We prepared bags of towels and clothes to change into as well as the large buckets for water, stools to sit on, and toiletries for bathing before we walked over. There was an 11 dirham (less than 2 dollars) entrance fee, which we paid then stripped down to almost nothing in an anteroom. Afterwards we took the buckets into the main bath area with us and started filling them with hot water. The room itself was very hot like a sauna! There also happened to be almost no one there since we went after a quick iftar and it was nice not to be in a crowded room.
The bath ritual went as such:
- pouring water on ourselves
- rubbing red exfoliating soap all over, then washing it off
- using scrubbing mitts to get rid of all the dead skin, then washing it off
- pouring some more water on ourselves
- getting hair wet, then washing hair, then rinsing
- washing body, then rinsing
- more water to make sure that all soap is gone
- sitting and pouring more water on ourselves
People really like to take their time in the bath - I think we were only there for an hour and a half, but I’ve heard that some stay up to three hours just pouring warm water on themselves! Towards the end I was running around filling the buckets up with hot and cold water since the girls were going through them so fast.
We towelled off and changed into our clean clothes in the anteroom after the ritual was done. Before we left, Fatima Ezzahra and Aya helped me conceal my hair with a hijab because they said it’s bad to have your hair exposed to the cold - similar to the reason why people wear sandals around the house and insist that you do too, they think the floor is cold and you could get sick.
We came back to the house to drop everything off before heading out again to get henna done, but it was getting late and there was a line so Sophia and I gave up after waiting for a while and came back home to get some sleep. I know this won’t be my last opportunity for henna, so no worries there.
I would definitely be open to going to a public bath again in the future - the one we went to wasn’t comparable to a spa in the US (we actually saw a small scorpion at one point!) but overall it was a fun and interesting cultural experience.