Cleaning Up

When in Rome, they say, do as the Romans.  My Beloved Travel Companion (BTC) and I and some of our other fellow travelers chose to experience a particularly Turkish creature comfort: the hamam – or Turkish Bath.  None of us had ever done this before and, since we had the services of someone to help make the arrangements, we felt this would be a perfect opportunity to try.

Our guide and interpreter scheduled visits for the evening we arrived in Antalya.  One of the benefits of the hamam treatment is the removal of dead skin.  Since the subsequent afternoon would be spent sailing and swimming in the Mediterranean, she recommended we go to the hamam before being in the sun lest our newly acquired tans (or burns) be scraped away with all of the dead skin.

The same hamam served both men and women, but with segregated facilities.  Once at the hamam, we were each given a changing room where we a donned a wrap – slightly larger than a bath towel and about as thick as a tea towel – and foam rubber clogs, a.k.a: spa shoes.  We gathered outside our changing rooms to receive further instructions: first we go into the dry heat (sauna) for a few minutes, then into the wet heat (steam room) for a few minutes.  We had been told that this process would loosen up the dead skin.  Once we were sweating sufficiently, the proper bath would begin.

After some time in the sauna, I sat in a steam room with the vapor so thick I could barely see the door five feet from me.  With the sweat forming tributaries and rivers over my body, I wrapped my tea towel around me and stumbled out towards the main bath chamber.  The chamber was a series of white marble pedastals, each large enough to accomodate the one person being massaged.  The sound of running water echoed off the tiled walls – white, but with the occasional blue tile in for decoration.  The arched ceiling was a blue and white mosaic of a dolphin leaping from the sea.  One of the tea-towel clad tellaks (masseuses) crossed to me and placed a solid hand upon my shoulder.  To me, he looked like a Greco-Roman wrestler in the 1988 Olympics.  To him, I probably looked like a mere snack.  He eyed me directly as he evaluated my readiness by rubbing his thumb in circles on my shoulder, creating tiny pills of dead skin in the process.

“You’re OK,” he stated with a brief nod.  With a convincing slap on the shoulder, he directed me to a marble shelf on the far end of the room.

A clean tea towel was placed on the shelf for me to lie upon, face down.  I was marveling about how warm and comfortable the marble was when I was doused in water and my body attacked by a loofa – Turkish for “sandpaper mitten,” or at least should be.  (Attention abrasives manufacturers: diversify your product line with loofas)  My back and legs were scrubbed.  Turn over.  Then, chest and legs.  Sit up.  He placed my arm on his shoulder as I watched the loofa generate threads of dead skin on my increasingly reddening arm.  The pain was above discomfort level and often had me wincing.  I was certain this process would be leaving marks.  Escape was not an option.  Despite both of us being wet and slippery, his grip was firm.  I was not going anywhere.

Face down on the marble again, with a sensation as though I am being run over by a hovercraft. As he works the muscles in my calves, it dawns on me that the marble beneath me is more solid than I am.  If he starts agressively massaging me, pressing hard onto my body, my bones will probably break well before the the stone does.  As I turn over, I am able to identify the strange hovercraft feeling.  The masseuse takes a wet, soapy piece of fabric like a cotton pillow case and pinches off the open end so it looks like a cloth balloon.  He rubs this balloon the length of my body to create a lather then squeezes all of the trapped air out of the object, covering me in a cairn of bubbles.  One of my fellow travelers, on an adjacent slab, said he could not make out my form under the pile of air and soap.

After a more vigorous massage – including an aggressive working of my hands and fingers – I am led to a small step to be rinsed.  Warm and hot bowls of water are poured over me – along with the occasional cold bowl, just to keep me on my toes.  Head shampooed.  Lather, rinse, repeat – complete with cold bowls.

Reasonably clean, I am wrapped in clean dry towels from head to toe and sent to the lobby.  There I meet my fellow travelers.  We sit on lounge chairs, sipping the tea that has been graciously provided, and listen to the sports on TV.  The glass cups containing the tea are too hot to handle.  At first we attribute this to the tea being extra warm.  When I am finally able to hold the glass to my lips long enough for a sip, I realize that it is not the tea that is hotter, my finger tips are more sensitive.

Round two is an oil massage.  The massage is similar to those I have had in the past on a familiar looking massage bed.  It was very forceful, but not as rough as I thought a Turkish massage would be.  I hear my fellow travelers leaving, their massages complete, as my masseuse continues to work out knots in my body.  Finally, he claps a hand on my shoulder saying, “For you, VIP massage.”  I am handed a towel to dry off and head back to the changing room.  I see my fellow travelers already dressed and waiting.  The VIP massage makes more sense now – I was the first one in and the last one out.  I reward with a good tip.

Comparing notes with my fellow travelers, I think I got off easily.  The massage was thorough and solid, but not as severe as I had thought it would be nor as strong as some of the others.  One of my compatriots commented that his was almost to the verge of crying out in pain.  It felt good and I felt clean with no lasting redness on my body from the scrubbing.  I also felt like a puddle of goo for the rest of the evening – but goo in a positive way.

My BTC and I also compared notes.  Although our experiences were similar, there was one major exception.  After the bath, the men sat and drank tea while watching sports.  At women’s hamam, the women drank tea while the female masseuses danced for entertainment.

Draw your own conclusions.

• Antalya
• Hamam
• Turkey