Hammams and spas in Morocco

[Strosj7]

Visiting Morocco for the first time and excited to visit some of the hammams / hamams / spas!

I will be going to Fes and Marrakech. Does anyone have any hamams or spas they visited that they liked? I like getting massaged my male therapists (even if it is strictly legit) and would love any recommendations folks may have. Feel free to DM me as well if better. Thanks!

[Deadlift1]

Great topic!  

[Marc in Calif]

On 2/14/2024 at 5:16 AM, Strosj7 said:

Visiting Morocco for the first time and excited to visit some of the hammams / hamams

Best to go with hammam. That's how you'll see it spelled in North Africa and Turkey. 

[+ JEC]

I love Hammam, but have never tried it in Morocco.  My best Hammam experience to-date has been the Grande Mosque in Paris.  Would love to hear about your experience!  BTW watch the movie Steam......if you have not.  

[+ nycman]

In my experience all the providers in Moroccan hammams were female.

They’re going to be highly suspicious if you ask for a male, trust me. 

You’re better off in Turkey where the exact opposite is true.

[Strosj7]

11 hours ago, nycman said:

In my experience all the providers in Moroccan hammams were female.

They’re going to be highly suspicious if you ask for a male, trust me. 

You’re better off in Turkey where the exact opposite is true.

Oh very interesting… thanks for the heads up!

[Strosj7]

This TripAdvisor review for the Diwane hotel in Marrakech looks promising:

 

#5 of 16 ·

The modern salubrious hammams have ladies to attend to you as do the hotels. I have never seen a man at these places. 

 

In December in Marrakech at my hotel a naked muscular man entered to scrub me. I jumped up faster than Linford Cristie and told him to go and send me a lady. He exited forthwith and within 5 minutes a lady called Loubna entered.

[Strosj7]

Other part of review

#9 of 16 ·

Hotel Diwane on la Rue Yugoslavie just off Mohammed V have two Hammam persons executing the Hammam. 

 

One is Loubna who is a fine pretty nice lady around 30years old and there is a bald headed muscular guy in his 30s who thinks he's TARZAN.

[+ nycman]

On 2/18/2024 at 11:08 AM, Strosj7 said:

This TripAdvisor review for the Diwane hotel in Marrakech looks promising:

 It did you actually read the rest of the reviews?

The place looks and sounds like a 2 star dump!

Marrakech has some of the most beautiful and fantastic Riads in the world.

This place isn’t one of them.

[claym]

On 2/15/2024 at 4:19 PM, JEC said:

I love Hammam, but have never tried it in Morocco.  My best Hammam experience to-date has been the Grande Mosque in Paris.  Would love to hear about your experience!  BTW watch the movie Steam......if you have not.  

Sadly now the hammam in the Grand Mosque in Paris is only open to women.

[Strosj7]

11 hours ago, nycman said:

 It did you actually read the rest of the reviews?

The place looks and sounds like a 2 star dump!

Marrakech has some of the most beautiful and fantastic Riads in the world.

This place isn’t one of them.

Any good recs based on your travels there? 

[nopelo]

On 2/14/2024 at 2:16 PM, Strosj7 said:

Visiting Morocco for the first time and excited to visit some of the hammams / hamams / spas!

I will be going to Fes and Marrakech. Does anyone have any hamams or spas they visited that they liked? I like getting massaged my male therapists (even if it is strictly legit) and would love any recommendations folks may have. Feel free to DM me as well if better. Thanks!

First thing to realise is that there are two types of hammams in Marrakech. The ones for tourists and the ones for ordinary citizens. These are _entirely_ different. The tourist version will have signs, advertising, they will give a commission to your hotel or tour guide, if they sent you there, it's big business in Marrakech and you will pay anything between 25 to 100 usd depending on what treatments you want (massages, peeling, pedicure, hair removal, etc) or more if you order refreshments or even a meal. Most places will have a fixed price for entrance, scrubbing and massage and you can't opt out (I guess you can pay, but say no thanks to the massage, but in that case why are you there?). These places vary greatly in quality,  decoration, etc, so do your research. This is what people refer to when they say they have been to an authentic Moroccan hammam. They can be absolutely wonderful, some of them are very boutique, but all the other guests will be tourists like you, staff will speak some English, there's no nudity, and it's nothing like the hammams where ordinary people go. I went to one of these and an older male masseur selected me (they picked the clients, not the other way around). After the scrubbing (gommage in French) he took me to an isolated room upstairs, while the other clients were having their massage in a shared room downstairs. He worked my legs and buttocks _a lot_ and entirely focused on that. His fingers touched my anus repeatedly and I was really curious to see how far he would go. I never actually instructed him to go further though, so it ebbed out. Afterwards he asked me for a tip, even as there was gigantic signs everywhere saying tipping was forbidden. I'm still not quite sure what that was about, I would call myself very straight-acting and on the other hand I have a great ass for someone 50+. So was he "into me" or just wanted to get paid for a happy ending? No idea. 

It took me quite a while to find a real hammam, mostly because no locals will tell you where they are. I speak fluent French, so that's not the issue. The real hamams are really very private, people use them as their own bathrooms, they can be rather small, and they are also not very hygienic by Western standards. People will be shaving, even their pits or pubic hair (common in Arab countries), they will cut their toe nails, etc.They often don't have signs, and are in small back streets, entrance may be from the yard, etc, so unless you already know it, you won't find it. Nobody speaks a word of English and only very little French. Entrance is 2/3 usd or similar. You bring your own soap and what else you need to clean yourself. The only thing they provide is a bucket, that you need to get water from the taps, that you then pour over yourself in the steam room. There are often no lockers for clothes and valuables, so you give them to a guy who will watch them. The toilets will not have paper (common in Arab countries) and the doors often won't have a lock (I'm assuming it's too stop people from having sex in there). There will be a masseur or two, price would be around 10 usd, but most people don't go there for that. They go to scrub themselves and do that very passionately, many of them probably don't have a proper bathroom at home. They sit around the steam room relaxing, some of them for what seems like hours. And here's the beauty of it, they scrub each other, they scrub you. You don't even have to ask for it or communicate by words, someone will just come up to you and start scrubbing and you're expected to do the same in return. There's often a dense homoerotic atmosphere but not because the men are necessarily gay (some might be, of course). There's very little talking, if any. 

I absolutely love these places, they are primitive but so sensual. Some of them do have a bit of a gay clientele and some action,  mutual masturbation etc, nothing advanced, as there is nowhere private. Great place to meet local guys and go home with them after though. God bless you, if you can find one of these places. Only local gay men would know which ones of them have some action, and they may not even want to share that info, it's clandestine and people want it to stay that way. But it's paradise in my book.