2007 ° I bought a t-shirt at Legian. It reads "iPot: trip to heaven." The words are framed in a bright green box with a graphic outline of a palmately compound leaf in white. It looked fresh, typographically playful, and generally harmless to wear. Next morning, on the Kuta beach, the surfs are three times taller than what we saw four days ago, and as the others bobbed up and down the rolling waves, a Surinamese came by, telling me that he found my t-shirt fanciful. "Hey, iPot! Good stuff... Trip to heaven!" An experienced surfer zig-zagged his way over the waters for a terrific ten, fifteen seconds, until the wave broke, and he dived. The stranger started fingering the image of the leaf - "This green looks nice, this leaf..." I can almost see his eyes glitter.

"You smoke pot?" I asked.

"No, not really, but I used to, just a little," he answered, a bit of smile leaking off the corner of his lips.

I swiftly pulled out my point two two from the holster hidden under my board shorts, and pressed the barrel against his temple. "Alright, hands in the air - you are under arrest," I announced, like a cop who hadn't game a single bug for years, finally getting close, for once, to toying with the idea of a promotion from a beach head mission. But the bugger already sensed it coming, so he spun around almost immediately, his messy dreadlocks brushing against my face - which felt like escalator bristles - and surprisingly enough, I smelt shampoo! so they do wash their hair... He dished up sand and splattered it on my face; by the time I recovered my vision, he was deep in the surfs, probably ripped far out by an undertow, riding over the swells of the ocean in the rhythm of some marijuana high.

Or so I imagined, as I kicked sand while surveying the baking pan of quartz and saltwater. Ladies, ladies, all flat on the beach, some with straps undone and a few sunny sides up. A little over mid-morning, half-boiled becomes fried chow tar. I simply don't understand the logic of reading under the blistering sun, bosoms unguarded - but it sure explained my undivided attention; I was trying to analyse that.

The King and I walked into Hard Rock Hotel and unpretentiously dropped ourselves into the very big pool. Yes, I meant Hard Rock Hotel, Bali, designed by Mr. Chan Sau Yan, right off Kuta beach. After an hour or more dipped in chlorine, we walked into the spa, water dripping off our wet shorts, and asked for a sixty minutes massage (thirty percent discount if you bring a friend).

Move four squares back on the calendar. go to Jimbaran bay, smell the seafood warungs before heading up the Four Seasons Hotel. 2005 was the year bombs went off in this area. The beach was inscribed with interesting curve patterns as the sand grinds the volcanic ash with each ebb and flow; or so we assumed with our elementary geography. Further along the beach, tiny little crabs tunnel through the soft sand, and array miniscule balls of excavated earth in tidy rows around the hole, forming incredible graphic patterns. Then even further, we thought we found sacred writings on the beach - curly patterns are lighted scribed onto the sand, with no apparent repetitive patterning, and at such massive extents it couldn't have been the work of some totally-bored-to-death toddler on a family trip to happy-tropical-Bali. There was no trace of what caused this patterns. Soon we arrive at some colourful cabanas, the candleholders sculpted in the same curvilinear strokes we saw earlier. We inspected the magnificent landscaping of Made Wijaya, snapped pics of the infinity pool, and left the strange wonders of quietly quiet Jimbaran, by heading towards Uluwatu.

At the southern Pura, we witnessed sunset by the cliff before watching the Kecak Dance made famous by the Garuda Airlines ads seen on TV a few thousand years ago, although it really only started in the 1930s. It was probably the longest single-syllable song I've ever heard, with only "tjak", "tjak" and more "tjak", exotic masks, costumes and gestures, and generally a Ramayana-in-a-nutshell outdoor play, with very entertaining cast especially Ravana and Hanuman. Whether you are looking for ethnomusicology, trance, spiritual mysticism, old school epic narration, modern drama concepts or just stage entertainment where the characters will hop around and sit beside you posing while your friend snaps a quick photo, in the middle of the dance, it's got something for everyone, except that there's no musical instrument - every sound heard is a cappella.

And the montage of past, present, and future tenses within one drama is not just found in the drama, but in Bali at large. There are detailed documentations of the surf tides of the Balinese beaches, so its quite impressionable when you see really serious, tanned beach animals from various reefed coasts of the world unloading their professional boards from their bikes and scout the beach for a good set-off point. Then there are the expensive hotels and upmarket restobars, surfwear shops, half naked people and sun shades; halfway along these stretches of glazed shopfronts and air-conditioned comfort, there are stone-stacked shrines here and there, in every corner and at every key junction or traffic island. Inland, there's the rice-growing, basket-weaving, woodcarving, stoneworking, oil-painting, batik-printing, gamelan-playing and silversmithing side of Bali. So graphically you have a lot of organic patterns in the collage - there's Billabong, Ripcurl, Quicksilver, Surfer Girl, and that already internationalised graffiti script, and there's Arabic, Indonesian, Hindu and Buddhist iconography in both serious and non-serious contexts; and the sarong one wears to temples also doubles up as a beach mat. Along the streets, fresh offerings are placed on the sidewalks each morning so everyone is forced to practise mindful walking every minute of the day. It is a beautiful place, but somehow we were glued to Discovery Channel about a third of our time there; maybe because of the heat.

Move one step forward on the calendar. Add Batujimbar to the itinerary (yes, I meant Batujimbar by Mr Geoffrey Bawa). The cabby drops you at the cafe. You head straight into the houses, telling the guard you are looking for the agent, and that an appointment has been scheduled and you need immediate access. A water tower marks the minor road junction. You pass through a walled lane with frog sculptures on both sides, probably inspired by the Jenggala prince legend. As the boundary walls are discontinuous, you pass through gaps to enter somewhere between House No. Seven to Nine, where a Wantilan pavilion with spiral stairs inside awaits you. If anyone asks again, say you just had tea at the cafe and wanted to head for the beach but got lost - let someone guide you around in all courtesy and ask if they mind if you snap a pic or two of the pavilions and the gardens around. In case the person you bump into appears to be the owner, mention some arbitrary names to put yourself out of predicament - try David, or Kerry, for instance.

And before you give yourself away - agents don't work weekends.

If you ever successfully make your way to the beach by passing through one of those gateways cleanly split into two symmetrical sides, but the owner is still eyeing your whereabouts, you can try hitting the waters to evade attention - just keep to the four seconds rule. Remember that Sanur beach is ankle-deep only for about point two to point three nautical miles seawards, so you'll have to stay low by leopard-crawling in shallow waters. Keep going for about half a nautical mile southwards, and you should roughly be out of radar range. Drift aground, look around, and you'll find some beach recliners and umbrellas awaiting you. In fact, a well-dressed waiter might just come to offer you a towel. Welcome to Bali Hyatt. Warmed by the helpfulness, you come up with a wonderful plan for the evening. You asked the concierge to arrange transport for the next three hours - it brings you to Tanah Lot for sunset. you ask to be dropped at Kuta instead, saying you will make your way back by your own after some drinks at, say, Maccaroni. You murmur some room number, and that the bill be settled when you check out tomorrow. But you never return.

Move the pawn another square forward on the calendar. Force yourself to wake up by 1am. For some preconceived reasons a van arrives at your bed-and-breakfast hotel and picks you up for a trip up north - to Mount Batur. You start the climb at about three, you reach the top around five, you watch sunrise at about six, and just when the colour saturation comes to its best, your camera runs out of battery. Which means you are freed from analysing the space around you in terms of framing and zooming. That’s when you begin realising the mountain on the other side is actually Mount Agung, that you are on an active volcano, and that you ought to have brought along a jacket for the climb.

And what a way to end the trip, spending the final night at Seminyak with a trip down Ku De Ta. We took no more than twenty minutes to soak in all the ambience, exteriors and interiors. Needless to consider reviewing the menu, it was conclusively atas - good to see, not good to stay. So we had nasi padang at the typical warungs instead, complete with sate and Fanta, and a lot of sweating from the sambal. It reminds me of the little trek we took to get from Goa Gajah to Yehpulu. It's not necessarily comfortable, but it leads to something that certainly isn't contrived Bali.

Of course, there's Ubud. We visited the Alila, and the Neka Art Museum. We couldn't hear the rice growing, but we did see the terraces. Times like this you feel you haven't quite been on a holiday at all, reporting on places that you ought to see because someone probably said so.

But hey, it’s all written in Lonely Planet.

* Disclaimer - set in Bali, all events and characters mentioned are fictional. Any similarities or semblances to real persons or occurrences are purely coincidental and unintentional.

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