hammaming it up

our next destination was the small town of douz, which was the most remote and least touristy of the cities we visited. one of the most memorable experiences in this little town was our visit to the hammam, essentially a public bathhouse. men and woman visit separately (for obvious reasons) and after vince explained his trip there we thought we knew what to expect..

we arrived in the morning, when the women usually visit. we were directed into the first room, which is lined with lockers for clothes. this is why we were somewhat surprised when a woman came in and motioned for us to give her our clothes to put outside (?). we reluctantly obeyed. slowly we undressed and continued on to the back room (the first room) in our underwear. this room was what vince described to us as "the rainforest", basically a giant sauna where the women use scalding hot water to scrub themselves. we quickly realized we were the only ones who were not half naked so.. doing as the locals do we decided to follow suit. (it was awkward for us at first but as you'll see by the end, we quickly got over that.) this ended up being a good decision, as we were covered in sweat within a few minutes.

once we had stayed in the rainforest as long we could stand it, one of the hammam ladies ushered us into the next room where we were expecting our massages (as per vince's description). the woman asked who was first and we graciously volunteered paloma. we quickly learned that it was not a massage so much as a complete bathing. the women treated us like giant babies, washing us quite literally from head to toe. they had no shame, setting us on their laps or pulling our underwear this way and that. they scrubbed us until our skin was raw; jasmine's right arm was red for several days afterwards.

after the scrubdown (not rubdown), we went to the individual showers to soap up and wash our hair. this we did by pouring water from buckets. after the hammam ladies (with whom we had become fast friends) asked for our shampoos and body gels we went back to retrieve our clothes and redress. in the meantime another girl came by offering putting makeup on us. we kind of felt like giant baby dolls. we were still damp as we left the hammam and went back into the cool morning air. as they say, it's harder to leave the hammam than to go in. but we definitely felt refreshed and our skin felt cleaner and lighter. probably because we left half of it on the hammam floor.