Try the hammam: Luxurious Turkish bath comes to Manila

Hammam clients enjoy the bubbles of olive oil-based castile soap cascading over them at Terazi Spa. Photo: Discovery Primea

My friend Irene tells me that when you're stressed, it helps to get some bath salts and scrub away. Muscles are relaxed, and time passes by as you focus on nothing else but scrubbing.

That thought came to mind when I heard about hammam, the Turkish bath. It's a bath with much seremonyas, and definitely more than your body scrub at the neighborhood spa.

The hammam is to Turks what the Roman bath is, well, to Romans. For centuries, men and women in the Middle East have been having the hammam, and the practice caught on in other countries over the years. Today, many spas all over the world offer the hammam.

Basically, the hammam is a luxurious bath that starts with steaming, similar to a sauna. Then comes exfoliation and rinsing. Simple, right?

Well, not quite. As I said, it calls for much seremonyas (at least for a non-vain person like me).

At Terazi Spa (Discovery Primea, Makati City), the hammam treatment starts right at the waiting lounge where you are given a refreshing drink of tamarind-pineapple juice. One should drink it because the hour ahead will be “hot.”

I was booked for an hour-long hammam treatment at this spa, and I was intrigued at what may lie ahead. I was asked first if I had allergies or hypertension. That settled, it was time to head to the hammam room after I finished the tamarind-pineapple juice.

A glass of tamarind-pineapple juice before treatment. Photo: Karen Galarpe

The marble-walled room (like a traditional bath house in Turkey) had little wisps of steam already when I came in. There was a big marble oval stone (the göbek tasi) in the middle of the room. I could hear the sound of water trickling from the faucets. My therapist Myla was in a wet suit, and after I wrapped myself in a hammam towel, she motioned for me to sit at a corner beside a marble sink.

The temperature will be very hot, she said, and I should douse myself with cold water from the faucet anytime. The steaming would be for 15 minutes at 80-100 degrees Fahrenheit, but I asked if we could shorten it to 10 minutes. She said yes.

Myla also told me to pour myself a glass of cold water with lemon wedges from a pitcher and drink from it from time to time to prevent dehydration.

Then she said she'll stay at the other end of the corner and that I won't see her anymore when the steam is on full blast.

OK, I must admit I don't like saunas and got a little panicky after five minutes with sweat dripping down my face. I called Myla to come over for a chat.

Amid the steam rising and hiding the marble stone from view in front of me, Myla told me that foreigners especially like the temperature to be very hot during the steaming. Some can even tolerate as high as 114 degrees. We reached 95 degrees Fahrenheit before I asked her to turn it off.

The gobek tasi, or the marble stone on which the user lies to be massaged.  Photo: Karen Galarpe

I was then led to the heated marble “bed” and with a traditional Turkish mitt called keses, Myla began exfoliating my skin from the soles of my feet going upward while I lay face down. It was not stressful at all, but relaxing even, as the strokes were gentle and not harsh.

Then she took a white towel, dunked it in a solution with olive oil-based castile soap, and artfully brought it over my body in such a way that I was showered with the warm bubbles. It was luxurious, it was relaxing, I couldn't think anymore.

A short massage came next and by then I was hardly thinking of what will happen at work the following day. Or even the next week, or the next year.

The whole procedure was repeated after I was flipped over, and soon, time was up.

Myla helped me sit up on the marble bed, put a cold ice bag on my forehead, and only after a few minutes was I asked to stand and head for the private shower room.

I thought it ended there but after I was done, Myla endorsed me to Nikki, who led me back to the waiting room for a glass of cold ginger tea and a little snack of granola.

I left the spa feeling not just clean and refreshed, but soft and young, renewed even. Days after, my skin still felt smooth. I shed not just dead skin, but stress too. All that in just an hour.

And this is probably one of the reasons why the hammam has survived over the centuries—destressing is a must, and Turkey has showed us one wonderful way to do so. — BM, GMA News

Terazi Spa at Discovery Primea (955-8888) offers the 60-minute hammam treatment for P3,500.