The pool at Mandapa resort near Ubud, overlooking rice paddies, jungle, and river

There are places in the world that impress you the first time you visit them. Then there are places that keep drawing you back because they make you feel something very special. Bali is one of those places for us.

What we love most about Bali is its extraordinary natural beauty. The island is impossibly green. There are towering palms, rivers cutting through deep jungle, volcanic mountains that seem to appear out of nowhere, and rice terraces sculpted into hillsides that look more like works of art than farms.

The path through rice paddies to get from the pool to our room

Got a hair cut!

Our view of the river from lunch. This may well be the same river where we first tried white water rafting 30 years ago.

But the beauty isn’t just natural. The Balinese have an almost remarkable devotion to beauty itself. Every morning, tiny offerings of flowers appear outside homes, shops, temples, and restaurants. Shrines are draped with fresh cloth. Gates are carved with astonishing detail. Even ordinary places seem to have been designed with an eye toward grace.

We’re not remotely spiritual people, but it’s impossible not to notice the spirituality here. It isn’t tucked away inside churches or reserved for holidays. It seems woven into everyday life. The island has an atmosphere that suggests the sacred and the ordinary comfortably coexist. I once heard that the Balinese are the only people in the world who believe the afterlife is very much like the place they live now.

One thing that surprised us this trip was the weather. We’ve always visited Bali during our own winter, when it’s also Bali’s rainy season. It’s always very hot and humid, which is okay because we are escaping winter at home and we enjoy cooling off by a nice pool. But here we are in July, during the dry season, and the climate is perfection. Days have been in the 70s and low 80s with little humidity. Even more of a tropical paradise.

When you move from place to place things looks rather chaotic. It’s a relatively small island — about twice the size of Rhode Island — but home to well over four million people, making it one of the most densely populated islands in Indonesia. Drive almost anywhere and you’ll find yourself inching along narrow roads packed with scooters, cars, delivery trucks, and an endless procession of little shops, workshops, cafés, and roadside businesses. There are stretches where it feels like one long, endless town.

Then, almost without warning, you turn down a side road.

Suddenly the traffic disappears. The noise fades. You’re surrounded by towering bamboo, ancient banyan trees, emerald rice paddies, rushing rivers, and temples that seem to emerge naturally from the landscape. Every village seems to have several temples. Every valley seems more beautiful than the last. It’s astonishing how quickly Bali can transform from chaotic to serene.

Bali is also home to innumerable wonderful places to stay. From stylish boutiques to ultra high-end resorts, the choices are almost daunting. We decided to divide our stay into 6 stays of 5 or 6 nights each, giving us half a dozen experiences in hotels and parts of the island with very different personalities. After our initial stay in quiet Eastern Bali, we’ve now moved to our first stop in the Ubud area, the physical center and spiritual heart of the island.

Jim crosses the rice paddy

A heavenly lunch overlooking the river

One day we walked 10 minutes down the chaotic Main Street to a neighboring resort for lunch

And quickly stepped into yet another stunning and peaceful landscape

Walking past one of the ubiquitous temples after lunch

Can’t stop taking pictures of this landscape

Another day we walked to a lunch place overlooking this beautiful spot. We ordered a bottle of rosé but were quite surprised when the lovely waitress tried to serve it. She kept struggling to twist the top off the bottle, until Jim explained that it required a corkscrew.

The temple on the grounds of our resort

The pool in our room after a quick afternoon rain storm rushed in. The river rushes by just below the pool, and we frequently hear the excited shouts of the rafters going past.

The resort has a special beauty under the sudden rain storm

Crossing the rice paddy

The entrance to our room

We really love Bali

Donning pink shirt and pink-striped socks, and I’m ready to settle into the beach cabana that was to be our home most days at Amankila

We first came to Bali in 1996, 30 years ago. We loved it then and it’s a place we love coming back to. A Buddhist island in the world’s largest Moslem country – and the fourth largest country in the world after India, China, and the U.S. – it’s an island of incredible beauty, happy people, great tourist infrastructure, and often amazing food. We’re spending four-plus weeks on the island with six stops, all in beautiful resorts. It should be an extremely relaxing journey.

First, though, we had to get out of New York City. We’d waited until after the Fourth of July semiquincentennial celebrations, forgetting back when we were planning the trip that Trump would of course totally screw up what should have been a unifying national celebration. And on top of that on July 1, the day we normally leave for our summer vacation, the weather turned brutally hot in the city – a couple days with temperatures over 100 degrees. Definitely could have missed that.

Finally on the evening of of July 5th we set out on an 18-and-a-half hour flight to Singapore, the longest flight in the world, before connecting to Bali. Not so fast, though: a big thunderstorm stranded us on the tarmac for something like two-and-a-half hours, not exactly what you’re looking forward to when waiting to set off on the longest flight in the world. The delay, of course, meant that we would miss our connecting flight, further delaying our arrival in Bali. And as though that weren’t enough when we finally got to Bali my suitcase didn’t. Ugh. Not a great start.

View of the beach area from half-way down the hill. There were three pools above us and the one down there, plus of course the beach. Altogether 292 steps from our room to the beach, but they had buggies if you were lazy.

From there though things got way better. First stop for six nights was Amankila, part of the Aman chain on the east coast of the island. It is perhaps the premier hotel/resort chain in the world and we were pretty excited to stay there. And once my bag arrived the next morning we were set.

The resort was every bit as beautiful as we could have hoped, with service that was nearly perfect. It was all set on a steep hill above the Lombok Strait (Lombok being a neighboring island that we visited in 2014) with a variety of pools and a very private beach. Our days consisted of an early breakfast, then down to the beach where individual cabanas provided all the privacy and comfort you could dream of. A couple hours of lounging and reading, then off to the gym for some exercise before lunch. Afternoon was more reading and napping, then dinner. Not a tough regimen to fall into.

Our beach faced the Lombok Strait. At one point during our stay I was confused whether Bali was in the Pacific or Indian Ocean. Turns out the north coast faces the Pacific while the southern part of the island faces the Indian Ocean. And the Lombok Strait is one of the main passageways to exchange water between the two oceans. On top of that, the Strait is remarkably deep, making it a great resting place for these container ships waiting for their next assignment.

There was one off-resort excursion, dinner in a nearby town at Vincent’s, a jazz club that got pretty good reviews. It was definitely cheaper than eating at the resort but the food wasn’t that good while the music and ambience weren’t any better. So we stayed on the resort for the rest of the visit. Fortunately there were three restaurants available so we didn’t really get too bored with our options.

One thing that I found remarkable was that, oddly, we had almost no jet lag. I mean, Bali is 12 hours ahead of New York so you just can’t get further away. Yet by the second day I was sleeping until 5:30 or even 6:00 AM which is just about ideal. So we’ve settled in pretty well here. (Note about that 12-hour time difference. I’m writing this the night after Trump’s stupid, lying speech about election security. I wanted to know when it started so I asked ChatGPT. It said that the speech was set to start at 9:00 PM EDT, so in Bali that would be 9:00 AM Saturday. Umm, no, 9:00 PM on Thursday in DC is 9:00 AM on FRIDAY in Bali, not Saturday. Important lesson about trusting AI!)

The view from our typical lunch restaurant on the beach. I’m not sure I’d ever obsessed about the evolutionary genius of these palm trees, unbelievably tall yet remarkably stable even in heavy winds. How can something that long and thin hold up?

From here we had towards Ubud, the heart and cultural center of the island. Very different from the beach vibe here but, based on our earlier visits, someplace we’re pretty excited about.

Mark with a bowl of gazpacho and glass of rosé for lunch

The view from our private pool across the Strait

More resort beauty

One afternoon on the beach I watched these guys hauling a big old stump through the water heading … somewhere

But then they had to bring it ashore. Turns out floating it was a LOT easier than dragging it across the beach. I mean, that’s how they moved heavy things in medieval Europe!

Reading at low-ish tide

And settling in for for my morning read

Mark liked these piggies decorating the lunch restaurant

And finally, when we think of Bali the most remarkable thing is that the Balinese take beauty very seriously. Here you will see they even decorate the urinals with frangipani flowers. That is taking beauty seriously.

Cooling off in our cute little pool

To close out our trip through Bali we rented another villa, this time in the bustling, touristy, (comparatively) upscale town of Seminyak in the southwest part of the island. We were in Seminyak back in 2014 and stayed at a great resort, but this time we were on a mission: is this the sort of place where we would come back to rent a villa for an extended winter stay?

The short answer is no. I found myself longing for Lovina, the small town feel, the huge villa, the rice paddies, the great household staff. Now, our villa in Seminyak was certainly nice. It consisted of three separate buildings, a mostly open air living area (walls on just two sides, consisting of kitchen, living room, and dining room) and two separate one-bedroom buildings with attached open-air bathrooms. And of course a nice little pool. Absolutely nothing not to like.

This is the living area from our villa. The kitchen is behind that little fake wall, and the dining area is around the corner. It was a great combination of indoor/outdoor living, with no wall at all separating you from the pool area.

Except the noise from the neighboring villa. The property is built to two identical, separate villas or, if you open a gate between them, a four-bedroom space with two pools. The first two days we were there, though, some young partying Aussies were renting the other space and they were loud. Loud. The big cement wall between the properties provided all the privacy you could want, but their music just went right up and over the wall. On the second day as they were blasting some heavy metal music I finally went over to ask them to turn it down. The music was so loud they couldn’t hear the doorbell so I had to wait until the song was over and then knocked really loudly. To their credit their response was perfect: they immediately turned it off … and then left the next day. Couldn’t ask for anything more.

It’s worth noting, of course, that the issue of noise went both ways. I like to listen to music at the pool, too, but felt pretty inhibited knowing that whoever moved in after the Aussies moved out were unlikely to welcome our music so we had to keep it down, a limitation that just didn’t exist in our isolated Lovina villa.

Back in 2013 when I was first contemplating retirement one of my concerns was just how lazy I might get with no obligations. One thing I learned in Bali was that the fear was well placed. I can get really lazy. I made breakfast every morning (the housekeeper was supposed to do that, but she explained when we arrived that she’d just had shoulder surgery so, well, we’d just have to take care of it ourselves), and even lunch half the time. Otherwise, I was just lazy; on a couple occasions I realized when we’d go out to dinner that it was the first time all day I’d been out of the compound. Pathetic.

With this pool and the comfy loungers, why would I do, well, anything?

There was plenty to like about Seminyak. There was the grocery store I’d been hoping to find in Lovina. Nothing that would pass muster in Cambridge, but pretty much everything I would have hoped for. Our villa was beautiful and relaxing. And eventually we managed to find some good restaurants. Sip, a genuinely authentic French restaurant, was a standout, as was Rolling Fork, a tiny, cool Italian place. Even a classy bar where we could have cocktails and dinner.

And while on the subject of entertainment in Seminyak, can’t forget the entertaining drag shows

Ultimately, though, I can’t really imagine going back for an extended stay. The town is just too crazy/busy/touristy for my taste, crowded and hot. The crowds and traffic and noise and sprawl just go on and on and on for miles. The beach is a 20-minute walk from where we stayed which wouldn’t generally be such an issue except that the first few days we were there it would rain every hour or so, sometimes reasonably hard. Then it would clear up and be beautiful … and then it would rain again. No problem in our villa but if we’d made the trek to the beach we would have gotten rained out pretty quickly.

In that sense, then, it was a successful stop: I learned I don’t want to do it again, at least for more than a week. Apparently the search for the perfect winter hideaway continues. Unless we already found it in Puerto Vallarta.

At any rate, that’s it for Bali. From here it’s north to Bangkok where we hope to get a 10-year visa for China (10 years!) and then, visa gods permitting, we’re off to China.

Sip, a great French restaurant in a classy setting, very un-Seminyak-ish

Don’t believe me that it was authentic French? Here’s the steak tartare to prove it, with Mark’s rack of lamb in the background.

And Rolling Fork, a little quirkier, not as flashy, but great food

Before dinner we’d enjoy music and a little Absolut on the rocks

After dinner there was always a show if we were up for it

Never enough pictures of Mark with a kitty

And finally the beach. The weather cleared up near the end of our stay but by then we were too spooked by the frequent rainstorms and never came down here except to take pictures.