Hammam (Turkish bath) experience – Turkey vs Morocco
Time slows and nearly stops in a hammam (hamam or Turkish Bath), while you sit in your sweat, with only a small thin piece of fabric to cover yourself. How long have I been lying here, you ask?
My first hammam experience was at a large hammam in Istanbul. There are many wonderful hammams there (and all over Turkey). I picked one based on online recommendations as being reasonably authentic but still comfortable for a western traveler who knows what’s going on. At the local ones, the primary difference is that it’s more of a communal experience.
When you enter, you are taken to a changing area where you strip to your panties (or ones they provide, or naked) and then wrap yourself in a thin Turkish towel. An escort takes you to your spot in the hammam room. It is very hot and very steamy. The thin fabric wrap you have becomes nearly transparent as it soaks in water.
The women who work there will be clothed in skimpy outfits since they spend much of their day in a steamy and hot room. First, they will scrub you with a rough hammam towel, as if you were a piece of wood that needed sanding. If you don’t normally take Turkish baths, they may remark or show you how much dead skin they are removing from your body, it is truly impressive. Once they are done they will rinse you with cool water from a faucet.
That’s when the time dilation occurs. They’ll have you lie down on the hot raised platform and then leave you there. For an unspecified time. In a room with no clock, no watch, nothing. Just you and heat and water and steam (unless there are other women in the hammam with you in similar predicaments).
At first, it will just be hot, and you’ll still be processing the fact that you just lost an entire layer of skin cells, and how it feels to be freshly scrubbed from toes to forehead, but after a while it will feel nearly unbearable.
When you breathe, you can’t feel cool air in your throat. What have I gotten myself into, I wondered. Have they forgotten me?
After 5 minutes, or a half hour, I have no idea how long, they will come back and rinse you off again from that layer of sweat that covered you. Then comes the best part.
You are covered neck to toe in soapy foam they wring out of towels dipped in soapy water. The feel of that on your skin is amazing, and the sound of all the tiny bubbles slowly burst is enchanting. The workers in the hammam will then indicate that you should turn over, and the process is repeated on your back. Someone in the room would just see your head sticking out of a mountain of popping foam.
Finally, you are rinsed off again with cool water, and free to leave.
Many hammams also offer massages after your steam room cleaning.
If you go to Turkey, I highly recommend doing a Turkish bath if you are comfortable being nearly naked in front of several women (and perhaps a stray man – one entered the hammam I was in, to tell one of the attendants something). You leave literally squeaky clean and feeling refreshed.
By doing this experience, I found out how wonderful 
After that experience, I have always looked for hammams in the places I travel. While they are primarily only in Turkey and Morocco, some spa-like ones are in other cities. And on my trip to Morocco, I found out that my hotel had one as well. This was a different experience as the hammam was just for a max of 2 people, but the process was basically the same. A full scrape down, then sadly just a few bubbles, and finally a long sweltering timeless melt. It was still good, but I really missed the mound of bubbles portion.
