Bali

Why go

People come to Bali for the wrong reasons and stay for the right ones. They arrive chasing the infinity pool and the swing over the valley; they leave remembering the smell of frangipani and clove smoke at six in the morning, before the island has put its face on. I came first to photograph the terraces and ended up keeping a house in Ubud, because the light here does something I have not found elsewhere in Southeast Asia — it rakes low across the paddy at dawn and turns standing water into sheets of beaten pewter, then climbs and goes flat and ordinary by nine. The whole drama is over by breakfast. Bali rewards the early riser and the patient one. Underneath the surf bars and the wellness retreats is an island still organised around its temples — there are tens of thousands of them, from clifftop sea temples to the small household shrine in every courtyard — and around the subak, the thousand-year-old water-sharing system that carves the hillsides into their famous steps. Come for the picture you have already seen. Stay for the hour around it.

When to go

The dry season runs roughly May to September; the wet, October to April. I shoot most in the shoulder months — late April, May, and September — when the paddies are green and worked but the worst of the July–August crowds have gone. Bali sits eight degrees south of the equator, so the sun is honest year-round: first light around 6am, the sun gone by 6:30pm, with no long European dusk. Golden hour is short and you must be in position before it, not arriving during it. The wet season is not a write-off — mornings are often clear, the rice is at its most luminous green, and afternoon storms make for dramatic skies — but roads flood and waterfalls run brown. Two dates worth planning around: Nyepi, the Day of Silence (usually March), when the entire island shuts down — no flights, no lights, nobody outdoors — a strange and beautiful thing to witness; and Galungan–Kuningan, the ten-day festival when towering penjor bamboo poles arch over every road. Check the Balinese Saka calendar before you book; both move yearly.

How to get there

You fly into Ngurah Rai International (DPS) in the south, near Kuta — most of Southeast Asia connects through Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, or Jakarta, and there are direct hauls from Australia and a handful of European and Gulf carriers. Clear immigration with a visa-on-arrival (around 500,000 IDR, roughly USD 35) or eVisa. Getting around is the real decision. For freedom and for reaching a terrace at dawn, rent a scooter (about 70,000–100,000 IDR a day) — but only if you genuinely ride; Bali's traffic is unforgiving and the crash statistics are grim, so wear the helmet and carry an international permit. Gojek and Grab apps handle car and bike rides cheaply in the south, though some areas restrict app-pickups to protect local drivers. My own method for shoot days is a private driver — 600,000–800,000 IDR for a full day, often the same person each trip, who knows which gate to the terraces opens first. Distances deceive: Ubud to Uluwatu looks short on the map and takes two hours in the wrong window. Plan around the traffic, not the kilometres.

Where to stay

Base yourself by the version of Bali you actually want. Ubud, inland and humid, is the cultural heart — temples, terraces, woodcarving villages — and where I keep a house; stay slightly out, in Penestanan or toward Tegalalang, to wake to ricefields rather than scooters. Canggu is the surf-and-laptop coast, dense with cafés and a younger crowd; good fun, heavy traffic, thinning charm. Seminyak is its glossier, pricier neighbour. For the cliffs and the cleanest sunsets, Uluwatu on the southern Bukit peninsula — limestone headlands, serious surf, sea temples. For quiet, go east: Sidemen, a green valley under Mount Agung that is the Ubud of twenty years ago, or Amed, a string of black-sand fishing villages where you dive in the morning and see almost no one. Sanur, on the east coast, is calm, flat, and unfashionable in the best way — older travellers, a gentle lagoon, good for slow mornings. Prices span everything from a 250,000-IDR guesthouse room to villas in the millions per night. My advice: pick two bases, north and south, and don't try to do it all from one.

What to eat

Eat at warungs — the small family kitchens — and you will eat better and pay a tenth of the resort price. The dish to find is babi guling, spit-roasted suckling pig rubbed with turmeric, lemongrass, and a fistful of spices; the famous address is Warung Babi Guling Ibu Oka in Ubud, though half the locals will point you somewhere quieter and better. Order nasi campur and you get a plate of rice ringed with small tastes — sate lilit (minced fish wound onto lemongrass), lawar, shredded chicken, sambal that will find you out. Bebek betutu, duck slow-cooked for hours in banana leaf, needs ordering ahead. Along the coast, grilled fish at a Jimbaran beach warung with your feet in the sand is worth the tourist markup once. For the sweet tooth: pisang goreng, fried banana, from any roadside cart, and black-rice pudding with palm sugar. Drink the kopi — thick, unfiltered Balinese coffee, grounds settling in the cup. A full warung meal runs 30,000–60,000 IDR; the same food plated in Seminyak, five times that. The terraces grow the rice; eat it where it's grown.

Things to do

Do less, and do it early. The Tegalalang terraces north of Ubud are the photographed ones — go at first light, before the entrance gates and the swing operators, when the only sound is water moving through the subak channels. For scale and quiet, the Jatiluwih terraces (UNESCO-listed, 600-odd hectares) reward a slow morning walk. Tirta Empul is a working water temple where Balinese come to bathe in the spring pools — watch respectfully, and only join the purification if you mean it. For sunset, the kecak fire dance at Uluwatu temple, performed on the cliff edge as the light goes, is theatrical but genuinely moving; the temple is 11th-century and the macaques are thieves, so hold your sunglasses. The Mount Batur sunrise hike is the cliché everyone does — a 2am start to stand on a volcano rim as the sun clears Lombok — and it is, honestly, worth the lost sleep once. But my own best Bali days are the unscheduled ones: a scooter into the Sidemen valley, no temple, no list, just the green going gold toward evening.