A Visit to an Hamam

For those of you that don't know, a hamam is a Turkish bath house, and today D1 and I went to experience the much talked-about pleasure of being scrubbed to the bone in front of an audience of strangers, all eager to see whether Aussie bits looked the same as theirs.

The process starts by lying prostrate on a hot marble slab, and you stay there until the perspiration is literally running off you, at which time a hundred year old gentleman appears ( a hundred year old lady for D1) and proceeds to scrub you with a giant steelwool glove, and he does this until he can show you the visible evidence of his efforts, which is bucket loads of dead skin clinging to your now depleted body. He then tips buckets of hot water over you to wash the evidence down the giant drain plug after which you lie down on the hot slab of marble again so that he can get the suds bucket and wash you from head to toe...and then there are more buckets of hot water thrown over you to clear the suds from your eyes and wash away any remaining signs of life.

Now it's time for the massage. Previous massages in Asia consist of gentle but firm movements resulting in a feeling of well-being, at peace with the world. The massage in the hamam is more deliberate and forceful with lots of hard pressing into pressure points, fast and hard hand movements which make you jump from the table only to be pushed firmly back into place for the next jab to the ribs and thumb into the thigh.

Now it's time for a shower, and you can't help but feel that you have survived the entire treatment  when the hundred year old guy returns and beckons you back to the now even hotter marble slab for scrub down Mark 2. There is more soap, more hot water buckets, more sliding around on the hot marble slab, and all the time the hundred year old guy is telling me that I should remember to leave a tip for him (reminding me that he's attendant number 30) before I escape back onto the street.

Another shower, a rest on a cooler marble slab, a brief moment of reflection wondering if D1 is having as much fun as I am, and then it's time to be dried off by the hundred year old guy and released to go and get changed.

On the way out the masseuse, the hundred year old guy, the towel guy all get tips, and I get lots of thank yous for being so generous (D1 is also spreading her financial largesse) and we are dismissed into the throngs of people on the street on a typical Sunday morning in Istanbul.

Was it a great experience? Yes, it was. Was I inappropriately touched by the hundred year old guy? I don't think so. Would I go back and do it all again? In a heartbeat...it was fabulous, and D1 feels the exact same way.

No photos of our visit to the hamam in this post for obvious reasons, but if you're ever in Istanbul we highly recommend the Cemberlitas Hamami (www.cemberlitashamami.com). It's an experience like no other.  Here's a photo from the internet to give you a fair idea of what happened.

D2