and that's it? They really, really wanted my business and I almost came back later by myself to check it out, but I wasn't sure how safe that would be.

I didn't want to be knifed and thrown into the massive stinking piles of garbage that seemed to pop up every so often in a random block. Where here a construction site might be surrounded with a wooden high-board fence, there they had a fence around what seemed to be a small landfill.