Turkish bath in Ciragan Palace, Istanbul: Hamam for beginners

I'm almost embarrassed to admit I've reached the middle of my third decade as a card-carrying Turk without having experienced a traditional Turkish bath (hamam). In fact, the folks at Ciragan Palace, the former Ottoman palace turned luxury Kempinski property where I am staying seem just as embarrassed for me.

"You mean you've really never had one?" the spa therapist asks me for the umpteenth time, incredulous that such an oversight could have occurred in our lifetime.

Despite never having been, I have many horrific memories of my mother recounting her experiences in them, such as the neighbourhood elder who would swing her large, pendulous breasts over her shoulders to scrub the dirt underneath, and the meddling mum who poked and prodded all the naked young women who had recently become of "marriageable age" to check whether they were meaty enough for her sons.

It was the done thing then, of course; although built ostensibly to give locals a place to cleanse in line with the Muslim faith, in Ottoman times in particular, hamams became the country's social hot spots where meetings were conducted, marriages arranged and gossip broadly circulated.

Rather than take my chances at Istanbul's more historic – and more traditional – hamams where "mechanical-grip massages" have a reputation for leaving you black and blue, I decide the hamam at Ciragan's Sanitas Spa might be a better fit for me.

Although it looks like an authentic Turkish bath with a large gobektas (marble slab) centred in a marble room, its spa menu features words like "Abhyanya" and "St Barth" which serve to make me feel safe and hopeful that the treatment will be something that could best be described as "Hamam Lite".

The tears start unexpectedly five minutes later.

My therapist asks me to strip down to a towel before ushering me into a sauna. "A 15-minute steam will help soften the skin before I scrub," she says, happily leaving the "it off" section of that sentence. Once my time is up, she leads me into the steamy hamam, lays me down on a hot wet towel on the marble slab and begins pouring hot water all over my body – naked save for a small towel draped between my legs. She is wearing a short white dress that is getting soaked and, for a moment, I feel like I'm trapped in the opening scene of a porno. I look up at her but she's busily getting her products together.