Turkish Bath

I remember the days when The Adelaide Turkish Baths stood where the Festival Centre now stands on the bank of the Torrens. I was too young to try it out and always wondered how different it could be to any other bathing facility so, when in Turkey, of course, I was in the ideal place to find out.

We were waltzing around the bazaar in Old Town Fethiye (“Fet-ee-ay”) and Cinzia wanted to check out the Turkish rugs, towels and other typically Turkish gear in the bazaar. As I would only constitute an encumbrance she made the polite suggestion that I take a Turkish bath which was on offer next door so I thought “Why not?” even though I had just hopped out of a perfectly good shower and thought I was pretty clean.

You don’t need to bring a thing except cash or card so I was introduced to a changing room, stripped to the bone and whacked my stuff in a locker. They gave me a Turkish towel – much like the bath towels commonly used elsewhere but it looks and works more like a sheet than a towel. I soon ascertained that the Turkish towel was basically ornamental – it served no useful purpose because, like a sheet, once it is wet it’s no bloody good for anything.

Male and female customers have separate facilities so the men feel uninhibited in dispensing with the towel when they are in the steam rooms which are basically large saunas. They are pretty hot, but that’s how they make them – they are supposed to get you sweating profusely in as short a time as possible. You have a cold shower or two and you throw cold water over your head periodically, kind of like basting a roast, until someone comes in to ensure that you are still breathing. I drew the long straw and scored a youngish but heavily built lady who laid me out on a large marble table like you would expect to find in a morgue. I guessed that she had been trained as a nurse because she, too, quickly dispensed with my soaked sheet and proceeded to manhandle me all over with some aggression, back and then front. I got lathered up like a car in the foaming brush cycle of a carwash and got thoroughly scrubbed down with special scourers before being comprehensively rinsed off. Then they give you a fresh Turkish towel (ie a dry one) to take you out of the steam and into a cool down area before leading you on to a table for a massage where the towel is dispensed with yet again.

Your body gets another work-out which can be both reasonably sensitive and relaxing at the same time. It took me a couple of days to get full movement in my right shoulder but generally I thought the massage was beneficial. I think it is an experience that everyone should have at least once or twice in their lifetime. If you had a Turkish Bath once every ten years you could probably dispense with the daily shower. Prior to the Turkish Bath Cinzia noticed that my skin had acquired a heap of tiny white spots (girls seem to notice these things) which I put down to a bit of variable pigment reaction to suntanning. Most of the spots appeared to vanish following the “super-scrub” with the scourers.

Well, that should have been the end of this resoconto, but, alas, it isn’t. From Turkey we had tickets and seat allocation on a Turkish Airlines flight Istanbul to Rome but, rather than the two-and-a-half-hour flight, it took us six more days and 1,055 euro to reach our destination – but that is a ‘nother story.