Hammam: [huh-mahm] noun (in Islamic countries) a communal bathhouse, usually with separate baths for men and women.
So there will be no pictures included in the post for obvious reasons. At the hammam, you leave your inhibitions and your clothes at the door. This experience, unlike the hot sulfur spring, was amazing. I'm going to have to open up some hammams in the U.S. because I'll be making it part of my weekly routine.
So here's how it goes...
1. Hunt through the medina for a bath mat or stool, buy some handmade soap that is scooped from a big bucket and put in a baggie, its like a honey and flour consistency, buy a hand-sock type body exfoliator, and do not forget shower shoes.
2. Enter the hammam and kindly handle snarly Moroccan woman who takes the money from your foreign self (40DHs for a massage and 9DH just for entry).
3. Strip down to your undies and shower shoes.
4. Let a random, naked woman swiftly walk away with your towel.
5. Just don't act awkwardly (arguably most important step).
6. Enter the steaming hot first chamber. Just an empty tiled room with faucets pouring out boiling water into big buckets.
7. Pass through to the second room and lay on your mat waiting for your masseuse to come soap you up and scour five years of your skin off.
8. Don't cry as she pulls down your undies and scrubs your cheeks and maybe even (no, definitely even) inside (inside where? I'll let you think where you want).
9. Let your masseuse scrub your face with the rough exfoliating hand-sock like it's not going to result in bleeding.
10. Embrace the scalding water as it is dumped on you from above.
11. Avoid the recognition of how hot it is and how light-headed you are.
12. Enjoy the masseuse's shampooing and conditioning.
13. Leave feeling like velvet.
14. Discover two days later that maybe you had a "beauty mark" scrubbed off, but act as if it you never heard that that can result in cancer.
It is quite possible that my day at the hammam was my favorite that I have spent here in Morocco thus far. It is incredible how immersion in another culture has opened my mind to doing things I would find unthinkably awkward in the U.S., ie. bathing naked with other women and having a stranger touch.you.everywhere.
Bodies are bodies. Bodies are beautiful! I will go to the hammam with Naima this week, inch'allah.
So there will be no pictures included in the post for obvious reasons. At the hammam, you leave your inhibitions and your clothes at the door. This experience, unlike the hot sulfur spring, was amazing. I'm going to have to open up some hammams in the U.S. because I'll be making it part of my weekly routine.
So here's how it goes...
1. Hunt through the medina for a bath mat or stool, buy some handmade soap that is scooped from a big bucket and put in a baggie, its like a honey and flour consistency, buy a hand-sock type body exfoliator, and do not forget shower shoes.
2. Enter the hammam and kindly handle snarly Moroccan woman who takes the money from your foreign self (40DHs for a massage and 9DH just for entry).
3. Strip down to your undies and shower shoes.
4. Let a random, naked woman swiftly walk away with your towel.
5. Just don't act awkwardly (arguably most important step).
6. Enter the steaming hot first chamber. Just an empty tiled room with faucets pouring out boiling water into big buckets.
7. Pass through to the second room and lay on your mat waiting for your masseuse to come soap you up and scour five years of your skin off.
8. Don't cry as she pulls down your undies and scrubs your cheeks and maybe even (no, definitely even) inside (inside where? I'll let you think where you want).
9. Let your masseuse scrub your face with the rough exfoliating hand-sock like it's not going to result in bleeding.
10. Embrace the scalding water as it is dumped on you from above.
11. Avoid the recognition of how hot it is and how light-headed you are.
12. Enjoy the masseuse's shampooing and conditioning.
13. Leave feeling like velvet.
14. Discover two days later that maybe you had a "beauty mark" scrubbed off, but act as if it you never heard that that can result in cancer.
It is quite possible that my day at the hammam was my favorite that I have spent here in Morocco thus far. It is incredible how immersion in another culture has opened my mind to doing things I would find unthinkably awkward in the U.S., ie. bathing naked with other women and having a stranger touch.you.everywhere.
Bodies are bodies. Bodies are beautiful! I will go to the hammam with Naima this week, inch'allah.
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