I Think I Was Just Raped by a Luffa

Do I even need to write anything? Like, seriously... you all owe me one for posting these pictures. I'm serious. I have given you material to humiliate either of us at your will. It's only fair... (bitch) tit(s) for tat.

So, obviously, we had our Turkish bath experience. It was like nothing else I have ever done before and I think I'm O.k. with that. At 8 a.m., we walked to the Cover Bazaar and Cagaloglu Hamam not sure what to expect. Ryan's stress level was now at an all time high and I'm pretty sure he just wanted to get it over with. We entered the Hamam after walking down a short flight of stairs and found ourselves in some sort of grand room (pictured below - if you go to their website that I linked, you'll find better pictures of the actual building. We couldn't exactly take our camera in because of the humidity and besides, there was only one place to store it and it wasn't going to happen, if you get my drift).
We waited at the counter for awhile. Then waited some more... and some more. We couldn't have looked more like tourists - guide book, running shoes, "please help us" look on our faces. There were three men in different parts of the room, one of them wearing only a towel. They had all looked up at one point or another and kept on with what they were doing. After several minutes and a brief Turkish argument, the loser got up and pointed to the menu. After checking out our options, we paid (which was far more than expected, never ending story) and were directed to our lockers. We had brought shorts and asked if we should put them on but were cut off mid-sentence with a "NO" and were each thrown an oversized terrycloth. We each took our key and stepped into our lockers. By this point, Ryan's eyes looked something like this.
We both came out wearing nothing but the cloth and these hard wooden clogs. We walked from the lockers into the actual bath which was a massive marble cavern with 40 foot ceilings with adjoining rooms. We were told to go to the "hot room" for "ten, maybe fifteen mee-nuts." Ryan and I went into the 40 degree room and sat down. As we looked at our rolls spilling out over the towels and we both thanked our lucky stars that we were the first customers of the day and the only ones there. After losing about half a litre of sweat, we heard Turkish echoing through the building. Ryan asked me to sit up so that I would be called first. Turns out there were two men coming for us. This was going to happen at the same time.

We sat down on a marble riser that was about 6 inches off the ground. We're talking knees by your ears kind of sitting down... in a short towel... you would not have been wanting to sit across from us. The men poured water over our heads and started to exfoliate our entire bodies with their hand scrubbers. Indeed, they got all of the dead skin off... and I'm pretty sure they sandpapered off most of my nipples as well. They had no problem reaching up under the towels either... dangerously close to stripping the bark off of my twig and berries. They continued with the soap, which was administered with a octopus-looking luffa, and then rinsed us off.

Here's where my experience differed from Ryan's. Every time my dude ran his scrubber down a part of my body, he let out a moan that sounded not unlike he was climaxing. It was especially disturbing when he was lifting up my boobs to scrub underneath them and I got the moan, combined with the blast of Turkish tobacco breath. Don't get me wrong, this was as un-sexual an experience as you can get. I'm just having trouble interpreting it.

Before our helpers (ewwww... I'm not sure what to call them. Everything sounds so dirty) left, they were quick to deliver the one English phrase they had mastered. "Tip Please." We were then ordered to take off the wet towel, and they cinched up a dry one so tight that it acted as a bustier. Just what I needed (see picture above). We then went back to our lockers and saw ourselves out.
We got back to our hotel bright red and dead-skin free. We are transferring to the other Istanbul Four Seasons hotel today and are needing to pack so we'll post about it when we get there.