The most fun you can have with your clothes off?

I will admit to a certain feeling of nervousness as I enter the Turkish bath in Istanbul – after all, George Michael is playing on the PA system and Careless Whisper sounds just a little more suss than ever.

Standing around, with little gingham tea towels wrapped around their waists, are half a dozen over-hairy Turkish men, keeping a watchful eye over the people walking through the entrance.

They look formidable as they stand half naked, smoking and talking amongst themselves. There’s not a woman to be seen.

Frankly, if these guys were wearing an Indian feather headdress or police uniforms, they could be mistaken for members of the Village People.

I’m sure I am in the wrong place.

With my equally-nervous wife on my arm, I walk up to the reception desk and study the bath menu.  We both settle for a “Complete Oriental Luxury” which, according to the spiel, is a “real Ottoman royal service” and promises to “make you feel reborn”.

It includes a scrubbing followed by a foam massage and body wash from a hand knotted oriental washing cloth with foam bubbles.

Mmmmm. Okay?

We’re both taken in to a gift-shop type room where the sales pitch begins. =, with another hairy employee telling me the scrubbing mitt will cost me 10 lira, but after having just shelled out 136.00 lira for two “Complete Orientals”, I’m broke – liraless.

Disappointed at not making a further sale, he issues me with my own gingham tea towel and pair of clunky wooden sandals.  I’m then ushered through to a timber changing room where I’m told to take off all clothes and reconvene in the centre of the building – the equivalent of a hotel lobby, dressed in my tea towel.

My wife has been dispatched to the women’s section and I’m now on my own.

George Michael has stopped his Gentle Whispering and the only song which rattles through my head now is Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini, where the girl was afraid to come out of the water. I wonder why.

The hairy men are still waiting in the stone foyer like hungry prisoners in a shower block. Oh God.

As I take a few tentative steps outside my mahogany bathing box, one of the men smiles and points to an opening under a marble architrave.  I walk through it feeling self conscious and not really knowing what to expect.  The room starts to take on the appearance of a damp crypt.  The walls are marble, as is the ceiling and floor, and everything is wet and slippery.  In my wooden sandals, I slowly walk past an area stacked to the (stone) rafters with towels in shuffling steps that make me look like an underdressed and overweight geisha.  I’m then ushered into another area which looks like the inner chamber.

Having previously told the manager that I was a travel writer from Australia and would it be okay take photos, I was politely told “No photo”, so I presume this is a place of secrets.  I can only imagine myself as the central character in a book…Kevin Moloney and the Chamber of Secrets, possibly? Oh God.

I’m now in the inner chamber – a cavernous, circular marble room with a huge dome ceiling.  In the centre is a massive hexagonal slab of stone, upon which, half a dozen tea towel-clad men are lying prostrate.  Around the marble walls are eight washing stations which look like oversized holy-water fonts.  This is a cathedral of wet.  There, in the fonts, two men are being baptised into the steamy, sudsy world of the Turkish bath.

I lay on my back staring at the massive dome ceiling waiting for my turn.  The air is heavy, moist and oppressive like the minutes before a tropical rainstorm.  I stare at the ceiling way, way above my head.  I can see drops of water fall from the massive dome structure.  They lose their grip on the marble ceiling and shoot to ground like watery bullets.  Some hit the stone slab, some hit my body – both are easy targets as the size of my body has reached its p.b. after three weeks of Mediterranean food and wine.

I close my eyes for a second and hear a sharp crack as one of the hairy Turks slaps a leather pillow on the marble slab next to me.  He flicks my foot and without a word, motions for me to lie on my back.  There are no niceties like in an Asian massage; no introduction to the oils that are about to anoint me and no submissive introductions.  He just starts pounding, rubbing and crunching as if making pizza dough; appropriate really, as I feel and look like a lump of dough at this stage.

After a pummelling on my front, I’m told to spin on the slab and have a similar treatment on my back.  It’s a massage like no other.  Gentle kneading is replaced with limb wringing and aromatic balms and oils are non existent.

As the humidity increases, I sweat profusely as my Turkish masseur slaps and grinds mercilessly.  I’ve lost the feeling of nervousness at being over exposed and slip into a normal massage-like state.

The moment the massage has an effect and I close my eyes, I’m slapped hard on the back and grunted at to move to the holy water font.  Sweat stings my eyes and my vision is slightly clouded.  I slide off the slab, adjust my tea towel and shuffle in my wooden sandals to the font.

I’m told to sit on the floor beside the font and Hairyman leaves me there to marinate for a few moments.  I think he’s gone out for a smoke while I start to look like a steamed dim sim.  I close my stinging eyes and listen to the sounds of the bath.

I hear water splashing, tin pans clanging against the warm marble and voices talking in many languages – mostly Turkish.  I can even hear people say “Oh God”.

Then, without warning I’m doused with hot, hot water.

The shock makes me reel.  It’s really hot and without notice, is even more of a shock.  The hairy Turk is back again and, as if taking retribution for some heinous crime I must have committed, starts scrubbing me with the same vigour I use to clean the shower screen.  Surely I can’t be that filthy – even if I have been walking around Istanbul for two days.

I’m scrubbed and scrubbed and rubbed and rubbed in a lather of suds.  If I hadn’t had my time on the slab, I probably would have found the act of a hairy man in my bath a little confronting but I’ve adopted the “when in Istanbul” philosophy and go along for the ride. (I just wish his tea towel was a little longer when he kneels in front of me.)

After my scrubbing, it’s full wash cycle and a cloud of bubbles fills the holy water font (and my nose), I’m about to proceed to spin cycle but Hairyman is already in a spin.  He’s twirling and splashing and pummelling and tumbling me in a frothy wash.  Unfortunately, I was not made with a little white label attached to my side that reads “Gentle hand wash only” – he’s giving me the ungentle version.

Lying on my back with the hot marble pressing on my face and the bubbles causing all sorts of hell with my nose, Hairyman stands on my back and walks the length of my torso.  The last person to do that was a 40 kilo Vietnamese woman at a resort in Hanoi.  It was a very different experience; different by about 70 kilos.

More buckets of hot water are thrown on me from a great height and my cleansing is finished.  Hairyman grins an ugly smile and points to the palm of his hand.  I’m confused but quickly work out he’s just after a tip.  Thank Christ for that.

Well sorry fella. Quite honestly, just at this moment, I don’t have anything on me, as if you hadn’t noticed.

His English is limited to a few words – “me, after, towel, tip, baksheesh, me”

He flashes his smile again from under the broom-like moustache in a Midnight Express kind of way as I slide off the marble in my wet tea towel and silly wooden sandals.

I leave the inner chamber and had back towards my changing cabin.  En route, I’m given a fresh tea towel and a couple of bath towels.  My eyes are as bloodshot as if I’d been necking a bottle of Johnny Walker and I’m as thirsty as the subsequent hangover would make me.  I pass another hairy bloke who offers me a bottle of water which I down with great gusto.  I dress and wait for my wife in the lobby.

As I sit there, yet another hairy bloke comes up to me and asks me if I want shave.  Or a haircut?  Maybe a beard trim?  I decline.  I don’t have a beard but that doesn’t stop him asking.

In the foyer, Hairyman moves towards me and gives me a gift.  I open the little plastic bag and find a pair of cotton boxers – a strange gift to receive from another man.  He grins that ugly smile again and retreats back to his hungry prisoner position in the foyer.  The water man has noticed that I’m now dressed and comes after me for a lira as payment for the bottle of water he thrust in to my hand as I exited the inner chamber.  I have one lira left to my name.  It’s now his.

Now, where’s my wife? Hasn’t she finished her washing yet?

An on location report by Kevin Moloney in Istanbul