The birds wake you up, at about eight o’clock: the jabbering mynahs squawking in the thatch of your roof, or the coucals gliding overhead from the lagoon to the palm trees. You peel back your mosquito net and a gecko scurries across the wooden floor, up the wall and on to the ceiling.

You open the shutters to the lagoon and see the arrowhead of a water snake glide into a reed bed; beyond the lagoon, past the long white breakwater, is the Andaman Sea and the last of the boats, with their catch of squid, lobster and grouper, making their way back to the tiny fishing village near Kuala Teriang. It’s already 70 degrees out there, but a soft wind from the direction of Burma cools the skin.

Nobody is up yet, least of all the hotel staff – except maybe Little Sham, sorting stuff out in the restaurant. Breakfast is in your fridge: delicious carrot cake, some bread and fresh fruit, yoghurt and proper coffee. You sit on the veranda and sip your coffee and shout a quick “Selamat pagi” (good morning) to Sham; you think how utterly exquisite it all is.

A hotel consisting of fewer than a dozen antique kampong houses, some 100 or so years old, beautifully done up by someone with an idiosyncratic eye for detail, grouped around a lawn and an elegant pool. Your own kampong house has air-con, luscious fabrics, antique ornaments, the most comfortable double bed in the world, a sitting room and – out the back, under the stars – a giant wooden bath. Hell, you think to yourself, slumming it isn’t that bad, is it?

Slumming it: I’ve grown up with the island of Langkawi and Langkawi has sort of grown up with me; these days, we’re very comfortable with each other. I first went there in the early Nineties, backpacking, and stayed in beach shacks costing one quid per night. I loved it then: the wildlife, the quietness, the staggering natural beauty of primary rainforest cascading down to the sea, the many uninhabited islands of the archipelago.

Even back then I had formed a visceral loathing for the country three miles to the north – Thailand, with its overcrowded resorts, its despoiled scenery, its fervid, money-grubbing relentlessness. In the decade and a half since, Langkawi has changed – there are more restaurants, bars, hotels and even a cable car on the towering mountain, its rainforest forever shrouded in mist. But it has not lost itself; there is still space, wildlife, silence and beauty.

I liked those cut-price beach shacks, but I wouldn’t go back (which is just as well, as they’ve all been bulldozed). But, equally, I don’t want anonymous corporate places where the obsequious waiters serve you taco chips and pizza by the pool and want you to die. If I ever do show signs of wanting that, call the undertakers, sharpish. I want the relaxed atmosphere of the places I used to go, plus some comfort and – oh, sure – good food.

Back then, there were very few places to go on Langkawi that served decent food; now, there are plenty. There’s the excellent Gulai House at the Andaman, a short drive from the Bon Ton (try the beef rendang), or Mare Blu, down by the jetty, next to what may well be the best bakery in the world.

I suppose that 17 years ago I would have despised my future self for enjoying a spicy lobster pasta lunch with a crisp white wine at Mare Blu, buying a couple of cakes for tea and then collapsing into the evening menu at the Bon Ton’s Nam restaurant, the best food on the island. “You bourgeois wanker,” I would have said to myself. And my present self would have replied, “Yeah, what of it? And sort that awful hair out.”

Never did sort the hair, as it happens. Never mind. But I’ve been going to the Bon Ton for the past ten years or so, ever more in love with the place, and am now friends with the owner and the staff. Truth is, you can be friends with the owner and the staff after two days there; it’s a hotel where you feel that the guests are slightly more than a mere source of income. This may be an illusion, but, if so, it is a clever illusion and they sustain it very well.

An evening at the Bon Ton begins with the rush hour of egrets and herons back from the reed beds to wherever the hell they spend the night. The sun sinks with improbable grace behind the Thai islands, off to the north. Big Sham wanders around with pre-supper snacks. Later still, when the racket-tailed drongoes are flitting about after moths and mosquitoes, you can retire to the Chin Chin bar where there is always somebody interesting to talk to.

You’ve spent the day walking through rainforest with its clamorous macaques, gaudy hornbills and flying foxes. Or maybe you swam in the sea, or took a trip to one of those untouched islands and sat alone for hours with only the lizards and monkeys for company, or just lounged by the pool. You are pleasantly tired and very happy. Amir serves you a last espresso martini and you retire to your cooled kampong house to sleep. If we’re honest, this isn’t slumming it at all, really, is it? Every comfort to hand and yet still not ruined. If you go, don’t tell anyone else about it.

Rod Liddle stayed at the Bon Ton Resort Langkawi (00 60 4955 1688; www.bontonresort.com.my), where villas cost from £77 per night. Malaysia Airlines flies to Kuala Lumpur then on to Langkawi