turkish bath | The Fighting Couple

Our 7 Links

By The Fighting Couple on June 24, 2011 in General, Slideshowable

Tripbase recently started a new project meant to connect travel bloggers around the world & share their awesome content. We were nominated by our friend Christina of Middle Seat View. Thanks Christina! We have been running our blog for the past year and a half. We have learned a lot. More important we have made some great friends all around the world. People that we would have never met. We are so grateful for their friendship.

So as a part of this project, we share 7 links. These are out babies, so it was hard to pick ones for each question…Anyway, here they are. We hope you enjoy reading them as much as we had writing.

At the end of this post, we nominate a few travel bloggers to continue on the project.

1) Our Most Beautiful Post:

https://1000fights.com/general/fighting-couple-safari-2/

Our trip to South Africa was a tour of sights, sounds and images we will never forget.

2) Our Most Popular Post:

https://1000fights.com/general/turkish-baths-arent-for-whimps/

Hands down, Mike’s first Turkish bath has been far and away our most popular. Not sure why?

3) Our My Most Controversial Post:

https://1000fights.com/general/observations-race-south-africa/

Race is always a touchy subject. It can elicit strong emotions. This was a great guest post that took on the subject.

4) Our Most Helpful Post:

https://1000fights.com/general/turkish-take-aways-churches/

This took us the most work to research. We worked hard before we visited the sites to know what we were going to see. Writing the we did equally the amount of research. We have had a number of kind comments about it’s helpfulness.

5) A Post Whose Success Surprised Us:

https://1000fights.com/general/blogging-bombshells/

We decided to host a little “blog beauty contest”. We wanted to highlight the great travel blogs out there. We didn’t expect much,and candidly didn’t put a whole lot of work into it. Turns out it went crazy! Folks voting and encouraging others to vote. It was a blast.

6) A Post We Feel didn’t get the Attention it Deserved:

https://1000fights.com/greatest-fights/

Part of our blog’s mission is to collect great travel fights. Read our best one. Have a great travel fight, we would love to hear about it.

7) The Post that We are Most Proud of:

https://1000fights.com/slideshowable/swaziland-a-window-into-hope-and-desperation/

Swaziland is not exactly on everyone’s destination list to visit on vacation. We did. We were better people for it. So many lessons learned. I just wish we could have spent more time there.

Now comes the fun part. I’m nominating the following bloggers to share their wisdom by publishing their 7 links on their blogs:

My First Bath (Turkish)

By admin on September 21, 2009 in Best of the Fighting Couple, General

An experience that is difficult to fully describe. We chose the Cagaloglu Hamami or Turkish bath. It is medieval design. The Cagaloglu Hamami is probably the world’s most famous Turkish Bath. It’s featured in the 1000 places to go before you die book, and is reputed to have been visited by King Edward VII, Florence Nightingale, Tony Curtis and Cameron Diaz and now my wife Luci. You walk in and are greeted by two “bath guys” they give you the run down on the different bath options. We chose the bath and massage. We put down our green backs, picked out our soap and soapmit. Luci was whisked away to the women side. From what she described, I should of followed her.

Ok, they give you the key to your “compartment” and in you go. Directions from the aging gentleman were simple. “take off clothes, put on towel”. No welcome to the bath, no: you may be concerned about modesty etc… now the mens waiting room is right in front of the main entry way. So I walk out and some French girls are pointing an laughing at me. I think they thought something was funny with my towel…I don’t know.

You are escorted into the back, which opens into a huge domed room At center is a huge marble slab. It is about a 1000 degrees. 10 bathers total. One of the employees (blue towel) says: go to hot room. I am thinking, this is fairly hot. I head to back. Hot room was an understatement. I sit down careful to keep knees together. How do you girls do it? I cook for 10 minute, then my “man” comes. “I am Ali” I said, yes you are. “come”. Ali is light on words and heavy on pounds. Ali looks to be expecting twins, and has the hair from planet apes. He directs me to lay flat on the center stone. I do. Enter Turkish massage. A lot of chopping, and pulling muscle from bone, which is not as pleasant as it sounds. Ali is ingueiness in using elbows, and knees to knead soft tissue. At one point, knee is used to “soften buttocks area”. This was the most unpleasant portion of the adventure as marble was not very forgiving of my reverse side (enough said).

Once my entire body has been stretched, pulled and properly kneaded. Ali explained, “now wash”. I was directed to one of the side marble benches. being completely washed by another man is not something that i do on a regular basis. Ali puts on a sandpaper glove and begins to methodically remove 1 inch of my skin. He keeps showing me the glove. It is completely covered in skin removed. I nodded like this was great. Then he took his finger nails and removed the top layer of my scalp for 10 mins.

Enter more soap, more scrubbing. At last I look like a drowned cat. Ali says: “done”. I can’t move. I finally find my way back to my compartment and change. I take a pic with Ali. I tried to wish him luck with the twins…it didn’t translate well.

It was a once in a lifetime experience (I hope!)