I've never been someone who was terribly bothered by exposed skin. I don't purposely show skin, but I also don't purposely cover up. As a child, I went through a no pants phase. In my 4 year old mind, a tshirt + underwear = a leotard, and I desperately wanted to be a ballerina. Along those same lines, I've never been terribly bothered by nudity. I'm not going to seek out a nudist colony, but I've definitely changed clothes in hostel room in the presence of 15 strangers without giving it much thought.
The first time I heard about a hamam was from two assistants in Bordeaux during my first year there. They had spent their Christmas in Morocco. I was planning my own trip to Morocco, so I listened closely to everything they said. One of their stories that particularly caught my interest was about a trip to the hamam. One of them described it as "I've never felt so clean but dirty at the same time." I was intrigued. Unfortunately, the people I traveled with in Morocco were at the time basically strangers. One of them I'd randomly met 5 months earlier at a train station in Paris. We talked for a few hours while waiting for our trains and that was it. I had never met the other two. During the trip, I was too afraid to speak up and say "I want to do this!" So I left Morocco, still a hamam virgin.
A year and a half later, I found myself living in Seoul with the weather quickly turning cold. Jjimjilbangs became a favorite pastime. Jjimjilbangs differed somewhat from hamams. In Jjimjilbangs, bathers strip down, shower, then soak in a variety of pools before putting on some pajamaesque clothes and relaxing in a common room full of the opposite gender and saunas. Heavenly.
Despite getting my completely naked in a room of strangers feet more than wet at the jjimjilbangs, I was still too chicken to go to a hamam the first time I was in Istanbul.
This recent trip was my Istanbul do-over. I would not make the same mistake twice. None of my travel companions had any interest in going with me, so of course the temptation to say "Forget this!" and return to Anya's apartment was more than present. Pull it together, Morris. I reminded myself that I traveled alone in Thailand and Hong Kong. I reminded myself that I may never be back to Turkey. I reminded myself that I'd regret not doing this. I had to do this.
I saw the place and walked towards it. The sign was small and spelled differently than I'd seen online, but I knew this was it. I put on my big girl pants and walked down the stairs. They opened into a room. It was hot, empty, and ornately decorated. I momentarily paused and wondered if I was at the right location. Wasn't this a business? Where was everyone? As I was standing, I felt like I was being looked at. I turned to my left and tucked away around the left corner of the room was a small office with a desk.
Please enjoy this rendition of the room, done by yours truly. The red dashes along the right side were a bunch of small doors, then in the back of the room were two more doors.
A man was sitting at the desk, watching me look confused. His lack of greeting/any reaction at all to seeing me had me really questioning this being the right spot. Still no verbal greeting, but with his eyes he was clearly saying "Yes?"
Stumbling through the question, I asked "Ummm...is this...the...ummm...hamam? Bath?" The man laughed at me and said yes. Then he asked where I was from as he handed me a price list. I guess my stumbling through the words made him think I was not a native English speaker.
I looked at the list. Did I want a scrub or a scrub and massage? Go big or go home. I paid for both the scrub and massage. He called for a woman to come and take me away as he went back to petting the cat that was sitting on his desk.
The woman took me over to the row of doors on the right side of room. She opened one up to reveal a small room, similar to a changing room at a clothing store. She told me to put my bikini on. It was Istanbul, in March. My bikini had not been on my packing list. I told her I didn't have one. The woman smiled and asked if I'd ever been to a hamam before. She assured me that no bikini wasn't a problem, then handed me a Turkish towel and told me to put it on.
David Sedaris wrote an essay about going to the doctor in France and not knowing exactly if he was supposed to fully undress or put a robe on, and then ends up sitting in the waiting room in his underwear. Since reading that years ago, whenever I've been in any situation that involves getting undressed in a foreign country, I make sure I'm very clear on how undressed I'm supposed to be and where exactly I'm supposed to go. That sounds like a weird statement but I've found myself in that situation several times. I'll let you wonder about the circumstances.
So before the Turkish woman left me alone in the changing room, I said "Everything off?" and pointed to my bra.
"Everything." she replied as she walked out, closing the door behind her.
Alone and standing naked in the basement of a building in Istanbul, I started thinking that familiar question, "What did I do in my life that got me here?" I wrapped the towel around myself, took a deep breath and walked out. I stood for a few seconds, wearing only my Turkish towel, in the entry room of the hamam. The woman saw me and came running over. She took me to one of the doors in the back of the room. It opened into a small room, with three rooms off of it.
Here's another drawing for you. You're welcome.
She pulled my towel off and told me to raise my arms. I stood, naked with my arms raised as she fashioned my towel into a halter dress and tied it around my neck. Then she gave me instructions. Pointing to one room, she said "First, shower." Pointing to the room to the left, she said "Second, sauna." Then she pointed to the room on the right and said "Third room, scrub."
I hesitated and she gave me a gentle push towards the first room and said "Go. Relax." Then she left.
There was no one else in any of the three rooms. I wished there was. As I said before, Korea helped me get over any uncomfortableness about being naked in front of other naked females. Had there been other people in the hamam, I could have watched them to see what I was supposed to do. There was a sign on the scrub room door that said "females only" and the other two rooms did not have any signs. So I began wondering if I was supposed to bathe with my clothes on. No, of course not...but the thought of a group of men walking into the shower room and me sitting naked on the stone floor splashing water all over myself was enough to make me awkwardly "shower" while wearing my towel halter dress. Theses weren't showers so much as 15-20 faucets coming out of the wall, into stone basins (without drains). Sitting all around the room were silver bowls. Was I supposed to bring my own soap? Was I supposed to be naked? What am I supposed to do in here?
These photos are courtesy of Google image, as I obviously had no pocket to carry my phone in.
I sat down by one of the bowls and dumped some water on my legs. I'd been on a walking tour earlier in the day, and it had been freezing. So I was trying to enjoy the warmth of the room and forget about the fact I had no idea what I was supposed to do in this room.
After my shower, I went to the sauna. Saunas are easier to understand, but again the question of "am I supposed to be naked?" came to my mind. I'd read that hamams separate genders, but there was no sign on the door of the sauna that said females only, so I left my towel on just in case. This sauna was hell fire hot, especially while wearing my towel. I'd read that the longer you stay in the sauna, the easier it is to loofah the dead skin off. So I sat. And sweat. And sat. And sweat. And wondered if I passed out in here, if anyone would ever find me because this hamam was a ghost town. And I sat and sweat some more. I finally couldn't take it any more, I left the sauna and went to room three, the scrub room. There was still no one around. I'd read that an employee at the hamam will scrub you, but how did you get their attention? Maybe I'd read it wrong? Why is everything so confusing? The scrub room had four of the same faucet/stone basin combos that had been in the shower room. It also had some bottles of shampoo laying around, as well as some obviously dirty loofahs. On the wall were some hooks and hanging on the hooks were a few pairs of underwear. I assumed the items in this room were left by previous customers, but I still had no idea what I was doing. After 5 minutes in the scrub room, the door opened. THANK GOD! ANOTHER CUSTOMER! An older portly woman with purplish red hair walked into the scrub room. She nodded a greeting at me as she walked past. She had a confidence in her step that told me she knew what she was doing. I was prepared to watch her like a creep so I could find out what to do. She took off her towel and laid it next to one of the basins. Then she walked across the room to the hooks, took a pair of lacy black underwear off the hooks, put it on. She walked back to her basin, turned the water on, and called me over. Suddenly I realized this woman was not a customer, but an employee. She untied my towel and laid it out on the table, then instructed me to lay on it, face down. Using one of the dirty loofahs, she began scrubbing me, EVERYWHERE. Everywhere everywhere. Yes, everywhere. At one point when she paused to go rinse the loofah, I stole a quick glance, and was amazed/disgusting at the amount of skin that was coming off. Turkish loofahs are no joke. After she finished my backside, she flipped me over so I was laying on my back and she did my front half. I wasn't sure where to look, as she was leaning over me scrubbing, with her breasts hanging right there. I closed my eyes. My arm pit shaving was on the vacationing somewhere cold schedule, so I cringed slightly as she raised my arms to scrub. After she finished scrubbing, she started soaping me.
When I was a kid, my mom rarely let me use Mr. Bubble Bubble Bath because she said it wasn't good for my skin. There was a box in the closet with the towels, but it didn't see much action. One night a baby sitter was giving me a bath and let me put my own Mr. Bubbles into the water. I'd never experienced such joy. My bath was a few inches of water and two feet of bubbles. The bubbles created by this Turkish woman cleaning me rivaled that. I was completely covered in several inches of suds. After she doused me with several buckets of water to rinse, she pulled me down from the table and sat me down on a plastic stool. She took a bottle of shampoo and started washing my hair. This was clearly a woman who liked her bubbles, and within no time my head was covered in suds, and they quickly began running down my face. At first it was okay, but as she kept scrubbing my head, the amount of suds increased and before long my face was covered in a thick layer of suds. My hands were completely soapy, so I couldn't use them to clear my face. Breathing was impossible, so I held my breath for what seemed like hours. I was actually becoming concerned about passing out when she dumped another bucket of water on me and the suds cleared enough so I could breathe.
She finished up, and told me to go upstairs for my massage. Since I'd been laying on my towel while getting scrubbed, soaped, and doused with buckets of water, it was soaked. Beyond soaked actually, but it was that or nothing. So I wrapped the towel around me and went back out to the entry room of the hamam. Since the towel was wet, it no longer hung shapeless around me, but clung to every curve in my body. Great. And of course the entry room of the hamam was no longer empty. A group of 6-7 Turkish men in their 20s were standing a few yards from where I was standing. Thankfully a male employee of the hamam saw me standing there, and ran over, gave me a dry towel, and told me to put that on. I quickly went back to the shower room, changed towels, and went upstairs to the massage room. The massage room was completely dark, aside from the light coming through the cracked door. The masseuse took my towel off, while I was still in plain view of everyone downstairs, and told me to lay on the table. The massage was very relaxing, and the oil was especially nice after the intense loofahing my skin had just been through. However, the whole situation was so bizarre to me, that I was having trouble really relaxing. The masseuse must have picked up on this, because she kept asking me if everything was okay and telling me to relax.
After it ended, I skipped out on the tea phase of the hamam (Turkish tea is not my favorite), got dressed, and walked home, hair still soaking wet.
I've heard stories of people going to a hamam multiple times while vacationing in Turkey. This happened on my last night in Turkey, so a return trip the hamam wasn't an option. And I was okay with that. I was happy I did it, but I have no desire to do it again. I fully understand now what was meant when they said it was the cleanest and dirtiest they've ever felt. Thinking of the loofah that had scrubbed countless other people, as well as my nearly 24 hour trip home, I decided a shower that night was a must. But, laziness got the best of me. Despite the dirty loofah, I still felt really clean and I didn't feel like wasting some of the precious little time I had left with my friends.
Here's a few unrelated Turkey pics, a few mosques and a lot of rocks
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