Bali

I flew into Denpasar on a red-eye from Singapore, a short two-hour hop on Scoot that deposited me into the thick, fragrant heat of Bali at 5am. The taxi driver to Ubud — about an hour north through rice paddies and temple gates still smoking with morning offerings — played Balinese gamelan on a little speaker clipped to his dashboard and didn't say a word the whole journey. It was perfect.

I spent my first ten days based in Ubud, at a small family guesthouse called Pondok Pundi just off Jl. Hanoman. My room had a four-poster bed draped in mosquito net, an outdoor bathroom where geckos watched me shower, and a terrace overlooking a deep green ravine. Breakfast was included — banana pancakes or nasi goreng with a fried egg, fresh juice, coffee so strong it made my hands shake pleasantly.

Ubud itself I explored almost entirely on foot and by hired scooter. The Sacred Monkey Forest I visited twice — once in the morning when the macaques were sleepy and indifferent, once at dusk when they became frankly terrifying and stole someone's sunglasses three metres from me. The Ubud Palace sits right in the centre of town and I stumbled upon a Kecak fire dance performance there on my third evening — a hundred men in chequered sarongs chanting hypnotically around a coconut-shell fire, the Ramayana unfolding in the flickering light. I paid 100,000 rupiah (about £5) and sat front row, completely transfixed.

The rice terraces at Tegallalang I visited at sunrise on a borrowed bicycle, cycling the 3km uphill through cool morning mist, arriving just as the light began catching the stepped edges of the paddies in graduated greens and golds. I ate breakfast at a little warung perched on the terrace edge — scrambled eggs and toast and a fruit platter for 40,000 rupiah. Two days later I did the Campuhan Ridge Walk at golden hour, a 9km trail along a jungle ridge, just me and a handful of photographers chasing the light.

For cooking, I took a class at Paon Bali — picked up fresh ingredients at the morning market at 8am (snake beans, galangal, shrimp paste, lemongrass), then cooked a full Balinese feast of nine dishes in an open-air kitchen. I've since tried to replicate the black rice pudding at home. I've failed every time.

Week two I rented a scooter properly and went exploring. South to Kuta (chaotic, touristy, exactly what you'd expect, one afternoon was enough) and then east to Amed, a quiet fishing village on the northeast coast where I snorkelled over the USS Liberty shipwreck just offshore — coral heads growing from a 120m cargo ship, batfish and sea turtles weaving through the hull. I slept in a bungalow ten metres from the black sand beach for £18 a night at Amed Cafe Bungalow and ate grilled fish every evening at the beach shacks.

The Tirta Empul holy spring temple was a genuine spiritual experience — pilgrims queuing to submerge themselves in the purification pools, priests in white and gold, offerings floating in the emerald water. I waded in in my rented sarong and let the cold spring water pour over my head from the carved stone spouts. Whatever I expected to feel, I felt something.

Final week I based myself in Seminyak for the beach stretch. The W Bali Seminyak is expensive and worth every cent — a pool villa that opened directly onto a garden that led to another pool that led to the beach. I watched the Seminyak sunset from Potato Head Beach Club with a Bintang beer and thought seriously about never leaving. I surfed at Kuta three mornings running with a local instructor called Made who had me standing up (badly) by day two. I ate the best roast chicken of my life at Naughty Nuri's in Seminyak — a half-chicken with honey-chilli glaze, rice and a cold Bintang, 85,000 rupiah. On my last night I had a four-hour dinner at Locavore in Ubud, a Michelin-starred tasting menu using only Balinese ingredients. Twelve courses, wine pairing, the most technically extraordinary meal I've eaten anywhere. I took a taxi back to Seminyak afterwards and lay on my villa terrace listening to the ocean.

Getting home was a Scoot flight from Denpasar back to Singapore, then a connecting Singapore Airlines flight onward. I sat at the gate in Denpasar watching the last of the sunset over the apron and felt genuinely, entirely bereft.