BALI

The affordability of this soulful island makes it attractive to South Africans. Julia Freemantle spent a month there

gentle because there’s nothing aggressive about Bali – the physical effect it has is instantaneous. From the moment I stepped out of the doors of Denpasar’s Ngurah Rai Airport, I was hit by a wave of heat and humidity so intense it was palpable. In that moment I realised how completely unequipped I was for the climate, having parted ways with my luggage somewhere in Dubai.

Late at night, with no shops open and clad in plane-friendly jeans and sneakers, it was the first of many lessons in the Indonesian art of going with the flow. Despite the discomfort, I couldn’t help but be swept up in the sheer tropicality of my surroundings – something I had gone specifically in search of.

Deciding to escape the South African winter and make the most of my freelance status,

I’d come across Unsettled on social media – a group of global nomads who live and work (for brief periods of time) in different locations around the world. I was drawn to the idea of shaking things up and relocating for a month, with a community of sorts to fall back on but no hard and fast structure (and as a solo female traveller, the safety net appealed).

I was based in Ubud in central Bali, with the freedom to explore the rest of the tiny ‘island of the gods’ – a name that initially seemed overstated but that proved in keeping with the profusion of deities and idyllic lifestyle on offer. Ubud is a spiritual and cultural centre; a jungly maze of narrow streets, moss-covered temples and yoga studios interspersed with family compounds and palm-fringed rice paddies. It has also become a hotspot for remote-working expats, entrepreneurs, yogis and artists looking for an alternative way of life at a slower pace – tropical paradise with Wi-Fi. Ubud offers a real sense of everyday Bali, along with the trappings you’d expect from a place where 80 per cent of the economy is built on the tourist trade.

Bali as a whole is both exactly as you expect it to be, and much more multi-faceted. There are the iconic island motifs – palm trees, rice terraces, impossibly blue seascapes, foodthieving monkeys. But there are also some unexpected anomalies, such as how oddly prolific Italian food is, and the occasional Afrikaans-sounding word on signage (a relic of the Dutch East Indies in the early 1800s). Some details brought special delight, like the daily spiritual offerings at the entrance to every household and place of business or worship.

Our Unsettled community quickly fell into an easy routine – each day starting with breakfast at our villa: a cup of thick, grainy Balinese coffee, which I came to love; spicy nasi goreng (stir-fried rice) and fresh watermelon juice, served always with such grace and attention to detail it made every meal a ritual.

Breakfast was usually followed by a few hours at the nearby co-working space – hushed and cool, filled with people from all over the world working different time zones under the turning fans. With some focus, I could have everything done before South Africa had risen six hours behind us, and head to the pool where holidaymakers would already be drinking beers in the shallow end. An afternoon stroll to town for ice cream or a yoga class was followed by a daily catch-up and Bintang beers back at the villa. It was somehow much easier to find that work-life balance in Ubud, and everything fell into a rhythm.

Exploring on foot, we’d negotiate our way between the chaotic choreography of scooters, opportunistic monkeys and cars, past

Probably best described as a gentle assault on the senses –