Not only had I managed to get us upgraded to a hill villa - something we would only have been able to afford when booking if we had sold our souls to the travel devil - but we could go straight away. Luckily, we hadn't actually got around to unpacking yet as the pull of the resort had been too strong and we had literally dumped everything we had and gone out exploring the moment we arrived. Collecting our bags from where we had left them - luckily, the monkey hadn't been interested in anything we'd brought with us - we made our way up the hill and back to the delightful pixie villas we had been ogling earlier. The wooden picket gate and the little pathway which wound around quite unnecessarily on its way to the front door were still there, but this time I got to hold the gate open for Eloise and make a grandiose sweeping gesture to indicate that she may enter our own personal slice of paradise, which seemed terribly romantic at the time but probably just made me look like a dick. Inside, there wasn't much to tell the place apart from the garden villa below, but that's certainly not a complaint. In this part of the world, they don't seem to consider a bed to be big enough unless you can get about six people in it - so there wasn't much room in the main room of the villa for anything other than the bed and a chair. These were both exquisitely presented, however, with rows of pillows neatly arranged along the headboard and japanese style runners laid out across the bed to make sure we didn't forget for a moment that we were in the east. The main difference between our new accommodation and the garden villa was that we now had a sun deck to luxuriate upon - granted, a sun deck shared with the villa next door, but a sun deck nonetheless. I don't know if it was just an illusion, but this huge wooden boardwalk seemed to jut out over the edge of the hill into nothingness, which meant that it afforded us a more than spectacular view of the resort. It also gave us a good view of the sea villas out in the ocean, which I suppose might have been a clever plan to get us to upgrade again. Wooden sun loungers were carefully arranged in such a way that we could spend the rest of our stay lying flat on our back, calling for room service or just staring at the sea. There really is very little to distract you at Pangkor Laut - unless, of course, you want to be distracted, in which case someone will be more than happy to come running with brochures full of expensive spa treatments and walks in the forest at dawn.

Our deck was rarely without a small collection of monkeys peering in through the windows to see if we had anything worth stealing. If you don't like monkeys, or don't like the idea of returning to your villa at the end of the day to find a startled looking primate wearing all your makeup and eating your biscuits, this probably isn't the resort for you. The staff at reception had already warned us to be cautious when approaching them, as some have been known to become really quite irate when not given exactly what they want - and since what they want is pretty much everything you've got, this could quickly become a problem. One guest a few years back, we were told by a member of staff who clearly didn't understand the concept of encouraging visitors to come back, had been attacked and badly injured out in the forest by a monkey he had been teasing. I can only assume he told us this in order to make it clear that teasing the local monkey population perhaps isn't such a good idea, but I don't think either of us really needed this information - even if you haven't got complete respect for the local simian population, surely common sense tells you that poking wild monkeys with sticks is probably going to end badly for all concerned. Our regular visitors, however, seemed quite tame - or, at least, as tame as a wild monkey who has seen you eating an orange can possibly be. Nevertheless, it is still quite unnerving to draw back your curtains in the morning to find three of them sitting right outside, hands pressed up against the glass, trying to see what's going on inside. Perverts. One of our regulars seemed to have something of a love of toilet rolls and spent much of his time picking them to bits and leaving little trails throughout the forest. We've already contacted Andrex to see if they're interested in introducing an Andrex Monkey.

Although Pangkor Laut is only three hundred acres in size, getting around can easily involve long walks up steep hills, by which time you are too exhausted to do anything other than sit down for half an hour and then limp back to the bar covered in sweat. For this reason, the resort has helpfully laid on a sort of minibus service between the two main beaches. We were told, however, that if we followed the path right in front of our hill villa as it weaved its way through the forest, we would eventually come out on a road which would lead us down to the beach on the other side of the island - so this is what we decided to do. According to the welcome leaflet, Pangkor Laut can provide the services of a resident naturist who would be only too pleased to lead us on a guided walk through the forest at five in the morning, introducing us to the local flora and fauna at dawn, and this idea might have appealed if it hadn't been for the fact that five in the morning doesn't exist when you've been travelling pretty much 24-7 as we have recently. Besides, unless the guide was going to be David Attenborough, it seemed as though it would be so much nicer to explore at our own pace rather than being forced to stop every five seconds to look at a particular type of mushroom.

The track through the forest wound slowly up the side of a particularly steep hill at an angle which thankfully took the effort out of the journey. We passed through sections of dense woodland where we had to climb over fallen trees to continue, and through sections where overhanging flora formed attractive archways overhead. It was a very pleasant walk, and although I'm sure someone out there would manage to complain about the fact that the path wasn't cleared properly in some places, we came out the other end with big smiles on our faces. On the other hand, we didn't see a single monkey on the entire journey - which we took to indicate that they were all far too busy breaking into guest's villas and making off with their possessions to actually want to bother with their natural habitat. After spending quite some time exploring the woods, resting on conveniently placed logs and taking photos of each other in an attempt to show how beautiful the forest was and how much we were enjoying it, we stumbled onto the beach road on the other side of the island. As promised, a short walk around the corner brought us to a turning area for the minibus where a hut made out of logs served as a makeshift bus shelter, and a guy with a folding table and a barbecue served as a restaurant. When we looked at our photographs later, by the way, it became obvious that neither of our cameras had coped very well with the low light - rather than delightful pictures of two happy people frolicking in the woods, what we actually had was a collection of scenes from the Blair Witch Project.

Next to the beach, an almost perfect line of ants was making their way across the sand from their colony on one side to a tree on the other, where they were disappearing up the trunk and returning with pieces of leaf and other odds and ends. I'd never seen anything like this before outside of a nature documentary, and spent quite some time absolutely glued to the spectacle. Eloise must have thought I'd gone quite mad - while she was laying out her towel and topping up her tan, I was watching a row of ants go about their business. We spent the afternoon on the beach, had lunch at a picnic table being watched suspiciously by a monkey holding an orange, and made our way back to our villa on the bus as the sun went down. At this point, it had suddenly and unexpectedly started to pour down with rain, but neither of us cared - it was warm rain and we were in paradise. We didn't, however, fancy the idea of making our way back through the forest after nightfall - I had visions of luminous eyes peering at us from out of the darkness...

After two days in our hillside accommodation, I enquired at reception to see if there was any chance of spending our last night in a sea villa at a reasonable price, expecting the same guy who had upgraded us two days previously to tell me to stop taking the piss. To my surprise, they were only too happy to help as somebody had just cancelled and they had one going spare. Actually, this probably worked out as something of a bonus for them - I doubt very much that you're entitled to a refund if you cancel on the day you're supposed to turn up, so what was actually happening was that the resort was getting paid twice for the same accommodation. The sea villas are situated along a collection of interconnected wooden walkways which make their way around the base of the cliff towards the hugely expensive resort spa, and they pretty much constitute a village in their own right - so much so that we had felt slightly self-conscious the previous day when we had gone exploring and felt as though we were trespassing on the territory of the rich and famous. We had walked enviously along the walkways between the villas, sitting on benches under the covered rest stops positioned on the intersections and watching people coming and going from their little wooden houses on stilts. The thought that we might actually get to stay in one had never really occurred to us. Eloise, being a woman and therefore altogether more routed in reality than me, had voiced her concern that spending extra cash on a sea villa might ultimately mean that we wouldn't be able to do some of the things we wanted towards the end of our trip, but of course I was still thinking like a romantic rather than a realist. Naturally, she was right, but that's another story. For now, we got to stay in a sea villa and I got to see Eloise smile as we sat on our balcony over the sea and watched the sun come up - and you can't get better than that.

And so, our last night at Pangkor Laut was spent living outside our means and loving every minute of it. Our sea villa was simple but perfect. The main room, just like it's garden and hillside cousins, was straining at the seams trying to contain the giant bed - but this time, there was one major difference. One entire wall of the room was occupied by two giant picture windows looking out onto a private wooden seating area over the sea, an area we had all to ourselves for the duration of our stay. This seating area was nearly as big as the bedroom, and was illuminated at night by the soft light from hanging lanterns which were attached to posts on the corners and swung gently in the breeze. Wherever we went in our sea villa, from the bed to the bathroom, we were spoilt with panoramic views of the ocean outside our windows. Even the bathtub, a large square expanse of marble which was built right into the floor, had its own personal view of the ocean - which was a bit of a concern whenever a motor boat sped past full of local guys who could just as easily see in as we could see out. A certain level of nonchalance is required, I think you'll find, to be able to return a wave from a friendly passing local when all you're wearing is a smile. By the time we'd been in our sea villa for five minutes, we had already come to the conclusion that it was almost perfect - the only thing that might have completed the scene was a small glass window in the floor through which we could have fallen asleep watching the myriad of exotically coloured fish swimming around beneath us.

Everyone uses the old joke about their hotel room being so luxurious that they shovelled everything that wasn't nailed down into their suitcase before going home, but in the case of our stay at Pangkor Laut this actually wasn't far from the truth. Every villa we stayed in had a bathroom filled with surprisingly large plastic sample bottles of everything from shower gel to creams and cleansers - none of the cheap rubbish you get from the local roadside motel; these were all quality locally made products that the resort were at pains to remind us were available in large expensive quantities from the gift shop. Never ones to turn down a freebie, especially when it was of this quality, we carefully wrapped all the bottles from the bathroom of every villa we stayed in and packed them so that we could just about close our suitcases, leaving in the sure knowledge that we would be able to spend a few weeks relaxing in our own baths back home surrounded by the smells from our high-class Pangkor Laut toiletries, closing our eyes and pretending we were back in Malaysia. Unfortunately, when we decided to send a considerable quantity of souvenirs back home a few weeks later courtesy of the Australian Postal Service, nearly 20Kg of our most prized possessions vanished into the ether never to be seen again - so we never did get to create our own personal Pangkor Laut in England.

As we sat outside after dark, listening to the sound of the ocean lapping at the stilts which prevented us from disappearing into the depths, the flickering light from the lanterns would cast eerie shadows on the deck as other residents of the sea village walked past on the adjoining boardwalk. We couldn't have asked for a more perfect end to our stay in one of the most beautiful countries on Earth.

About Simon and Burfords Travels:

Simon Burford is a UK based travel writer. He will be re-publishing his travel blogs, chapters from his books and other miscellaneous rantings on these pages over the coming weeks and months, and the entry on this page may not necessarily reflect todays date.