An Evening at the Hammam

One of the oldest 'hammam' of Istanbul is located near where we were in SultanAhmet near the road leading to the Grand Bazaar. Having had a long day and still adjusting to the winter weather, we decided that it would be quite an experience to try out the 'hammam'. We had tried it 8 years ago in Bursa when we toured central Anatolia, Cappadocia, Ankara and Bursa.

The hammam package offered a bath, scrub follwed by 30 minutes of a whole body oil massage. Men and ladies go to different seperate chambers. Upon payment, one is led upstairs where you are give your own cubicle to strip and change into a towel. All your goods and clothes can be left in the locked cubicle with the key to it strapped to your wrist.

You would next go to the main bath - a huge circular chamber with a dome that allowed the exterior light to come through many small glass covered holes. The centre of the chamber is made up of a raised circular marble elevation - heated with either steam or underground hot water. As such it took a while to get used to lying on it and adjusting to the heated marble. The huge marble table could easily fit 50 bathers a time. Around the wall of the chamber were hot and cold water faucets from which the hot or cold water would be collected in a wooden pail and poured over you. The atmosphere in the chamber is very much like in a huge sauna - one quickly starts to sweat in the hot and humid air even before lying down on the hot marble slab/table.

Each person is assigned one 'bather-masseur'. Most of the 'hammam attendants' were middle-aged men and the one in charge of pakdokter looks like a middle-aged Egyptian actor, Omar Shariff. Pakdokter's partner in the women's wing had a middle-aged wholesome lady in attendance.

We were given 'stretching' and a general massage first before the attendant picked up the pail of hot water and poured over the whole body. Then he would soap and pour lather over the body and scrub the skin with his hand covered in a cotton glove. The whole process took about 30 minutes. Having completed this part, we were asked to dry up and go to another room where the oil massage was given. The massage lasted for 30 minutes. Some of the massage techniques were not too different from the Balinese or Javanese massage. There were some different strokes which differentiated the massage from the oriental ones.

The whole experience cost 117 Turkish lira ( RM230) - quite expensive in comparison to what it cost in KL or Jakarta. But it was worth it for the experience.

Photographs were not allowed at the 'hammam' - so pakdokter snapped some pictures from its brochure to help illustrate this post.