Vietnam is the new Thailand. You get incredible history, magical landscapes, deserted white beaches, top colonial hotels and wonderful spas. You find bustling cities – some surpassingly beautiful with the faded elegance of the French colonial era – ancient temples, pagodas and haunting relics of the Vietnam War.

You haggle in colourful markets piled with dry shrimps and Buddhist artefacts, and swipe your plastic in sophisticated shops selling silk clothes and embroidered linens. Then stop to eat delicious street food such as pho (beef broth with noodles) and nem (delicate rice flour rolls filled with glass noodles, shrimps and coriander). You can walk amid pole carriers laden with dragon fruits, or try a three-wheeled cyclo pedicab. If you want to follow in my family’s intrepid footsteps, below is a round-up of destinations and hotels visited during our time in Vietnam.

1) The Sofitel Metropole, Hanoi

The spot: Perfectly situated in the French Quarter, just by the Opera House. It’s near the Old Quarter and Hoan Kiem Lake.

Why stay here: It’s one of the last great historic hotels in Asia. The 1901 Metropole offers French colonial elegance in the old wing and after the $20 million renovations finished last year, a zingy new Opera Wing. They’re virtually separate hotels in character and even have independent lobbies. In the old Metropole Wing there’s traditional furniture, ceiling fans and an old-fashioned shoe-shine service on offer; in the new wing, it’s a bold, contemporary look which slightly misfires. But there are nice touches like a choice of five pillows – doll’s house-sized models of which are popped on your bed for you to choose. Everyone gathers around the courtyard pool to sunbathe and eat fruit kebabs. And if you want history, there’s even a bunker under the poolside Bamboo Bar. Try Le Spa (the only luxury spa in the city) in a double treatment room then have a green-tea-and-bamboo-shoot facial followed by a Sacred Flower Scrub.

Don’t miss: The exquisite 1070 Temple of Literature, Vietnam’s first university and the Confucian temple with its five courtyards, ornamental gateways, stone stelae and red lacquer pillars. And the Thang Long Water Puppet Theatre for shows from hidden puppeteers standing in waist-high water and musicians on instruments made from dried watermelon.

Retail therapy: Propaganda posters from the Pham Manh gallery. Mangosteen and longan from pole carriers with conical hats and baskets

Must eat: The lotus blossom and bamboo shoot salad at the hotel’s elaborate buffet lunch at Spices Garden. And chocolate teas prepared by their Maitre Chocolatier – think chocolate fondue and chocolate jelly. Otherwise go to Bobby Chinn’s restaurant. He’s South East Asia’s culinary TV star. His temporary restaurant is in his home and it offers bordello décor and global cuisine. Try the lotus-leaf-wrapped caramel ginger chicken and sticky rice.

2) Halong Jasmine junk, Halong Bay

The spot: Breathtaking scenery at UNESCO world heritage site of Halong Bay. Think a seascape of strange-shaped outcrops, caves and coves. The area covers 580 square miles with more than 2,000 limestone pinnacles, pillars and dolomite outcrops scattered across it. Legend has it that a gigantic dragon careered into the sea and created the fantastical islets by lashing its tail in the Gulf of Tonkin. A more conservative view is that they’re the result of erosion over millennia. It’s a place that gets poets’ juices going and inspires artists, who see everything from monks to gods in the rocks and dragons’ lairs in the caves. Halong Jasmine cruises in Lan Ha Bay and anchors at night near 690 island. The brochures and guidebooks make it sound amazing, which it is. But it’s also fantastically touristy.

Why stay here: It’s a traditional junk with fan-shaped golden sails apparently dipped in vegetable dye for protection. But it also has air-con and three floors and sun deck. (At 55 metres long and 11 metres wide, it’s Halong Bay’s largest junk.) There’s polished woodwork, 1930s style Indochine décor and 24 cabins with comfy beds and ensuite shower rooms. It even has a spa. There’s plenty to occupy the water-borne tourists from a welcome drink on boarding to the cooking demo, spa treatments and T’ai Chi on the upper deck at 7am. But I couldn’t help thinking I was on a floating version of a luxury coach.

Don’t miss: Going on a bamboo sampan rowed by a lady in a conical hat to visit Cua Van, the floating village. It has houseboats, a school, pig-pens and tourist-weary residents. Residents live as many as three generations to a room. Later, shuffle with the queues through Sung Sot cave which is larger than most Knightsbridge flats.

Retail therapy: Tourist rubbish and pearls on the mainland and vendors in boats trying to flog shells and wicker hats.

Must eat: The seafood lunch on board, unless you’re going to swim 50km for an alternative.

3) La Residence, Hue

The spot: On the Perfume River with floating dragon boats and sampans, overlooking the ancient Citadel.

Why stay here: La Residence was a former annex to the French governor’s house (the French governor of Annam – now Central Vietnam). The original 1930s house has been sympathetically restored and expanded with two comfortable modern wings and Art Deco-style pieces and fixtures. Think a bowed, nautical facade, high ceilings and pieces that speak of the Jazz Age to the 1950s. There are suites with terraces big enough to build a village and four-posters with mosquito nets. Bedrooms are comfy and many have outstanding views. The lobby is set around Le Gouverneur bar – a bar with Art Deco type murals at the heart of the hotel. There’s a slightly run-down 30-metre saltwater pool in a lush courtyard garden which is great for cooling off from the overwhelming humidity. Near the pool is Le Spa, which has seven treatment rooms. Packages are designed by Italy’s Comfort Zone but the therapists are Vietnamese. I started with ginger and honey tea and ended with a sublime four-handed massage.

Don’t miss: Anything: the Imperial City, royal palaces, pagodas, tombs, statues of Mandarin warriors, dynastic bronze funerary urns and ancient bronze cauldrons. There’s also the Thien Mu Pagoda which still has Thich Quang Duc’s rusty blue Austin. (He was the Buddhist monk who self-immolated in response to persecution.)

Retail therapy: ‘Rolex’ watches ($25) from the Dong Ba Market and conical ‘brushes’ of yellow and red incense.

Must eat: The hotel food doesn’t quite pass muster but for a trip down student-backpacking memory lane, go to Mr Cu’s Mandarin Cafe. It’s one of those places that draws Lonely Planet souls in search of banana pancakes and Vietnamese rice dishes. His charming, naturalist photographs of Vietnamese rural life on the walls are for sale.

4) The Nam Hai, Hoi An

The spot: Miami-meets-Cancun coastline. The resort is hidden from this on a deserted 35-hectare golden stretch of Hoi An Beach overlooking fishing boats bobbing on the China Sea. It’s just 10 minutes from Hoi An, another UNESCO world heritage site.

Why stay here: The Nam Hai is a top chilling option combining haute design with stunning views. It has a manicured resort of 100 almost-Aman villas (Adrian Zecha is a non exec board member) designed by Paris architect Reda Amalou. Villas have chic, contemporary Asian décor by interior decorator Jaya Ibrahim. Think Lombok-style with elegant dark woods, bronze and taupe silks, and moody lighting. The other bathroom opens onto courtyard with alfresco shower. The design and décor brings on a dose of Zen serenity. Choose an Ocean Villa rather than a Pool Villa for better views. Some have private infinity pools edging onto the beach and they’re spacious – even a one-bed villa is 860 sq foot. They come with private butlers and Phuong, our butler, unpacks and packs for us, sorts our laundry and serves us meals by the pool. There are buggies to transport you to the fitness pavilion, tennis, badminton and basket ball courts, as well as the library, kiddies’ club or one of three huge pools leading down to the sea. If you’re feeling pamper-hungry, go harem-style in Le Spa and have a double-handed massage followed by a bathing ceremony in scented water strewn with petals – and look out on flames burning in cauldrons along the lake.

Don’t miss: Great cookery classes with the chef, Binh, after 3km bike ride to buy produce from the local market. (I can now make a mean fresh rice noodles with prawns and a banana blossom salad.) Also take a walking tour in Hoi An with Luong Chinh, a charming English-speaking guide. See the 18th century merchants’ houses, the Japanese Covered Bridge, the Old Quarter, Chinese temples and hundreds of tailors.

Retail therapy: Hand-hammered, patinated bronze bowls with 24k gold leaf interiors from the resort’s shop. Simple tailoring from Yali in Hoi An, which can be made in a couple of days.

Must eat: Go to the restaurant in the resort for Vietnamese specialities such as fish on sugar cane ‘sticks’ and fresh spring rolls. The breakfasts are also excellent: rice congee to vitamin shooters, pomelo marmalade and canary-yellow eggs any which way. In Hoi An try The Cargo Club Restaurant for delicate rice flour dumplings and sesame-crusted tuna.

5) Six Senses Hideaway, Ninh Van Bay

The spot: You’d be hard-pushed to find anywhere more beautiful. It’s on a peninsula which feels like an island because it’s accessible only by boat. There’s nothing nearby, just towering mountains behind, coral-strewn beach in front and views of the South China Sea, Ninh Van Bay and the Hon Heo mountains. The owners have even rented 50,000 square metres of sea in front of the resort to ensure that no noisy boats obstruct the view or disturb the peace.

Why stay here: It really is a no news, no Louboutins (or indeed any shoes) place. Even resort time is set one hour ahead of Hanoi time to allow guests to enjoy more daylight. There are 58 villas, all with private pools and delightfully dotted among the hills, on beach and over rocks. The interior décor is rustic chic with a wooden bath tub and bathroom open to a courtyard with alfresco shower. We walked out of our door of our Beach Villa onto golden sands. But I loved the Spa Suite Villa too – a hilltop villa with its own spa area and stunning views. (You climb about 70 steps to get there.) The Presidential Villa – two beds at $2,800 – is where Prince William and Kate Middleton stayed. We shower to the clicking of geckos, Duc monkeys come down close to the restaurant and sea eagles hover above. Nearby snorkelling is not yet great as the coral reefs with which the resort is fringed are mostly dead. The spa offers holistic treatments in rooms hewn in rocks and forest to the sounds of cicadas and birds. It has blissful bamboo walls, thatched shower and towels on rails made of branches. The very un-local Lomi Lomi (Hawaiian massage based on an ancient Shamanic rite of passage) is great. The new GM promises great things but he’ll need a good English teacher and a big new broom. Service can be rural and, luckily, a new chef is en route, too.

Don’t miss: The visit to lobster farm on a local fishing boat (kitted out with bamboo roof and white-towel-covered mattresses) then a BBQ lunch on the beach.

Must eat: Have a private dinner in the wine cave dotted with tea lights, or a BBQ lunch on a deserted beach. We were looked after beautifully by a private staff of two boatmen, one chef and a waiter.

6) Park Hyatt, Saigon

The spot: Near the 19th-century post office (still in use) and the 19th century Notre Dame Cathedral in a city that is an economic powerhouse.

Why stay here: It’s an unbeatable oasis in a city of eight million people and four million motorbikes. The Park Hyatt Saigon is built in faux-colonial style. It also has French-colonial-inspired décor, a great outdoor pool and 24-hour butler on every floor. The hotel is run with consummate professionalism and slick service. The GM, an Australian called Michael Golden, has the golden touch. There’s a good jazz performer every night in the lounge. HCMC has a staggering number of hotels but this one is said to beat them all.

Don’t miss: The grimly fascinating War Remnants Building in the former US Information Service building. Also 25 miles northwest are the Cu Chi tunnels – used by the Viet Cong for guerilla warfare and mounting surprise attacks. Built at different levels, they extended for more than 125 miles.

Retail therapy: Catherine Denoual for beautiful French-style bed and table linen by a French woman living in Ho Chi Minh City and Apricot Gallery for contemporary Vietnamese artists. Saigon Square for fake Converses (£6 a pair).

Must eat: Superlative Vietnamese street-food-inspired cuisine at the hotel’s Saigon Square One restaurant. Try the soft shell crabs with coconut, ginger and tamarind; shrimps on sugar cane; beef rolls with la lot (wild betel) leaf and five spices; and sea bass with lotus leaves. Then palm sugar ice-cream, passion fruit sorbet and warm coconut brownies. Have it with local beer or fresh juices – from guava to sour sop (like custard apple) and small, sweet fresh coconut. Also incredible buffet breakfasts in the Opera Restaurant, which is trattoria-style and overlooks Lam Son Square.

Unless you’re going by private Lear jet, hot-air balloon or in First Class, there can’t be a better way to fly to New York than aboard the Bankers’ Express, BA001. Launched last September, it’s the Club World only service that avoids the US immigration queues by stopping briefly in Shannon, Ireland to complete the fierce US formalities and to refuel.

There’s almost enough space on board the plane to play baseball – 32 flat-bed seats (but room for 100 ordinary seats); decent enough food of the asparagus and port reduction drizzle variety; fabulous service (when I flew, if there had been one more passenger we’d have outnumbered the crew); and a cute mobile phone icon which tells you when you may contact Earth.

I powered my laptop, pressed a buzzer for help which arrived within a nanosecond and used enough hot towels to open a Chinese restaurant. Then, seemingly moments later, we touched down at JFK’s domestic airport. Perhaps uniquely for a commercial carrier, I was the only person on the flight with checked-in baggage (is there a social stigma attached to being the only loser who has enough spare time to wait to retrieve checked luggage?).

Next we test drove the Farrell limousine service. This is one of New York’s most expensive car companies, offering a service that is beloved of discreet celebrities, private money and families into their fourth generation of Farrell hire. They have gleaming clean sedans, stretchers and formals, plus vans for the Louis Vuitton and professional-beyond-professional, always-early, often multilingual drivers. (‘It’s the best limo service in Manhattan,’ says The Mark Hotel’s general manager, James Sherwin, sitting later in his office among gratefully signed photos from British royals and Very Important People.)

Our first stop is The Mark, the 1923 über-chic Upper East Side hotel with 100 rooms and 50 suites. It’s fresh from a $150 million refit by Jacques Grange – who boasts the Légion d’honneur and is decorator to Princess Caroline and formerly to Yves Saint Laurent – and reopened in August 2009. It’s more like an impressive contemporary gallery than a hotel, but a gallery where your every need and whim is tended to by an impeccable staff. In this ‘gallery’, renowned designers from Paul Mathieu to Vladimir Kagan have created one-off pieces for the playful ground-floor rooms.

The lobby has a jazzy black and white marble floor and ‘Ge-Off Sphere’ Ron Arad pendant light; there is a witty, cloud-shaped bar by Guy de Rougemont and a herd of pony-skin sofas and bespoke geometric carpet; the restaurant has upholstered bar stools and free standing curved banquettes; and upstairs is a more muted kind of chic. Every time you look there seems to be another well-known face being welcomed by the hotel’s Turnbull & Asser clad staff. Oh look, that’s Woody Allen. And there’s Barbara Walters.

We’re just one block from Central Park (think passing hounds fresh from shampoo and set, with Tina Turneresque accessories and private roof gardens on which to cock their pretty legs) and at the centre of the civilised world, near the Met, the Frick, the Guggenheim and the Whitney. But it’s our elder daughter Anya’s first time in NY and (aside from the sartorial hell-hole that is Abercrombie & Fitch, with its torso-baring shop assistants and Glastonbury-decibel music) Harlem is high on her to-do list.

We sightsee in a Farrell Cadillac stretch, driving around the new look Harlem-meets-Zurich – the former black spot polished up by Rudy Giuliani with his hit squads and now full of smiling policemen thanks to Michael Bloomberg and moved into by Bill Clinton with his office. We pass a bright yellow ‘Sidewalk Sunday School’ van wreathed in balloons: God has moved in mysterious ways to replace the burned-out cars of yesteryear. Then we drive past Sylvia’s Restaurant where the politicians hang out for soul food of pigs’ trotters and gizzards, and which has now become a global food brand.

Back on the Upper East Side we lunch at The Wright, the Guggenheim’s recently opened arty restaurant with an iconic Frank Lloyd Wright museum attached. It’s in a sleek white-on-white space – designed by Andre Kikoski, a leading new-garde architect – with curvilinear walnut walls and a layered white ceiling that echoes the original corkscrew building.

It serves modern American (seasonal, local and sustainable) food cooked by ex David Bouley chef, Rodolfo Contreras. Its 58 seats and communal table are packed. Think signature dishes like green market vegetables with slowly cooked egg and truffle and Michelin-style presentation. I don’t get the benefit of cooking an egg slowly but, hey, the food passes muster.

After lunch it’s time to test drive another car company, Jeff Kaplan’s E-Z Ryder. It’s the favourite of in-the-know Lady Cosima Somerset of Concierge London and NYC fame. (An erstwhile friend of Princess Di and niece of Lady Annabel Goldsmith, Lady Cosima knows how to pick classy wheels.) Outside a big sign in the window of a four-wheel drive reads ‘E-Z Ryder Welcomes Caroline’. E-Z Ryder is a small, family-run business, with its cars with blacked-out windows, and another celebrity car firm of choice.

We do a lifetime of shopping and our accommodating driver seems never to tire of circling the block to avoid parking restrictions. We visit the sort of adolescent must-see emporiums that would exhaust you just wading through their names on a list. Meanwhile E-Z Ryder is a teen dream with its armrest full of candies and gums. And as the parcels and packages pile up, we use the car as a luggage depot. (There’s little better than going shopping with a driver.)

So which shops to recommend? Abercrombie, American Apparel and Victoria’s Secret be damned. My personal favourite and top of the (non-adolescent) list isBellhaus, the new lifestyle store aimed at the working woman and fashionable man. It’s Dover Street Market meets, er, Beach in the City. It sells ready-to-wear (including many American designers) plus accessories, candles, beauty, eye wear, Kilian fragrances, vintage pieces (up to $38,000) and Carlos Falchi daytime totes for $220.

Afterwards we have a sunset hour drink in Andre Balazs’ Boom Boom room at The Standard hotel. With its floor-to-ceiling windows (including in the loo) it enjoys spectacular views up the Hudson River. It’s a gawpingly great room 18 floors above the Meatpacking District with Art Deco-meets-contemporary features. A wannabe Studio 54, it has guest-list only pretensions, waitresses in skimpy dresses, a black-tiled room with triangular soaking tub, vertiginous glass-floored smoking terraces and hype to match.

In the evening, we return to The Mark. At this hour, slinky women in Christian Louboutin heels and fitted faces sit in the bar at low-flying cloud tables. Nearby, dapper men stand with practiced smiles and sky-scraper-deep pockets. As they follow their social X-rays into dinner in The Mark Restaurant by Jean-Georges (Vongerichten), we return to our suite: to a soothing place of custom-made furniture and black and white marble Art Deco bathroom. I could happily stay here for days longer. And just then we hear news of the eruption of the Icelandic volcano. We couldn’t have planned it better…

As we arrive, a baboon is trying to break into our tent. The manageress shoos him away and calls a guard who arrives with his spear a few minutes later. She says our primate friend won’t return unless we offer him sweets, which seems good enough reason to ban sugar from Africa. The frisson we feel increases when we learn that guests are only allowed to their tents accompanied by guards. Welcome to the delightful excitements of Naibor Camp, one of the most exclusive tented safari camps in Kenya’s Masai Mara Game Reserve.

The camp is hidden in a grove of riverine woodland on the banks of the Talek River, enjoying possibly the best location in the Mara. Captivatingly, hippos bathe in the river at the bottom of its garden and can be seen hauling themselves out in the evening. The area has the region’s highest concentration of leopard. Rhino hang out on the south side of the river. Plus it’s strategically placed for the wildebeest migration, being close to all the major crossing sites on the Mara River. And because it’s in the heart of the Mara, there’s wildlife viewing throughout the year.

There’s a small air-strip 30 minutes away for landing private planes (or for charter ones, if you must). Or it takes mere seconds to get here if you come in a Lady Lori helicopter, as did the squillionaire who had our tent before us. The celebrity transport of choice, Lady Lori is renowned for accessing the inaccessible from finding a plant not seen by botanists since the Seventies to offering superlative safaris from the air.

But we’re here to enjoy things from the ground, to explore from an open-sided Land Cruiser the rolling open grassland and Safari Wonderland outside our tarpaulin door. So, accompanied by our guide Daudi wearing Masai suka (blanket) and beaded headdress – we set forth into Animal Disney World. We don’t wish to spend time spotting different strains of the Greater and Lesser Safari Jeep or the hot-air balloons that litter the sky so Daudi takes us off the beaten plain.

We are soon rewarded with a herd of elephant, including mini Barbars gambolling and frolicking in the sun; a band of mongoose; and enough zebra to make a crossing. Then we see one of the world’s most spectacular sights: thousands of wildebeest and zebra crossing the great Mara River. A crocodile hovers nearby. But I have to admit that, in this instance, there are also other predators in sight: the animals are closely surrounded by bands of Homo sapiens and a fleet of four wheel drives.

Our next stop is lunch. It’s nothing like the steak and baked pineapple and custard enjoyed by some back at Naibor Camp. Instead we’re served a truly memorable Out of Africa picnic complete with chairs, table and chest of food eaten under a tree on the open plain under the wide sky. If it’s specifics you want, then imagine delicious chicken drumsticks with rosemary and honey and potato salad, eaten under the ‘sausage’ fruit tree beloved of rhinos and in which the leopard likes to lie with his kill.

Back at base camp and done for the day with the wonders of the natural world, it’s hard not to marvel at some man-made wonders. Take the Little Naibor tented suites with their enormous under-lit, low-floating beds on fig-wood bases, Savannah-sized cream sofas and African wool rugs: contemporary style allied with muted bush colours. And as for the Mess Tent with its rustic fig-wood dining table and chunky bush dining ‘thrones’…well, it’s pure Conran en Afrique. And if such style doesn’t sound like the bush, you should try reflexology in the spa tent…

Naibor Camp is also so eco it makes you weep and recycle your tears of joy. Everything is solar- run. It has safari showers and charcoal-heated irons. It attracts khaki-heeled guests who want to leave the world a better place, families, people who want luxury in the bush and rich businessmen. It’s also popular with honeymooners, sipping sundowners and eating romantic meals privately under the stars. After all, it’s particularly charming at night; candlelit and gas lanterns light the paths as the sounds of hippos, frogs and crickets fill the air. And as you sit chatting about the day’s adventures around that communal table, a camp fire burns cheerily…

From £1868 per person based on two sharing for 3nights on a fully inclusive basis including flights, air taxes, park fees and transfers. Book through Scott Dunn: 020 8682 5000; www.scottdunn.com; www.naibor.com. Lady Lori helicopters can also be arranged through Scott Dunn.

According to Lord Mancroft, there are only three things that you need to learn in skiing: ‘How to put on your skis, how to slide downhill and how to walk along the hospital corridor’. What he forgot to mention is that you also have to learn to enjoy sporting clothes and equipment that cost the equivalent of the Greek national debt just to stand in sub-zero temperatures and suffer height vertigo. And additionally, you need to grasp that you will spend un bras et une jambe simply to break un bras et une jambe. Only a mug would do it. Yet, ooops, I’m winter-holidaying in the ski resort of Val d’Isere.

I’m in Val d’Isere with Ella, my 12 year-old daughter, a genetic aberration who likes to ski 24/7 and would happily slalom backwards down a black run. We’re here because of maternal love and Scott Dunn, the luxury tour operator beloved of celebrities and royals. On first sight, Val looks like toy town after someone has sneezed the best Bolivian cocaine over it, with a pretty layer of snow over footpaths, the Baroque church and traditional Savoyard chalets built from wood and local stone. It’s in a majestic setting and peopled less by fur coats than serious skiers, including the likes of Ben Elton, Peter Gabriel and Coldplay drummer, Will Champion.

If you don’t ski, you can do an array of lunatic snowy things like snowmobile driving (junior Schumacher on ice), driving on ice (Schumacher on ice), ice diving (going beneath the ice of Lac de Tignes, for the truly crazed), dog sledding, snow-shoeing, ice climbing (scaling a frozen waterfall with the aid of ice axes and crampons, I ask you…) and paragliding. Or take scenic flights and vivez la montaigne en helicoptere. Or you can eat, which is what I like to do.

But first to our lodgings. We’re staying in Marie, a lovely chalet which sleeps eight, with an open-plan living-area, roaring fire, exposed reclaimed timber and stone, and Hammam and plunge pool overlooking snow-capped mountains. Marie is one of a family of chalets nestling in a cul-de-sac. (If you want to do the oligarch thing, you can stay next door in Marie’s impressive sibling, Le Rocher. A snip with a starting price of £32,660 a week, it sleeps 14 and has ironic arty décor including groovy chandeliers partout, Alice in Wonderland throne chairs, a technogym and a screen on which to watch films whilst in the pool.) It soon becomes clear that we’re onto something special here. Drivers who whisk you hither and thither are included in the price and there’s one member of staff to every two guests, for who nothing is too much trouble.

Take Thomas Checkettts, the chef in Marie. He cut his culinary teeth working with Gordon Ramsay and so must be used to difficult people. Which is fortunate as I’m keen to follow a macrobiotic diet. Forget raclette and fondue, I want sea-weed and miso soup as my mountain staples. Thomas rises gamely to my Madonna-style aspirations and conjures up delicacies like beetroot jelly, sweet pea granite, and garlic and spinach veloute. But very soon I’m lured to the Other Side by his beautifully-presented gastronomic dishes of foie gras, succulent fowl with rosti and breakfasts of smoked salmon and scrambled egg with truffle oil. Diet be damned!

It would be unforgivably piggy to do nothing but eat. So I raise myself for a sports massage from physio Toby Clifford, who is about ten foot tall and all compacted brawn in army fatigue trousers. He is to deep-tissue massage what crevices are to wrinkles. Words like muscular release, relief and amazing come to mind. In the summer he pummels soldiers for the Ministry of Defence. It’s enough to make anyone join the Army. Then in a fit of further exertion, later I walk to my bedroom for a facial from Pamper Off Piste. Pamper On Piste, now that would be interesting.

Afterwards, I swim in Oxygene, the erstwhile winter Olympics press centre now converted into a sort of Chelsea Harbour Club at altitude. It boasts hydro-massage, sauna, steam bath and Art, including life-size cows in the reception area. Plus there’s a pool where women in black costumes and goggles do fierce lengths. You probably take your life into your hands as much in these lanes as you do on the slopes.

Next day, I go (drum roll) snow-shoeing with guide Michel Gavet and a group. We walk in the silence. The sounds are of nothing but falling snow. In the valley below there’s a dam and a submerged village, the church spire of which sometimes shows above the water. People are skiing like traversing ants on the mountains opposite. There are eagles, white hare, roe deer, wolves (apparently) and trees laden with lichen and snow. It’s beautiful. It’s exhilarating.

We press on. I fall over countless times, often ending up stuck knee-high in snow. It’s no walk in the park; it’s more like an aerobics session for advanced mountain goats. As we pick our way gingerly down steep and slippery snow-covered rocks like lame donkeys, there’s a Virgin Mary in a rocky shrine. A bit like the ones you find on hazardous corners of fatal roads, overseeing the accidents. I’m glad to get back to terra more firma and less slippery.

I head to L’Arolay, a rustic restaurant Savoyard with views over the Isere Gorge, for lunch. Here they serve Cremeaux du Pere Francis (a basket of potatoes and an entire cheese in a box,) which my friend, Jane, polishes off, while I content myself with a family-sized serving of tartfilette and Ella demolishes a cow-sized steak tartare. Afterwards, groaning at the waists, we pop down to the Chevallot patisserie for some gastro-porn: think window displays of tartellette framboise and eclairs and, inside, counters of fougasse and croque courgette, and an eponymous owner who is often voted, ‘best pastry cook’ in France.

Then things take a very curious twist. Give me a map of the pistes, and I usually feel giddy just looking at it but Val d’Isere is a legendary area: 300km of marked runs, two glaciers, 1930 metres of vertical drops and 90 ski lifts. And then, reader, I do it. Under the expert eye of Ken Smith, a moniteur independent, I put on a pair of skis and hit the slopes…