If you're one of those adrenaline junkies for whom a holiday is never truly complete until you've bungee jumped from a bridge on the end of a piece of knicker elastic or thrown yourself out of a plane wearing a backpack where your parachute should be, then I can highly recommend the drive over the mountains from Kotor to Budva - because it'll scare the willies out of you. Jeremy Clarkson would probably love this road, but only because he could kill himself on a regular basis driving a Bugatti Veyron around its hairpin bends at two hundred miles an hour. For everyone else, the journey involves closing your eyes as tightly as possible each time your vehicle swings out over the abyss, digging your fingernails into the arm of the person sitting next to you, and praying that the day doesn't end with you being featured on the evening news. This only applies to passengers, of course - driving with your eyes closed is definitely illegal under Montenegrin traffic law, along with not having your headlights on, talking on your mobile phone, and shoeing a horse on the back seat on a Sunday.

As the more shrewd amongst you may have gathered from my tone, this is one road which takes no prisoners. There are no fewer than thirty hairpin bends on the way to the top, each sporting a large signpost written in blood announcing it's number to anyone wondering how long it'll be before they can breath again. At one point, we passed a local shop outside which a row of cars were quite literally parked with their wheels on the edge of oblivion, leading me to the inescapable conclusion that you really can't afford not to have your reverse gear checked regularly in Montenegro. Back home, the only thing a shopkeeper has to worry about is the possibility that somebody might one day point a gun at him and ask politely if he minds opening the till - here, you take your life in your hands every day just starting the car to go home.

Only tourists, of course, are stupid enough to make the journey across the mountains these days - the locals take the shiny new Vrmac tunnel which gets them to Budva in a little over half an hour and doesn't require making out a last will and testament before they set out - but then again, they've probably seen the view a million times anyway. Technically, what you have here is a major two lane road, built to get people to the other side of the mountains in the days when no other route was available, but since nobody in the Montenegrin highways agency has ever bothered to actually measure the width of a vehicle, neither lane is equipped to take anything much wider than a pushbike. Believe me when I tell you that half way up the side of a mountain on a crumbling road that hasn't been repaired since the fifties is not the best place to be when a juggernaut decides to come the other way unexpectedly. Or a cow, for that matter - because that's exactly what we found wandering towards us without a care in the world, chewing on a lump of grass, as we attempted to negotiate bend number twelve. This sort of thing just doesn't happen in Watford.

"Don't worry if the road scares you," our driver told us as we passed the half way point, happening to glance in his rear view mirror as the woman behind him turned a whiter shade of pale, "Just shut your eyes and hope for the best - that's what I do - and don't worry about the return journey, we take another road that goes straight down."

Just beyond the 25th bend, someone has kindly thought to widen the road just enough to allow people to pull over and admire the view. Of course, by the time you get this far up the mountain you'll probably be starting to notice the motion sickness and vertigo fighting for dominance in your stomach, so you might not really feel like doing much more than taking a welcome opportunity to throw up over the side on some unfortunate passer by far below, but it's the thought that counts. On the other side of Kotor harbour, a curiously shaped road seems to form a large ornate letter M on a perfectly flat piece of ground - as though the same guy who designed the mountain road moved immediately onto his next project and just stuck a couple of hairpin bends on the plans without thinking. So the story goes, the architect who designed this curiously shaped road was in love with a girl called Marta, and carved her initial out of the landscape in the only way he knew how - so that anybody looking down from the mountain would be reminded of their love. Probably just as well, then, that his girlfriend wasn't called Olga - or everybody in Kotor would've spent the rest of eternity driving around in circles.

Budva, assuming you ever manage to get here in one piece, shares one thing in common with its neighbour over the mountain - it's very much a playground for the filthy rich. Unlike Kotor, however, it never pretends to be anything else - and that makes all the difference. No need to hide behind a national monument here - on this side of the tunnel, people know exactly what they're in for before they arrive - and once they've parked their expensive sports car or moored their million pound yacht, Budva is more than happy to separate them from their cash in return for diamond encrusted goodies. The souvenir shops in the old town are unique in that they specialise in goods which no normal human being could afford, with only a small corner set aside for the cheap tat you find elsewhere. In Budva, it is absolutely essential to cover yourself with sparkly bling the moment you arrive, or you just won't fit in - but if you happen to have left your tiara at home, there's always a shop that can sell you one in exchange for a couple of arms or a leg. Anyone coming here without a platinum credit card attached to their wrist by a gold chain does so purely for the entertainment value - to see how the other half live and to laugh at the things they throw their money at. The sea front is filled with yachts from distant shores, some so covered in gold that you wonder how they got here without sinking, their captains far too rich and important to set foot on the shore when they can just send a minion off to pick up girls and bring them back for a party on deck. Everyone in Budva live their lives under the misapprehension that they are somehow better than us because daddy bought them an island in the bahamas for their sweet sixteenth - so I always like to visit places like this occasionally just to remind myself how lucky I am not to have to live this way. Not that I'm bitter or anything. Please buy me a yacht.

Budva is actually surprisingly pretty, which is something I wasn't expecting to find. After Kotor, I had prepared myself for another gold encrusted metropolis with not much going for it - so it comes as a pleasant surprise to be able to report that I don't currently have any plans to run screaming for the next boat home. Yes, there is an extraordinary amount of wealth here, and the shops don't sell anything that normal people could buy without a mortgage, but the old town itself seems to have retained its charm despite all this. If you want to lay on the beach and top up your tan, you can do that at the other end of town on a beach full of people in a range of reds waving bottles of expensive champagne around and in real danger of flambeing themselves. In the old town itself, it is entirely possible to get lost amongst the narrow streets or sit outside a coffee shop soaking up the atmosphere without feeling compelled to buy a yacht. Budva feels a little as though it wants to become the new Monte Carlo - it's quite happy to welcome you with open arms whatever your walk in life, but would probably much prefer it if you were stinking rich. Kotor, on the other hand, would really just rather you were stinking rich.

There is a standing joke amongst the people of the former Yugoslavia, that Montenegrins are lazy and pushy. Now, normally I would immediately jump to their defence and point out what a generalisation this is and that everyone is different - but when you look at the amount of people lazing about on the beaches of Budva or trying to talk visitors into buying a pair of dodgy looking brand name sunglasses from them the moment they step off the bus, it's difficult to know where to begin. It took me at least five minutes to get one guy to stop following me around waving a pair of shades in my direction, randomly demanding different amounts of cash however much I swore at him. Some say that the reputation is deserved, others that it is grossly unfair. One thing, however, is for certain - they really don't care. The Montenegrin people are simply far too laid back to give a damn what anyone says about them, and this really doesn't help their cause. Ask any of them why it is that they stand for this sort of abuse, and they'll simply shrug their shoulders and ask you what you're going to do. It really is hard not to conclude that they would love to complain about the stereotypes the rest of Yugoslavia aims at them, but that when it comes down to it they simply can't be bothered.

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.