Scrub a dub dub in a Turkish tub!
Our final day in Selcuk had sadly arrived so we both decided that as two stinky backpackers we were definitely in need of good wash. What better when to do this then a good old fashioned Turkish Bath?
Now the Turkish bath is actually known as a ‘hammam’ and the local hammam we walked into in Selcuk was miles away from the decadent, tourist-friendly ones we’d peeked in at in Istanbul. No photos signed by Kate Moss after her visit here! Just a whole lot of smiling, sweaty (and slightly hairy) Turkish men!
Will getting a final dry-off post hammam…
Although I’d read that apparently locals think women who go to mixed hammam’s are immoral (regardless of whether they are accompanied by a man or not) I decided to give the place a go! We changed out of our clothes into some rather teeny tiny Turkish towels and were directed into a huge dome-roofed steam room and told to lay down on the warm marble slab positioned in the centre of the room.
After warming up on the hot marble slab for a while I was directed by one of the men to a slab into the corner where I laid down to be promptly given the scrubbing of a lifetime! How so many skin cells were able to come off me and still leave me with a full three layers of skin I’ll never know. At one stage the man even stopped to point at the rolls of dead skin piling up all over my body and yell ‘you’re dirty, a very dirty girl!’ in front of everyone in the room. Oh dear!
The man who decided to tell everyone in the place how ‘dirty’ I was…
The excessive scrubbing was followed by a soap massage so hard I almost cried out in pain a number of times – I’m quite the wimp when it comes to massages. After some more hot stone chill out time we showered and redressed and I can honestly say I have never felt cleaner in my life!
The next time I have a hammam though, I might just have to give myself a thorough exfoliate prior to avoid any further ‘you’re a dirty girl….so dirty’ outbursts!
HAHAHA! Sounds like a lot of fun.