Finally - we've got to the sun, sea and sand element of our working holiday and meticulous island research trip. We checked into the Golden Tulip Mangosteen (a hotel name surely thought up by committee) and reserved our sunbeds with a nonchalantly draped towel.

We're high up on a hill, with a distant view of the sea, cooled by balmy breezes and surrounded by frangipani trees and some other as yet unidentified greenery. Oh yes and the obligatory building site being conveniently constructed to have maximum impact on the view from the more expensive bungalows As yet it's just a concrete box surrounded by Asian scaffolding; that is lots of branches held together by bits of string and sealing wax. On top of this structure about 10 workers, male and female, scurry about carrying bits of cement or the odd roof tile and wearing nothing more protective than an old pair of pants on their head which double up as some sort of sun protection. For all I know they've got their lunch in there as well, but who can tell?

The pool is lovely .Infinity, natch, all the best pools are these days, don't you think? It winds its way around the restaurant area, so acting as a bit of a workout on days when I am feeling particularly lazy. Although it's nice to stop at the swim-up bar on the way back and refuel with a Mai Tai or Banana Daiquiri I find, to replace those lost calories.

Talking of calories, breakfasts are a Billy Bunteresque smorgasbord of goodies. Fresh fruit, cereals, yogurt and 15 types of sultana are swiftly followed by lashings of bacon, sausages, tomatoes, mushrooms, noodle dishes, unidentified soupy offerings, sauerkraut, croissants and Danish pastries - if you are so inclined. Attentive chefs stand next to the 'egg station' waiting to cook our preferred egg combination to order and then 'rush' it to the table so our poor legs, exhausted from all that swimming, don't get too weary from all that tedious hanging around for four whole minutes. Bri has become an egg connoisseur - an 'eggspert'. Boom, boom. He likes to spend a good few minutes every morning standing in front of the egg chef deliberating on how he would like his eggs to be served today. Once he has made his choice he is faced with a further conundrum - which bread should accompany his egg of the day? The brown or white? Too simple. How about the German bread or the one with walnuts in it? He only has four minutes in which to make his decision and stick it in the toaster. Yeah, we do our own toasting. It's our way of keeping it real.

After breakfast Bri gets straight down to work reviewing all the film from our trip to Argentina last year - we've got 6 weeks to pull it all together and turn it into something watchable before our star performer 'el Dave' arrives to join us for the last week of our trip. If we don't get it done by then he'll be under the impression it merely lacks his editorial input and be full of good ideas. Most of which will no doubt involve close ups of him, to which he'll then be asking us to photoshop in a bevy of young girls, gazing up at him adoringly.

The slightly unnerving thing about these posh hotels is none of our fellow guests makes eye contact, let alone speaks to each other, it's really weird. I think they're worried that if they exchange a cheery 'Good Morning' with you one day you'll be pulling your chair up to their table at breakfast the next day asking for their home address and suggesting a holiday reunion sometime around about Easter.

The other problem is that we are living in a bubble of air-conditioned splendour with attentive staff to cater for our every need and ensure that our toilet paper is constantly folded into a little fan shape every morning. After three days it all starts to feel a bit unreal so we decide to break out and find some food that doesn't automatically attract 7% tax, 10% service charge and 100% napkin folding levy. The difficulty is we're not too sure where it is; we arrived by taxi which drove up a long quiet lane before turning into the security gate and up a steep hill to the hotel entrance. Will they let us out? Will we get lost? Will we be able to cope with paper napkins that haven't been origami-fied into little dinner jackets?

We ventured gingerly down to the security barrier, half expecting the words 'halt, who goes there' but got through with just the briefest of salutes and headed in the opposite direction from where we arrived. Surprise, surprise, just a few hundred metres from our sybaritic enclave there are shops, restaurants, massage places (they really are as ubiquitous here as corner shops) and bars. Hurrah, we've escaped, call off the guards.

We risked another day trip out to the nearest beach - about 10 minutes' drive away at Nai Harn. It's a long stretch of sand with three long lines of sunbeds and parasols which cost a couple of pounds to rent for the day. It reminds me of Benidorm; large bronzed topless women of a certain age cruise the tideline while wrinkled old walnut men walk in the opposite direction failing in their pretence not to notice the naked breasts bouncing towards them. There is an abundance of burberry bikinis and heavy gold jewellery. A bloke walks out to sea calmly puffing away on his Benson & Hedges. It's not very Thai, but it sure is amusing.

Our hotel room is huge - plenty of room for the editing suite, and Bri is getting lots of work done sprawled on the bed with his headphones on, chuckling occasionally at another of Dave's 'crises' - yeah there was a lot of them last year, and strangely enough there still are, that's the result of living in perpetual chaos - doing deals, wheeling and dealing, ducking and diving. Sort of Arthur Daley meets Basil Fawlty. Although I'm sure Dave would prefer my analogy to be Cary Grant meets Brad Pitt. Haha. Sorry Dave, but you know I'm right!

We've got an 'outside bathroom' with a massive Jacuzzi tub, so I decided to take advantage of it the other day with an indulgent wallow and bubble. I turned on the taps and arranged my Jacuzzi accoutrements at the side of the bath - book, small towel for resting my head on, cold drink…. Perfect - have I forgotten anything? I looked around for inspiration and spotted a small length of hosepipe perched on the wall above my head I hadn't noticed before. Was that going to be of any use to me? Wait, it just moved. It just moved quite a lot. It has a head. Somewhere round the corner it has a small pointed tail. Are those small beady eyes? Gulp. Yes, it's appears to be……. a snake. After my first initial freeze of panic I edged out of the bathroom - backwards obviously, who know how quickly these things can strike? I've just watched True Grit, I can't quite envisage Brian doing that old western thing where you suck out the poison and spit it out on the saloon floor, never mind stumbling into reception carrying my limp body. I have no clothes on. That would not be a good look.

We ring Reception who seem faintly unimpressed with the news, and nowhere near as over-excited as we are. They assure us that it is a harmless tree snake but that they will send someone over to deal with it, and sure enough 15 minutes later 2 slightly nervous looking boys turn up, one with a big stick and the other one with a laundry basket. Unfortunately it's taken them so long to gather up their professional snake catching equipment that Sid has slithered right around our bathroom and headed upstairs to frighten another victim. We wait with bated breath for the sounds of far-off screams but Sid is a master of disguise and he lives to scare the living daylights out of some other unsuspecting tourists another day. My bath is now full and it would be a waste not to use it but it's very hard to relax in a Jacuzzi with a good book and a long, cool drink when you have to break off every few seconds to nervously scan the room for boa constrictors and anacondas skulking in the undergrowth. The Jacuzzi remains unused for the rest of our stay.