I've had a love-hate with shaving my face since the peach fuzz days of old. All men have had the experience. It's a right of passage, the first shave. For the older amongst us, it was certainly a razor with canned foam, or classic shaving soap lather with a brush. Perhaps the youth are initiated with electric razors now. I always hated them. I've owned a few, but only for lazy expediency.

I loved the shaving-soap method, even collecting various soap products, mugs and wooden receptacles, and brushes.

Many years have passed and over the last 30 or so, I just got away from the habit, so I typically wore all variants of not shaving very often but not going full-on beard with all the trimming and upkeep required.

...Then I moved to Thailand.

In a curious and delightful way, millions of young and even older Thai women have taken a liking to farangs (pronounced 'falang') over the decades. These are western foreigners: white western enlightened men. While there are always the outliers, the vast majority of Thai chicks want you short haired and clean shaven. You see the occasional grizzly bear or hard rocker with a young sweetie, but mostly it's The Formula: