She'll slap you - for a price
Anyone who earns a living by slapping people's faces probably deserves media coverage.
The one that ABC News in the US found just happens to be a Thai woman.
Health practitioner Tata Sombuntham – who offers a “face-slapping” service at her salon in San Francisco – even said she learned how to do it in Thailand. Okay, stop laughing. She claims a few good smacks will erase wrinkles and tighten up the skin – no surgery or Botox necessary. Tata charged ABC $350 (Bt10,500) to beat up its reporter for 15 minutes.
Looking slightly swollen, ABC News could find no clinical proof of Tata’s claim, but several doctors were willing to say that slapping the face produces a “healthy flush”, meaning it improves circulation.
This was all too rich for the Daily Mail, the British newspaper that adores weird stories involving Thailand, especially that one about women slapping their breasts to make them bigger. As usual, the Mail’s readers’ comments were as amusing as the “journalism”:
“Now I have an excuse to slap some of my co-workers.”
“Book David Cameron in for a triple session now!”
“Might ask the old man to slap me around a bit tonight! He may think it’s his lucky day.”
And (sorry about this one):
“You can’t beat a good butt-punching session with a Thai girl.”
Mystery solved
Singing superstar Thongchai “Bird” McIntyre becomes the only Thai who doesn’t know how to use an automated-teller machine – now that celebrity hairdresser Somsak Chalachol has figured it out.
Somsak somehow managed to build an empire of 25 hair salons without ever punching the buttons on a cash machine. “I’m from a Chinese family and we prefer cash!” he explains, and his secretary could deal with the e-money.
Came the day, though, when Somsak, now age 55, turned up short of cash when a business deal required an instant infusion. Well, he’d long owned an ATM card – he kept it in an office drawer. The card’s debut performance, he says, was quite exciting.
