My experience in hammam

In one of the evenings after coming back from a long tiring day in the mountains I decided to go to a public bath, what Moroccans call hammam. It's a part of Moroccan tradition to go to their local hammams from time to time and I was tempted to try it as well. 

I was told that there were 2 types of hammams - for local people and for tourists, which I thought was not serious and decided to try the one for locals, just to know the real thing. I was completely unprepared for what would happen. At the entrance I was given 2 empty buckets and was told to take off my cloths. I took the buckets and went into a big steamy room. All women inside were half naked and most of them sat on the floor in front of buckets full of water. They all seemed to really enjoy themselves, they talked, laughed  basically behaved as if they would casually sit in some cafeteria or a pub, only difference- they were naked. They also did scrub each other with some sort of bathing gloves. I noticed that all of them had it. Apart from me who had no idea what to do. I think I never felt so awkward before. I had no clue what to do. Neither I can ask them because I don't speak their language, neither I have any glove to do that scrubbing. So I just awkwardly stood by the wall in front of 2 buckets of water while everyone else was curiously watching me and smiling.

Then suddenly one of local women came to me and said in French (most of the locals speak French) she is going to help me. That's all I understood with my really bad knowledge of French but felt really relieved. She was my saviour! She asked me to show her my bathing things and soon discovered I didn't have a scrubbing glove. She went away and brought one from somewhere. She put some black liquid, probably soap as it smelled like one, on the glove and started to massage me with that glove so strong that it even hurt. She told me later to lie on the floor to she could wash my back and legs. So I did! I found that really weird, but decided not to interrupt. After about 10 minutes of scrubbing she poured all the water that was in the buckets to wash out the soap. At that point my experience was over and the lady asked me to tip her. I happily agreed, dried myself and left the hammam. Even though this was probably the weirdest and awkward 30 minutes of my life I still would recommend this to everyone who wants to experience something different. Besides, scrubbing was so strong and intense that I think I never felt so clean before.