Last day in Turkey

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I'm back in Istanbul for my last day in Turkey and to wash the dirt of my body from the trip I decided to go have a Turkish bath. I decided to go to the most famous hamam in Istanbul, which is 300 years old and has been used in everything from soap adds to an Indiana Jones film. I was slightly nervous at the thought of being violated by some huge Turkish guy, but it all turned out ok. They give you a sheet to change into and some ridiculous wooden flip-flop things to walk around in. First they sent me to the hot room, which was this amazing marble steam room. On all the walls are basins which you can run water into and wash yourself. They left me to steam for about 10 minutes. The bath guy then arrived and massaged me - which included pulling all my fingers till they popped! After being beaten up for about 10 minutes, it was time to be bathed. The guy scrubbed me down with what looked like a sack-cloth mitten. This is meant to loosen all the dead skin and boy did lots come off! Then I got scrubbed down with a huge mop thing covered in soap. I wasn't really ready to be covered completely in soap suds and ended up inhaling a bit of soap, oops! I got washed down with water and then the soaping thing was done again. After a final rinse, I was allowed to sit around in the hot room until I was done. As fun as sitting around in a hot room on my own was, I decided I'd had enough of the bath experience and got changed feeling a hell of a lot cleaner than before!

I had one final kebab for lunch and after this I don't want to see another one for ages or bread for a while! So I'm about to go to the airport using the tram system and light rail system, which should be fun. I'll be back in London tonight and will take the train back to Edinburgh tomorrow morning.

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