Turkish Baths
 

I just saw some clips of turkish baths and it actually looks pretty horrific. I want to confirm exactly what are the ritues/procedures of a turkish bath. (eg. is it a massage + cleaning?) Also do you actually wear anything?

Finally which is the best one in Istanbul to try or the Ciragan Palace Kempinski will offer a pretty good one?

It's more of a mix of scrubbed to within inches of your life and a lot of heat. I did rather like it though. You can then separately generally pay for a massage afterward.

There are some descriptions of others in some of the reports on Turkey in the Trip Reports forum.

You get a cotton towel to put around you. Mine began with lying on the warm stone, getting my face painted with something thick and green, sauna, face rinse, more lying on the stone, then scrubbed with a rough mit (at this point towel was mostly off), rinsed and rinsed and rinsed (dumping water over my head repeatedly) and then scrubbed and rinsed again. Then I had a swim and cool down followed by massage.

The scrubbing was hard enough that I did end up with some very small scabs in some areas. Kind of took exfoliating to a new level. I would certainly do it again.

Agree 100% with l'etoile, DO IT! Even if it's a little uncomfortable (I went to it with a good female friend and we didn't realize that we shouldn't have worn swimwear until we were in the bath.

All in all we look at it as we experienced a turkish bath, in turkey.