Telling a New Stylist Your Hair History After Moving to Ho Chi Minh City

When you move countries, most of your paperwork moves with you. Your hair history doesn’t. The salon back home that knew exactly which colour formula you used, how your hair took a perm, and what went wrong that one summer — all of that stayed behind, in a client card you’ve never seen, quite possibly written in a language your new stylist doesn’t read. Meanwhile, the hair itself came with you, carrying every one of those decisions in its lengths. This gap is something long-term residents rarely think about until they’re sitting in an unfamiliar chair. The good news: you can close most of it yourself, in about five minutes, before your first appointment.

Why your hair’s past decides its future

Hair doesn’t reset when you cross a border. Whatever is on your head right now — colour, bleach, a perm, a straightening treatment — is still chemically part of the picture, sometimes for years, because hair grows slowly and the treated lengths stay until they’re cut off. A straightening treatment from eighteen months ago may be invisible to the eye, yet those lengths can behave very differently when new chemicals go on top.

A stylist plans a service around what’s already in the hair. With a full picture, they can tell you what’s realistic now, what should wait, and what’s better done in stages. Without it, they can only judge by look and feel, and look and feel don’t show everything. The history you carry in your memory is genuinely useful information, not small talk.

The four things every new stylist needs to know

You don’t need to reconstruct your whole salon life. Four points cover most of what matters:

1. When: the date of your last chemical service, even roughly. “Around March” is far better than nothing.
2. What: colour, bleach, perm, straightening, a bond-repair or keratin treatment. The exact product name is a bonus, not a requirement.
3. Where: roots only, the whole head, just the ends, one face-framing section.
4. How it went: the result. Did the colour fade fast? Did the ends feel fragile afterwards? Did you love it? A one-line verdict tells a stylist a lot about how your hair responds.

If you can answer those four for the last year or two of services, you’ve handed over most of what a client card would contain.

Why the bleach count deserves its own line

Of all the numbers in your history, how many times a section has been bleached is the one to get right. Bleach lightens hair by breaking down its pigment, and each round changes the hair itself, not just its colour. Hair that has been bleached once, twice, or three times can respond very differently to the next service. And because hair grows roughly a centimetre a month, lengths you bleached two or three years ago may still be on your head today.

So count per section, not per lifetime: “the ends have been bleached twice, the mid-lengths once, the regrowth never.” That single sentence can change what a stylist recommends. If you’re not sure, say you’re not sure: an honest “at least twice, maybe three times” is more useful than a confident guess.

When you honestly can’t remember

Plenty of people can’t, especially after a hectic international move. Three practical workarounds:

• Check your camera roll. Photos are date-stamped. Scroll back and find the pictures where your hair suddenly looks different — that’s your service history, reconstructed.
• Message your old salon. Many salons keep client records for years and are happy to send a short summary. Even one line (“last full bleach October 2024, gloss in January”) closes the language gap, because dates and service names translate easily.
• Show the regrowth. The line between new growth and treated hair is physical evidence. A stylist can read timing from it, so point it out rather than hiding it.

Build a record that moves with you

From your next appointment onward, you can make sure this never happens again. After each service, take two minutes:

• One photo of the result, ideally near a window in daylight.
• One short note: the date, what was done, which area, and (a few weeks later if you remember) how it held up.

Keep it in a dedicated photo album or a notes app. It sounds almost too simple, but this is essentially the record your old salon kept for you, now in your own hands. If work moves you again (to another city, another country), your hair history finally travels with you.

A format that works in any language

The most portable format is not a paragraph. It’s a list: date + service + area, one line per service, newest first.

• 2026-03: bleach ×1, ends only
• 2025-11: full colour, whole head
• 2025-06: straightening, whole head

Numerals and simple service words survive translation; long sentences don’t. Show the list on your phone alongside your photos, and you can communicate a surprising amount of history even with no shared language at all. Photos of past results, both the ones you loved and the ones you didn’t, do the rest.

At emo., bring the list with you

emo. Hair Salon is in District 7 of Ho Chi Minh City, in the Starhill area near Crescent Mall and Phú Mỹ Hưng. Both Japanese and Vietnamese stylists work here, and you can request either by name. On the price list, JP and VN indicate which stylist you have booked. They have nothing to do with your own nationality. The four Japanese stylists each have at least nineteen years behind the chair, so a hair history, however patchy, is something they know how to read. You’re welcome to bring your photos and your date-plus-service list to your first visit.

emo. can help you in English, Japanese, Vietnamese, Chinese and Korean.

To book, call or message us on Zalo. Online booking is also available, though that page is currently in Japanese only.

• Phone: 0707 177 290
• Zalo: Message emo. on Zalo
• Online booking (Japanese only): Reservia booking page

emo. Hair Salon
14 Raymondienne, khu Starhill, phường Tân Mỹ, Quận 7, Ho Chi Minh City (near Crescent Mall, in Phú Mỹ Hưng)
Tue–Fri 9:00–19:00 (last cut 18:00) / Sat–Sun 9:00–18:30 (last cut 17:30) / Closed Mondays