After just a day off booze or cigarettes – or even after a serious detox – there can be few better places for a retox than the Four Seasons in Koh Samui, Thailand. It’s a luxury resort that deserves a squillion stars (and stripes.) They offer torpedo-sized cigars, burgers so big and fresh that they almost moo, and chips to love more than life itself. And the place is full of Eastern promise and Asiatic charm with an American twist – a perfect retox ambience.

Koh Samui lies in the Gulf of Thailand, the principal island in an archipelago of 48 islands. The 4S (as the Four Seasons is known to aficionados) is set amid lush tropical rain forest and beside a whiter-than-cocaine beach overlooking the distant islands of the gulf. The weather is hot and perfect for tanning, as it should be for a good retox.

Staff deliver chilled towels, Coca-Cola floats and cocktails to a supine me on the private beach; so there’s little reason even to walk the 50 steps from my recliner to the ocean’s edge. When I tire of lolling there’s an opportunity to have a Minor Affair for the day (such is the name of the resort’s vroomiest of high performance speed boats with a sound system, DVD and TV ). Otherwise I can splash around with kayaks and stand-up paddle boards – not too much exercise, mind. That would smack of healthy living.

After all, I’m at the resort purely to overcome any vestiges of my Kamalaya detox (see Lusso article, ‘OM, OM….OMG’). I’m here to try to raise my toxin levels to those of the average McDonald’s quaffing, midwestern American; and to do my best to pile on the pounds until I can go up two sizes and make a British size 16 dress look figure-hugging. Except, let’s face it, I am as unlikely to manage this as I am to live on air and juice on a serious detox. But I can dream.

Fortunately the resort is close to Chaweng – which is renowned among international fun-makers as ‘party central’. Forget Ibiza – so last millennium. The Chaweng discos throb with techno, rave, house and ambient DJ music – and there’s particularly feverish party activity on full moon nights. Starz Club gets top billing: it’s where party-goers sip Lusty Ladies and get into the Cage aux Folles spirit as the silver lamé curtain rises on the cabaret…and the kathoeys (‘ladyboys’) strut their stuff.

Back at 4S, my accommodation has good retox possibilities. I have a delicious private villa with my own infinity pool and panoramic views of Laem Yai Bay. More importantly, I have a panoramic view of a 42” flatscreen. For those of us on a serious retox, there are 34 channels, DVDs, an iPod docking station and copies of Newsweek and Time. Why on earth would I ever want a ‘no news, no shoes’ holiday when I can have lots of news and lots of shoes? (On which note, tennis shoes of all sizes are available at the 4S tennis court, should I wish to amble down there with a cocktail to watch people playing).

To achieve a full retox and to help my waistline expand, a golf buggy service is available 24 hours a day. Even for journeys of less than a yard. Unusual fact: it takes three weeks to pass the test to get a golf buggy driver’s license. Another good fact: it’s just a short buggy ride to visit the resort’s drive-in wine fridge: an electrical wonder that could double as an air raid shelter for several guests in the event that attacks from the mosquitos on a mission to kill escalate into full-blown mosquito war. (Joking aside, this is the sort of wine cooler you generally find in French chateaux….but here you can also follow up a visit with an elephant trek on paradise island.)

Once my retox is seriously underway and I’m having what can best be described as colonic irrigation in reverse, there’s little inducement for me to move from my room. Fortunately there are plenty of ways for me to try to rid myself of my luminous skin without stepping outside. There’s a fridge in my room with Mentos – sweets which, thankfully, have at least 500 additives and colours; a drawer filled with whisky and Scotch; another dedicated wine fridge; and a mini-bar plus an Espresso machine. Who in their right mind would ever want ‘barefoot luxury’ when you can have instead a key to this, your personal upmarket deli?

Yes, I’m now following a hardcore retox programme. The only exercise I’m prepared to do is to step into my delicious egg bathtub, a work of art in itself. I wallow in coconut bath salts, a breeze on my face and watch a boat bobbing on the waters below. Retox bliss? But with sudden dread, I realise this is all unhealthily healthy. So I order a champagne breakfast with scrambled eggs with white truffle oil with a side order of Shrek’s favourite corn chips and a cheesy Hula Hula Hawaiian pizza. (Detox fans say that giving your liver a chance to clean itself out helps eliminate nasties through the digestive tract and skin. But doing it in reverse doesn’t have the same nasty side effects.)

My order is delivered by staff with cigar-length smiles, and arrives in less than a nano of a nanosecond: service that puts the 4S in a league of its own. Even the most (four) seasoned retoxer will rarely have encountered service like this. The staff will probably stop the resort’s palm trees swaying if I ask. “An elephant, madam? I’ll have it with you in five minutes.”

If I want to join in, there are endless retox activitities: 24-hour business services; beach evenings of eating popcorn and watching Academy Award winners under the stars; tropical drink and cocktail mixologist classes; and beach barbeques with authenticity lite fire-eaters and Thai dancers. And, reassuringly, it’s all watched and done by honeymooning Americans, investment bankers and ladies with trout lips, pert boob jobs and full maquillage. Not for me the detox crowd in bad moods and kaftans.

As my holiday draws to its end, I reduce my retox activities, aiming to find a level that I can realistically incorporate into my life at home. There’s no point in retoxing, just to go back to my bad old habits of healthy eating and living. But I know that there will be social situations when I cannot be a hardline retoxer and still have friends. To prepare myself for a return to my real life, I eat Thai cuisine in the resort’s restaurant, Lan Tania. It’s sublime gnocchi from mashed ‘potato’ made of boiled jackfruit stones; and as for its green tea bread….mwah.

The resort’s spa provides another way to wean myself off the more drastic elements of my retox – another good way to avoid retox withdrawals and the possibility of going cold turkey on the return Bangkok Airways flight. Treatments take place in an enchanted kingdom of villas and salas (covered verandas) in thick tropical rainforest and reached via wooden plank walkways and wooden steps. It’s the spa that Tarzan and Jane would have chosen for their honeymoon. They should be so lucky.

I try the Siam Fusion. First there’s Thai massage, which is like being in a one-person wrestling match (the brochure calls it ‘Thai yogic stretches’). Next the therapist does battle with my pressure points. Then she rubs me with Luk Pra Kob (warm compresses of lemongrass and ginger) and finishes with an energizing deep pressure massage with essential oils. It’s A*. (The poor woman does an excellent job of trying to detox me; but, after my dedicated efforts to eat and drink myself silly, luckily there’s some way yet to go.)

I was a Four Seasons virgin. Now I’ve been deflowered, I’m a Four Seasons junkie. I’ll visit the 4S again when my retox levels become dangerously low. What’s not to like? The fine fast food? Ambience? Activities? The location? Nothing. It’s hardly surprising that I’ve become a 4S retox junkie. It’s a resort that’s luxurious and allows guests to replace toxins at their own pace: to overfeed, overindulge and listen to what your body really wants. As a pleasurable aside, the 4S is also the genius hotel group that introduced Wi-Fi airport transfer limos. The first service of its kind. Just to ensure that I can keep addicted to technology even on a brief car drive. Wi- Fi retox where have you been all my life? But then that’s another story….

The Sukhotai may be surrounded by the noisy concrete jungle of Bangkok. Yet it’s that rare thing – a resort hotel in the centre of the city. It boasts landscaped gardens with water features and even an Olympic-sized pool. The décor is stylish and contemporary Thai, with miles of sage and copper silks, vases of lotus flowers and jasmine-garlanded statues of Buddha and friends. But there are other details that are more Silicone Valley than Siam: bedrooms with adaptor sockets to fit iAnything; and iPad restaurant menus. Try dishes with ‘rice paddy herbs’, ‘pandanus leaves’ and ‘garden chillies’ or visit La Scala, their European eaterie with a visiting roster of Michelin chefs. Everywhere staff glide by with hands clasped in ‘sawasdeeka’ greeting. Ask for a room overlooking the courtyard with its decorative, pike-filled pond. Go for the hotel’s impeccable service and for its convenience. Go for the power of calm.

It’s time for me to rejuvenate a body more burnt-out than an old firework. Maybe have the opportunity to live on air alone. Or perhaps do the sort of intensive detox that leads, above all, to dreams of meringues and ice cream. You know, a kind of Victoria Beckham diet.

Hang on a moment – before I’m pushed into a week of juice, watered down water or of three anorexic squirrel’s meals a day – it’s not possible to get through a serious detox without having a dreaded colonic, is it? Maybe even a cappuccino enema. Another hiccup is that I’m not a fan of detox herbal remedies, either. It doesn’t take much to realise one thing then: that it’s a no to a hard-core detox programme for me.

One of the biggest growth markets in travel is of people investing in their bodies. And Kamalaya in Koh Samui, Thailand, is one of the planet’s – or possibly galaxy’s – leading destination spas and the place to invest in my-body-is-my-temple.

Kamalaya offer 70 fitness, weight loss or rejuvenation therapies. There’s a stress and burn-out programme that includes Thai and Chinese practices plus Ayurvedic Shirodhara massages (that’s the one that involves a continuous stream of warm oil drizzled onto my ‘third eye’, as if I were a poppadom).

There’s also a sleep programme which includes naturopathy, Traditional Chinese Medicine and enough massages to open a parlour. Once I put head to buckwheat pillow, it’s hard to remember all the detailszzzzzz.

Kamalaya integrates medical science and Eastern healing traditions – which means there are diagnostic tests and healing hands aplenty: think holistic made hip. There’s a crack squad of practitioners…Traditional Chinese Medicine doctors, naturopaths, homeopaths, Ayurvedic therapists, registered nurses, energy healers, an allopathic doctor, Thai therapists and visiting gurus. A kind of Carry on Doctor series de nos jours.

There’s an infrared sauna that burns 600 calories in 30 minutes. That’s if I have any calories left after climbing the hill every day for meals and treatments.

Kamalaya is a beautiful hillside retreat of swaying palm trees, looming granite boulders and tropical jungle foliage borrowed from a Gauguin painting – with an add-on of landscaped swimming and plunge pools. There are lotus ponds, ginormous orange butterflies, hot pink hibiscus and loadsa ribbiting frogs. There’s even a herbal steam cavern hewn into the rock and an ancient Buddhist monks’ cave. It all puts the ah into spa. Can there be anything better?

Well, yes, it overlooks an aquamarine lagoon and a beach that out-beaches the one in From Here to Eternity. Forget Gauguin: this place has been borrowed from a Hollywood studio fantasy landscape with bells and brass knobs on.

It is to Kamalaya that Oliver Stone came for weight loss. Best call him Oliver Lost A Stone now. Fergie went all spiritual here (in her autobiography, Finding Sarah, she devotes 35 pages to the retreat. Recalling a meditation session she wrote: ‘We sat cross-legged on mats around the fire, with everyone chanting, “Ohm.”’ Ohm indeed). Annie Lennox travelled the world and the seven seas to get here. Add to these slebs a number of stressed-out investment bankers, Ozzies in singlets and CEO’s in sarongs, and you get the picture.

There’s a programme called ‘Balance and Revitalize’ – detox lite – which aims to fight modern stresses and combat adrenal burnout. That’s what I opt for.

My programme starts with a body bio-impedance analysis – a conspiratorial electronic device which, it’s claimed, is there to determine an individual’s specific wellness needs, but is probably only there to tell me I need to lose some lard. Beam me up, Scotty. Next I have a naturopathic consultation.

Then it carries on through a detox body scrub, foot massage, head massage, face massage and even intestine massage (it’s called Chei Nei Tsing and is a Taoist therapy). There’s only a centimeter patch behind my ear that goes unmassaged. I’m saving it for next time. All the treatments work on an energetic, emotional and spiritual level.

Instead of lolling by a pool reading Fifty Shades trilogies, I spend time with Smitha Jayakumar – a monk who lived in a monastery for 10 years and is now a spiritual-life-coach (think Buddhism meets Hinduism and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy). There are no televisions here. If I want Made in Chelsea or Graham Norton, forget it. Instead the waterfalls and ponds are a recording studio for love-lorn frogs – and alongside them packs of local dogs howl at the moon.

Suddenly I hear the siren song of French fries. The lyrical lure of the Mars bar. But it’s easier to find a nun in a whore house than a super-size-me anything in Kamalaya. So far so good, for the likes of me – someone who has less discipline than a randy frog and who is wanting to detox (that much said, there’s an infrared sauna that burns 600 calories in 30 minutes. That’s if I have any calories left after climbing the hill every day for meals and treatments. Go forth and sweat).

The food isn’t just for raw-food junkies and lactose, peanut, meat-allergic weirdos. It’s spa food that makes me go ‘om’ and ‘ah’. It’s deliciously organic, fresh and pleasantly medicinal – but not preachy (I can eat pancakes and chocolate mousse if I want. And, boy, do I want…). The cuisine is based on ancient Asian healing traditions and the latest Western nutritional research Black cod and banana blossom salad. Mieng Kam – fresh green betel leaves with dried coconut, tamarind, ginger and shallots…. It’s enough to turn the hardest fast food junkie’s heart to tofu.

Kamalaya is young and sexy, in the first flush of youth. It’s a spiritual place that favours authenticity over luxury and pampering. It catches me by the toe and pulls me in gently, casting its magic spell slowly. It’s so addictive it should be a classified drug. At the end, I’m ready to do everything my team of therapists suggest – as long as it’s not a colonic. I leave trim, fit and with luminescent skin. Who wants a week-long detox affair? I’d like this to be a marriage for life.

I’ll be jumping off a mountain to dangle in the air. As if I were in a cable car – but without being in one. I must be certifiable. I sleep fitfully in a cold sweat of anticipation – thinking about this, my first paragliding flight. Will I bump into a bird or electric cable? Who but a lunatic flies with just a parachute and Swiss instructor for company? Then dawn breaks and the snow-peaked mountains opposite my bedroom window change hues of blues obligingly, like an al fresco cinema show.

We’re staying in the Walig Hut – the most expensive shack on the planet – near Gstaad, Switzerland.

It’s set above Gsteig at 5000 ft, a place where the Alps rise dramatically and the air is fresh as Listerine. Originally a 1786 summer home to farmers bringing their cattle to nearby pastures, it’s 30 chauffeured-Mercedes-minutes from Gstaad. (Much of it behind cows refusing to do the right thing and just turn into steaks.)

The Walig Hut offers intermittent solar-powered electricity, an outside latrine and no shower. And it costs £1150 (CHF 1600) a night for up to two adults and two children, dinner and drinks included. It’s possibly frequented by women like the Beast of Wildenstein, men who smoke plump cigars and people who wear diamond-encrusted boots.

It belongs to the Gstaad Palace, one of the world’s leading hotels. Most of its guests are people up for a night or meal from the hotel– one-time haunt of Liz Taylor, Roger Moore, Princess Di and Grace Kelly. But you don’t have to be a Palace guest to stay in this humble wooden dwelling.

And why would we overnight here? Its real lure is the mountain highs. The views over the Saanenland. The hikes. A sky that fills with a million stars.

Inside, the hut is more Ralph Lauren than impecunious farmer – with two bedrooms, luxury duvets and sheepskins strewn over chairs. Plus antique farm implements and red geraniums on the sills. It’s enough to make anyone don their dirndl.

A mountain stream doubles as a fridge. There’s no Internet, fax or phone reception. We collect mountain water, stoke the log fire and boil water on a wood-burning stove. But only because we don’t want our manservant to do it.

To save on too much reality, the Palace’s regal touch is bought to the hut. Its charming head waiter, Mauritzio, personally serves us a three-course meal of smoked hams and fruit flans. Afterwards, Mauritzio scarpers off and leaves us in a hut where the silence is so loud, it rings in our ears. And then I have that fitful sleep.

The real point of even of being in Switzerland is to go paragliding with instructor Thomas Rast. So now we drive down the mountain and up another to where this charming and enthusiastic man is waiting. Half an hour is all it takes from the comfort of the hut to the discomfort of the mountain. Am I terrified? Almost fainting at the prospect of dangling at a height of 500m? Yes. But all too soon we’re paragliding, floating peacefully above mountainous beauty.

Then descending over chalets surrounded by dahlias and streets clean enough to eat raclette off. Enjoying the silence. The sun shines, the trees sway gently below, the wind whistles gently. It’s unforgettable. And a fabulous first.

OK, I won’t do it again. I suffer from vertigo. But it’s definitely one of those things to do before you die. As for our accommodation, it fulfils the need for escape and some may like it hut. But I’m more to the Palace born.