Theo’s blog:  “Welcome to your personalised Sauna Spa and Wellness experience…”

….was not what the thick-set taciturn man at the dark entrance to the men’s Hammam in Kadikoy said to me, as he wordlessly ushered me in from the street.

“English” I say, “Turkish” says he, and hands me a pair of crocks, a towel and a key, before firmly steering me into my private wooden cubicle where I strip to my boxers and wrap the towel around my waist.  With a hand to my back he propels  me into a large tiled room that is dripping with steam, and leaves me stewing alone.  Within moments I’m streaming sweat from pores I didn’t even know I had.

10 minutes later he reappears and briskly frogmarches me to a hot tiled seat in a large sink where water pours from a spout in the wall.  Turning me this way and that he scrubs me vigorously, back, front, legs and arms, bends, squeezes and pulls my limbs – almost to hurting point but not quite – lathers my scalp and rubs it hard, and sloshes me down with water.  Finally he steers me to another chamber where two other men lie on hot tiles and douse themselves repeatedly.

I copy them until I think that Shannon and Rosa in the women’s Hammam next door will be finishing, and I return to my cubicle in the foyer, towel off and dress, pay the set-price wordlessly and emerge, glowing and blinking, onto the sunlit Istanbul street.

He didn’t smile once, there was no dreamy ethereal music or soothing reassuring commentary, and the turnaround was just 30 minutes.  He was more like a professional baker than any kind of masseur I’ve ever experienced, and I was the steamed loaf – But I felt deeply clean and invigorated, with all my kinks and strains of long distance travel a long distant memory.

And the whole experience only cost me 210 Turkish lira, or £6.80.

None of this is meant to disparage the supremely skilful massage practitioners I know back home – or any makers of excellent massage products I may know in Somerset.

It’s just to tell you that when in Istanbul, you needn’t pay the £70 it’ll cost for an “Authentic Traditional Turkish Bath” in the tourist part. Just ask around in the back streets of “the Asian side” and do yourself a favour as the locals do.

• Theo.