My First Turkish Bath

Early in the morning of 16th Aug, our friend drove us to Bursa. It was a few hours drive from Istanbul and we had to take a vessel across the sea, together with the car. We drove past the Bosphorus bridge, leaving Europe behind us and reached Asia in just 10mins (the Bosphorus strait runs across Istanbul, separating it into Europe and Asia continent).

We saw endless mountains and plains along the way that it became hypnotising after some time. Most people would think that I've tried turkish bath before since I've been to Turkey many times but it was in Bursa that I tried it for the first time. We reached the hotel where the turkish bath was at around 1.30pm. There were separate areas for men and women. The charges were 16YTL (S$18.40) for entrance, 15YTL (S$17.25) each for scrub and massage. Wow, that was cheap, I thought, not knowing that the massage was only 10mins.

Due to language barrier, we had a hard time trying to figure out what we should do after we entered. We saw a few Turkish women in the resting area, some topless and some wrapped in cloths (yes, cloth and not towel). Initially, we were unsure where the changing room was. When we got in, we wondered if we should change into our swimsuits as all the locals seem to be wearing the emperor's new clothes. We decided to wear our swimsuits even if it meant looking like aliens to the locals.

We entered the hotbath where the water was supposed to be from some nearby hotspring. Well, it wasn't as hot as I thought and it didn't felt like water from hotspring either. We were the only Asians in the pool. Surrounding us were all the fleshy naked Turkish women, young and old. I felt like I was in some Italian nude painting that came alive. All eyes seemed to be on us which made me a bit uncomfortable. A strand of hair in the pool got caught between my fingers, it made me wonder how often they clean the pool.

Thinking that the massage area is outside of the bath, we got out of the pool and headed for the door. A mid-sized Turkish woman stopped us and got us back in again. Little did we know that she was actually the masseuse and we were to have our massage done on a marble bench in the public bath area. To make things worse, we were stripped before she used a common soap and sponge to bathe and massaged us, using the lather as lubricant. How should I describe this experience? Terrifying, embarrassing, eye-opening.... Thank God the 'massage' only lasted 10mins. To me, it was more of bathing than massaging. No wonder it was called 'Turkish Bath'.

We were glad when it was finally over and we left hurriedly, but not without taking a picture to remember our 'ordeal'.