Travel
Steamy encounters
by Luke Heal
Bath time in Asia and the Middle East is about so much more than rubber ducks and scented bubbles.
Can you imagine having a neighbourhood bath house in New Zealand? Picture strolling down a suburban street in the evening darkness to a modest building from which a hint of carbolic steam wafts. Imagine paying a little money for a clean towel and a piece of soap, entering the men’s or women’s half of the establishment and stripping absolutely starkers for a scrub down, sauna and soak with the neighbours. Imagine it not being a big deal.
You can get a vague idea by joining an expensive gym, or you can travel to many places in Asia and the Middle East where this kind of thing is commonplace.
Every town in Japan has its sento. Entering a sento and stripping to your Caucasian bones carries a real sense of entering a secret place. Japanese men calmly undress and sit on little plastic stools in front of low benches. A spout of warm water rains constantly down and drums on the forehead of each man as he shaves and thoroughly scrubs body and teeth. Once you are sufficiently disinfected, you are allowed to visit the sauna and baths. Although the sauna is familiar, the baths are not so: try a green tea bath under an open roof exposing the glowing city sky or a bath where electric currents shoot through the water, imbuing some mysterious health benefit. All this is in silence. There is no eye contact. The whole thing is no big deal; just a nice bath.
Middle Eastern countries have their hamams. The hamam is a bathhouse without a bath – essentially a subterranean marble or brick-lined dungeon with stone cauldrons of steaming water. You use a bucket to tip water over yourself to rinse away the suds, or you can pay someone to do it for you.
In Turkey, it is normal to have a huge, hairy man bath you. Completely normal. As normal as a shower with the lads after the game. The huge, hairy man will throw you around like a rag doll; drowning you with water, soaping you up with mounds of suds and then scrubbing your skin until it is smarting, squeaky and pink. For the scrubbing, he will use what looks like an oven glove but is far scratchier. The skin sloughs off in shrivelled, brown waves so surprisingly thick that you expect to see beads of blood forming. You will never get cleaner than that again. If you come back for another scrub in less than a month, not enough protective skin and dirt will have built up. As a result, you might end up looking slightly translucent.
Along with the scrub-down comes the onslaught – a very macho massage that surely underlines the fact that we are men here, and this is not for pleasure, it is for health. No mercy is shown and cries of pain are met with laughter. The huge, hairy man will bend your legs until the tendons creak, and dig his thumbs into your calves until the backs of your shin bones hurt.
Afterwards, the hamam is a place of recovery. The men lounge around sipping beer or cola, watching a murmuring TV and smoking. They sit for hours, hardly moving, in white towelling robes, and grow new skin.
Another specialty of Turkey and many developing countries is the full-service shave. Like growing new skin, leaving your stubble to develop to a good length, purely so that you can have a cutthroat shave, is part of the travelling experience. This is particularly important for me as a fair-headed man who grows patchy facial hair when in a country of swarthy types who have no clear boundary between stubble and the rest of their bodily hair. The shave consists of much expansive gesturing with the razor, and a few short, deft strokes of shaving. On top of that, you get doused with stinging citrus lotion and, most extravagant of all, the fine hairs below your eyes and any that stick out of your ears are scorched off with a flaming ball of cotton wool soaked in alcohol. The last surprise comes in the form of a massage while you are still sitting in the chair. It is administered by an expert boy who has the ability to get an audible crack out of every bone in your back, including each rib.
In more orthodox Muslim countries, the hamam is more demure and family-oriented. Maybe it’s because people don’t have baths at home, maybe there is a religious aspect. Whatever the case, I committed an embarrassing faux pas in Morocco. Oddly, there is nothing more refreshing after a day of near heatstroke and clinging desert dust than baking in the depths of a hamam. I entered the hamam and was given my towel, jandals and soap. I noticed that the other men were wearing their towels so I went to the changing rooms to follow suit. I stripped off as you would in any changing room – to a shocked reaction from the locals. They pointed to a curtain. I was supposed to get changed behind that.
Page 1 2 
