My dad’s Turkish, and when I was tiny, we used to drive to Turkey about once a year. It took us four or five days. So my travel experiences from the age of about one to four were in the back of a car. My mum and dad would put bouncy chairs onto hooks, and me and my twin brother sat in the back, bouncing up and down as we drove along.

I remember crossing borders – in those days, we had to go through the Bulgarian border to get to Turkey: checkpoints, car searches, travelling through Eastern bloc countries. We’d stop along the road and my dad would fry eggs on a little Bunsen burner. We were away for two or three months, so my idea of travel was quite exotic.

My ideal holiday now is to go somewhere like the Golden Door health retreats in Australia and spend a week detoxing: having a complete internal makeover, swimming three times a day, going for walks in the outback, having a really strict diet, but being pampered with massages, acupuncture and hypnotherapy. That’s my idea of a holiday: getting myself sorted out. I like 100% luxury. I want more comfort than I have at home – that’s the point of being on holiday. I won’t rough it, ever.

Places where there’s lots of fresh produce excite me, too: plenty of fish and vegetables. That’s why I like going to Australia, the cuisine there is amazing. I spend nearly all my time in Sydney; I like the architecture. It’s very hilly, but feels open, not at all cramped or congested.

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The city is spread out and the temperament very easy-going. It’s also quite cosmopolitan, with cinemas and art exhibitions. In Sydney, I’m not always very sociable. I go to bed early and get up early, whereas in London it’s much more full-on. I’m good on a beach holiday for maybe a week, then I start to get cabin fever.

When I’m in New York, I like to stay at established hotels, such as the Peninsula. You can be Mrs James from Derby or Madonna – everybody gets the same level of respect. I love the anonymity afforded you in those big, old places – in the more classic, old-school hotels, you get to disappear. I’m not a bijou-hotel person at all.

One of my main criteria is that a hotel has to have a swimming pool. The Peninsula has one on the top floor, so you have this brilliant view down the avenues to the park.

There’s a tiny little spot in Kenya called Kiwayu, near the Somalian border, which has to be one of my favourite places on earth. It’s so tranquil. You just lie on the beach and thousands of pink crabs cover the whole shoreline – you have the combination of the aquamarine sea and the pink crest of the crabs. I went there for a week on my own in January, and I definitely want to go back. There was a brilliant pastry chef, and I ended up playing chess with the owner, which was good for my brain. I like to go to places that mentally stimulate me.

My mini art kit travels with me everywhere – it’s just a snap-close freezer bag with my watercolours, different sized brushes, pencils, pen, pencil sharpener and a tiny watercolour pad. At the air-port, I’ll buy a lined writing pad, and wherever I am, I’ll try to get someindige-nous paper. In Africa, you can buy old faded notebooks and really old paper, so when I do drawings on them, they become my special “African” paper.

I’ve been to Las Vegas and done road trips across America, and now my thing is to do driving trips across Europe with my boyfriend. I like the idea – I suppose it’s because of when I was a kid, driving to Turkey. Driving slows everything down; you understand where you’re going and recognise different cultures, instead of just getting on and off a plane all the time.

My big problem is that I suffer from the most terrifying jet lag. I’ve tried everything – nothing works. It takes me a good three weeks to recover from a trip to Australia. When I come back from holiday on a Friday, I’ll tell people I’m returning on the Monday. It gives me the weekend to get my head to-gether. Sometimes, the best holiday can just be at home when nobody knows you’re there.

Tracey Emin talked to Veronica Groocock. Her exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art opens on August 2 as part of the Edinburgh Festival

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