Karla about town

Ben hasn't been keeping up with his part of the blog, so I thought that I'd step in.

There is so much to do in Almaty. Yesterday, Ben visited the local bath house and scoped it out for my visit today. He told me how to purchase the admission ticket, where to enter the women’s baths, how things are laid out, and how much the full-body massage cost (4000 tenge).

Armed with this knowledge, I purchased my ticket and climbed the stairs to the women’s baths. After changing into my birthday suit, I entered the mysterious world of the Kazakh bathhouse. I immediately noticed that there were showers everywhere, and there were naked women sudsing up all over the place. I mean these women worked that soap into a lather. I didn’t bring soap (on Ben’s advice) so had to skip the wash down.

After the shower room, there were more showers and two saunas (a wet sauna and a dry sauna). I opted to go downstairs to another room with, you guessed it, more showers and two more saunas. It was pretty obvious that I was a bathhouse novice. I was the only woman without a hat or a scarf around my hair, and I was the only one who stayed wrapped in my sheet.

I decided to first try out the wet sauna. I marched up the stairs to have a lie down and immediately went back down the stairs to the lowest level bench b/c I could not breathe in the wet heat. The other women lounged in the heat and occasionally had one of their friends flog them with the bunch of leafy branches that they bring for the event.

I stayed as long as I could in the wet sauna and went to the dry sauna. In between, I jumped in the shower to cool down. I lasted about 3 minutes in the dry sauna b/c I found it hard to sit on something so blasted hot (yes, I had my sheet underneath me).

Now it was time to try out the pool. Ben had assured me that the water was lukewarm. I love swimming, so long as the water is tepid. The water in the pool was like ice. I went down the stairs to my knees and decided that I was cool enough. As I emerged from the pool, I noticed the clock on the wall. I had killed exactly 20 minutes. The bathhouse session is supposed to last 2 hours.

I knew that I needed a break before going back to the sauna, so I figured I’d get a massage. I went back to the locker room and asked for a massage. They called the masseuse, who led me back into the shower room. Before she started, I decided that it would be best to nail down the price so I asked “Skolka tenge?” She motioned that it would be 5500 tenge. I only had 5000 tenge! So I asked what I could get for 4000 tenge. I ended up with a back, shoulders, neck, and head massage which lasted about 20 minutes. Ben had the same massage the day before for 2000 tenge, plus he got a wash down! (Maybe I should go to the men’s side next time!)

Ben’s massage was quite the experience. He said that he took quite a beating in the massage. At one point, the guy even stood on Ben to work on his legs. Ben said that he only talked to four people in his bathhouse experience: 2 Polish students, 1 masseuse, and 1 Russian guy who was laughing at Ben while he was waiting for his massage.

This is 3 more people than I talked to. It is very weird to try to meet new people and start a conversation while everyone is buck naked. We’re not hippies (apologies to all the hippies reading this blog)!

My massage was fairly routine. Thank goodness that my masseuse didn’t stand on me. She was a very large, very sturdy gal. I ended my experience with another quick jaunt to the saunas.

There are no pictures of our experience in the naked bathhouse. I’ve seen enough naked women at this point to last a life time.

Ben summed it up best: “It’s like party cove. The naked people shouldn’t be naked.”

(Watch the DVD “The Long Way Round” and you’ll see the Kazakh bathhouse where we went. Also, it’s just a really cool show.)

Note to all the math geeks reading the blog, the current exchange rate is 120 tenge to 1 USD.