The Hamam consists of three rooms. There is the caldarium or the room with a steamy hot bath, the tepidarium or the warm room for washing with soap and water and the cool room for resting afterwards.
The Hamam that I went to offered a public Hamam and a private one, since I am basically a shy person, I opted for the private one and thus I have a private lady in attendance. From the beginning that we entered the room, she treated me like a queen, she helped me with my “sarong”, make sure that I am comfortable on the hot marble table before she started to scrub my body from toe to head, yeah that’s the way she started from my toe ending at my head.
She was gentle, and humming some sweet thingy while she was working on my body. It was very easy for me to let myself go in a cloud of steam, with thick foam of sweet smelling soap. The cloud of steam, the hot marble table, the gentle scrubbing was giving my body some kind of purification and I don’t want it to stop.
The humidity and temperature of the Hamam stimulates intense sweating in my body, and together with the scrubbing resulted in deep cleansing thus freeing my skin of impurities, eliminating dullness and signs of tiredness.
The bathing itself was an elaborate process, the lady used a `tas` or a metal bowl to pour water all over my body, I thought the use of the metal bowl was kind of unique. The soap case was also made of metal while a coarse cloth was used to scrub the body. Everything in a Hamam was designed to indicate the intricate way of what a Turkish bath is all about.
The experience was just worth it and I do look forward to more.
No comments:
Post a Comment