Things You Can Bathe in Other than Water – Part 2

Soon after we settled in to the sanatorium, the moment I had been waiting for since the day I showed up in Azerbaijan arrived. We could only go one at a time, so I was nominated to go first. A guy wearing green scrubs came into the room and ushered me to the bathing area.

The first thing he said after “Is this your first time?” was “Ok, take off your clothes and go into the next room.”

After a deep breath, off they went. I strolled into the adjoining room to see a bathtub in the middle of the room. It was stained a dark tan colour from the consistent contact with the oil. The guy told me to sit down in the tub and then he turned on the tap. Within seconds, oil started pouring out of this pipe about four inches in diameter. I was giddy like a child on his first visit to Disneyland.

I sat there, trying to relax, while the oil level moved up my chest to just below my neck. What a strange feeling. The oil has the colour and consistency of melted milk chocolate. In fact, if you didn’t know better, you’d assume you were bathing in milk chocolate. The oil was also surprisingly hot and possessed almost no smell. The guy said that they take the petrol out of the oil. One would hope that would substantially decrease its carcinogenic properties.

After ten minutes (you’re only allowed a maximum of ten minutes), the guy drained the tub. Unfortunately, the oil doesn’t really fall off your body the way you would hope. Drastic measure need to be taken instead. First, you sit up and the guy uses a long shoe horn to scrape the oil off your arms and back. Second, you stand up in the tub and hold on to some bars with your outstretched arms while the oil gets scraped off your legs. It’s a similar position to when the police ask you to stand against a wall so they can search you. On the second day when an older woman was cleaning me, she point to my nether regions and said, “That’s your business,” and handed me the shoehorn.

Once a majority of the heavy oil is off you, it’s shower time. You take a sponge and a bottle of shampoo and start scrubbing. It takes about thirty minutes to get it all off and you usually end up going through about half a bottle of shampoo. This, if anything, is the major deterrent against bathing in oil. Who wants to spend thirty minutes cleaning each time?

I can’t say I felt much different after the whole experience. Maybe a bit more relaxed. They told us not to go out in the sun for a couple of hours, so we just sat in the shade and played backgammon. What a life.