Day 5: Turkish Bath

According to our guidebook, it is not "advisable" for anyone to leave Istanbul without having a Turkish bath or Hamami as they call it, so on our last day, we headed to Çemberlitaş Hamamı, one of the most beautiful and a highly recommended baths in the city, located in a building dating back to 1584.

Michael wasn't keen on the idea, but thought it'd be worth a shot. I opted for a basic bath and oil massage package, while he got just a basic bath. Men and women bathe in completely different chambers and what happens is, you strip down, get butt nekkid and a busty old woman (burly old man in Mike's case) scrubs you down. It's some serious scrubbin' as you can actually see the dirt from your skin on the sponge. I had really been looking forward to the experience, which is why I saved it for the last day of our trip and went in there with high spirits.

The baths are extremely steamy, hot and super packed. Everyone walks in a bit confused at first, because it's just a large room, with a huge marble slab in the middle, which you lay on, and wait for your turn to be bathed (with all your glory hanging out for everyone to see - I saw lots' of "shapes and sizes" if you know what I mean). Some people who were lucky and were laying in the right spot at the right time, got bathed right away. It looked like the average wait time was about 5 to 15 minutes. But I sat there nearly unnoticed for over an hour! Imagine sitting in a strange, stuffy sauna, alone, with a bunch of nekkid women yelling in a language you don't understand, while you ponder whether the marble slab you're jewels have been resting on have ever been sanitized... for an hour! Two American women who seemed lost, walked into the chamber and asked me if I had been bathed already because I was drenched in sweat. I wonder if they noticed I was feeling sorry for myself and near tears because I thought I was going to pass out from dehydration.

After that hour, a woman finally notices that I still hadn't been bathed and went outside to pull in another woman, who didn't seem to be too happy as they were screaming at each other in Turkish. I'm assuming the woman she pulled in was on break and didn't want to be bothered to bathe me. She made it apparent too as she took her frustrations out on me and I got a very half @ss scrub and mediocre hairwash, that lasted for about 4 minutes total - while I had just spent an hour watching all these other women getting luxurious body scrubs that lasted for about 15-20 minutes and head massage during their shampoo! It's not like I could have even said anything about it since people conveniently don't speak English when you want to make a complaint.

She then wisked me off to my oil massage, which was the most stressful massage I have ever had in my life. I came out of that bath dirtier, oilier, and more tensed than I had going in. Michael was waiting for me in the common room, fresh faced, relaxed and clean. He greeted me with a smile, while I did everything I could to not to grind my teeth. After all, it wasn't his fault I paid 95 lira for torture-in-a-sauna... while he paid half the price for an attendant assigned solely to him, got a 40 minute scrub, back massage and a bonus back-crack free-of-charge!!! Isn't that just the bollucks?!.. he didn't even want a Turkish bath, but ended up having a way better experience than me! I suppose if it wasn't for that long, miserable, unexpected wait, it would have been a lot more enjoyable. In hindsight, I'm really glad we did it... though we found out from my boss later, that him and his wife went to a luxurious bath and paid only 15 lira each - oiiii.

Here are some pictures of our last day in Istanbul (pre-bath... we couldn't bring cameras inside the bath) where we walked by some remaining sights.

In front of Topkapi Palace