It's hard when your private chef really wants to cook for you and you're torn between keeping him happy and eating with the other guests in the resort.  And it's a problem when your chauffeur wants to drive you to and from your private estate when, really, you'd just as soon wander the trails through the rainforest to get there. It's tough, too, when the day spa beckons, but you're happy reading your paperback in your private pavilion above your private beach alongside your private pool beside your jacuzzi while your butler keeps your glass of bubbles topped up.

These are some of the dilemmas you'll face staying in a private estate at Pangkor Laut Resort. They're not real-world issues, but then you're not really in the real world. You're in a resort on a private island, of which more than 80 per cent is undeveloped rainforest. 

So you will have to make do with whatever problems you can create to maintain at least a portion of the anxiety levels that keep you functioning at home. Because if you let it all go – and get about like a pampered infant in this bubble world – coming back to reality afterwards is going to hurt like hell.

I bet you've never heard of this island, nor this resort. The islands of Malaysia receive little of the attention bestowed on their northern neighbour, Thailand – and a little island five kilometres off Malaysia in the Malacca Strait (which separates Malaysia from Sumatra) is so far off the radar it barely registers a blip on the map.

The timing of my arrival is impeccable. The equatorial sun is sinking into a hazy horizon as we pass tiny fishing boats readying for their nightly mission. Bright Taoist shrines of ribbons, flowers and food on the smooth boulders of Pangkor Laut's shore will ensure them a safe passage home. There are tiny bays of white sand, lit mauve by the sunset, and above them tropical rainforest rises up to a series of peaks.

White-bellied sea eagles ride the thermals high above us, but as we pull into the resort's marina, the dry barking of the endangered great hornbill is the only birdcall filling the silence. Three pairs of Asia's largest hornbills fly across the sky, on wingspans of more than 1.5 metres. Their slow, heavy wing beats sound like the blades of a wind turbine. In the shallows by the over-water bungalows, a monitor lizard 1.5 metres long sits on a still-hot granite boulder digesting a bellyful of food (occasionally they'll enter the resort's swimming pool to clean themselves, causing quite a commotion).

Pangkor Laut Resort was the favoured retreat of the late opera singer Luciano Pavarotti, who officially opened the resort in 1994. Upon staying there for the first time he said: "This place is a paradise … when I woke up I went out and was really moved … to see what beautiful things God had done."

While his reflections on nature hardly match his famous tenor, I see his point: Pangkor Laut may be a mere 120 hectares in size, but it teems with the sort of flora and fauna you'd otherwise see only deep within an equatorial rainforest. Oriental hornbills – with their distinctive toucan-like beaks – dart between the ancient trees, colourful butterflies flutter about at eye level, fruit bats sleep upside down, and a tiny black-tip reef shark darts between the coral off the rock on which I stand.

Accommodation here includes Malaysia's only over-water bungalows and ocean and forest villas, including the  two-bedroom Pavarotti suite (set on a hill and complete with an oversized entertainment room). But I'll be staying in one of the resort's eight private estates, the same one favoured by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

On the other side of the tiny island, the estates offer total privacy – discounting, that is, a private chef, butler, driver and the guys sweeping my beach lest a single leaf from the fig tree fall on it and ruin my day.

On the drive there from the resort, my 4WD stops to let a troop of long-tailed macaque monkeys pass. As I wind down my window to take a photo, the sounds of the forest in the dusk manage to sound both menacing and peaceful. Bird calls compete with monkey screeches but it's the whir of a billion cicadas that wins the battle.

The villa of my estate is beside a small sandy bay shaded by trees. Within minutes of my arrival, a grinning chef is serving me tom yum soup in a green coconut with tiger prawns the size of Maine lobsters in a private dining pavilion.

Oddly for such a tiny island, there's plenty to do on Pangkor Laut.  One morning I drag myself away from my estate to walk through the rainforest with the island's naturalist, deciphering a forest of animal calls and stepping over snakes till we reach an outdoor bar on a secluded sandy bay. Chapman's Bar, on Emerald Bay, is named after a British colonel who escaped here by submarine during World War II.  Emerald Bay is said to be the best place to swim on the island, although I beg to differ, being quite partial to my just-swept private beach.

The day spa pavilion is built right beside the ocean but cocooned snugly within the rainforest. The spa's treatments and decor draw upon four Asian cultures – Malay, Thai, Chinese and Indian. The mandatory pre-treatment ritual, a slalom course of hot and cold water soaks, Japanese bathhouse body scrubs and tender foot rubs, is as memorable as the treatments themselves.  

Should I feel like a change from the meals created by my chef, there are six restaurants to choose from. The most casual of these is Uncle Lim's Kitchen, a dimly lit outdoor restaurant built on a rocky outcrop overlooking the ocean and serving old-fashioned Chinese home cooking.

One day I accompany one of the chefs from Uncle Lim's Kitchen by speedboat across to Pangkor Island on a half-day cooking school excursion, helping to choose the freshest seafood at the local markets in an attempt to recreate the restaurant's signature Crystal Prawns and Rock Lobster Bisque.

Even with all the options available, there are days I don't leave my estate. Hornbills come to visit me in the trees beside my villa. Nothing breaks the timelessness of whole days spent inside this perfect bubble, except the meals prepared and served to me, and the morning and afternoon tea in between.

The writer travelled with the assistance of YTL Hotels and Tourism Malaysia.

NEED TO KNOW

Getting there Malaysia Airlines flies to Kuala Lumpur daily. YTL Hotels' private car transfers take three hours, 15 minutes, then book a speedboat transfer, which takes 15 minutes, pangkorlautresort.com

Staying there Estates from $2773 a night, including a butler, private chef, driver and meals. Tel: +605 699 1100. For more see pangkorlautresort.com