The route was Cluj to Bucharest, Bucharest to Doha, Doha to Bali. First time in Asia. First time on another continent alone. I wasn't scared exactly — Bali is one of the most well-trodden destinations for backpackers and digital nomads, so it's not like I was going somewhere genuinely remote. I was nervous in that quieter way you get when something is actually happening.
Then the flight from Doha got cancelled. I found out when I arrived at Bucharest airport. Two days' delay.
I thought about what to do with two unplanned days in Bucharest and then remembered: my parents were in Constanta — their summer holiday by the Black Sea. I hadn't told them where I was actually going. I'd said a hiking trip in Italy, which is vague enough to be plausible and specific enough not to invite follow-up questions. They're not opposed to my travelling — they just worry in ways that are hard to explain, and I wanted to have my own thoughts about this trip before managing their feelings about it too. So: Italy hiking trip. Sorry.
I went to Constanta. Two days of sea air and my parents not knowing I was about to fly to Indonesia. Then I was on track again — Bucharest, Doha, and this time the flight was almost full. At check-in they told me they might not have enough seats. My ticket was valid, nothing was technically wrong, but the seats were exhausted. For a while it looked like I'd be overnighting in Doha at their expense and catching a later flight. Then somehow a seat appeared. I got on the plane.
Eight hours later, Bali.
Arrived. Knocked out. Where am I. The answer is Bali, but Bali takes a moment to process.
I was too tired to feel anything specific. I got a taxi without getting scammed, found my hostel, got my backpack through the door in one piece. Then I discovered I'd accidentally booked a party hostel. The music started at around 11pm and didn't negotiate. I barely slept and started looking for somewhere else the next morning. I ended up in private rooms for most of Bali — the price difference from a dorm is often small enough not to matter, and sleeping is not optional when you also have to work.
First proper thing I did: got my nails done and went for a massage. Good decisions, both. Then I went out to eat and understood immediately why people lose their minds about the food here. I genuinely wanted to be more hungry just so I could eat more of it.
The offerings
The first morning, I nearly stepped on one. A small square of woven palm leaf, filled with flowers, rice, incense — placed directly on the pavement in front of a door. Then I noticed there was another one. And another. They were everywhere: on steps, on motorbikes, on shop counters, on the ground at the base of trees.
Every morning, placed exactly here. A gift for the gods. This happens across the whole island, every single day.
Canang sari — the Balinese daily offering. Made fresh each morning, placed with intention, and left. By afternoon they're crushed underfoot or scattered by the wind, but that's not the point. The point is the act of making them and placing them. The daily reminder that there is something larger than your to-do list. I started watching where I stepped.
The god who sat in my lap
Bali has ceremonies constantly — for births, deaths, harvests, transitions, gratitude, and probably several occasions I don't have the cultural vocabulary to name. I ended up participating in a few. At one of them, a deity figure was brought out — and apparently it chose to sit in my lap. That's lucky, people told me. I was inclined to believe them.
My first god. He had the expression of someone who already knew how the next few weeks were going to go. "Stay ready," he seemed to say. He was right.
There was something in the expression — amusement, maybe, or patience — that felt like a gentle heads-up. Things were going to get funny. Things were going to get complicated and strange and wonderful and occasionally absurd. I should stay ready. I was not ready. But I appreciated the warning.
Heaven, found
You find it eventually in Bali — the place that makes you understand why people keep coming back. For everyone it's different. For me it happened on a random afternoon, somewhere I hadn't planned to be, when the light was exactly right and everything went quiet for a moment.
Heaven. Found. The best place ever. Some things are better discovered than directed.
That feeling lasted maybe forty minutes before other people arrived and the mood shifted — but it stayed good, just different. That's Bali. Nothing stays perfectly quiet for long. But the forty minutes were real and I still have them.
Canggu
Everyone has opinions about Canggu — too touristy, too Instagram, not the real Bali. I heard all of it before I went, understood it when I arrived, and then sat in a café and had three ideas in a row. Whether the ideas were good is still unclear. But something about that neighbourhood makes your brain run faster.
Canggu. Chaotic, yes. Also: cafés that might change your life. Both things are true.
I spent about two weeks between Canggu and Ubud — the most accessible, most popular corners of the island. A good starting point. Then I started moving further out, a week in each region, to see what the rest of it was.
Luna Beach Club, with Mark
I'd made a friend — Mark — and we went to Luna Beach Club one evening. It was the kind of place that feels slightly out of context for Bali, designed and deliberate in a way that most of the island isn't. And yet it worked completely, at least that evening, at least at that hour. Bali is a big island and a diverse one. Luna Beach Club is proof that it contains multitudes.
Luna Beach Club with Mark. Unexpected. Good.
The horse. The price.
On the beach one afternoon I made more friends, we played frisbee, and then I looked up and there was a man riding a horse along the waterline. I stopped. I stared. I wanted to do exactly that more than I'd wanted anything in recent memory. Then I found the price list.
The price. The horse. The debate. You can probably guess how it went.
Bali does this regularly — presents you with something you didn't know you wanted and then makes you decide how much you actually want it. Good practice for life.
The family on the beach
Later, Mark and I went out on a scooter and came across a family praying on the beach. Not a ceremony we'd sought out or been directed to — we just turned up at the right moment. They were completely absorbed in it: offerings, flowers, the sea in front of them, complete focus on whatever they were giving thanks for.
A family on the beach, giving thanks to the universe. We watched from a distance and didn't say much afterwards.
We watched from a distance. It was the kind of thing that makes you go quiet. A whole family pausing together to say thank you — for what exactly I don't know, for everything probably — at the edge of the sea, at whatever hour it was, for as long as it took.
I thought about the god from earlier. The one who sat in my lap and looked like he already knew. Things had gotten funny. They'd also gotten warm and strange and occasionally overwhelming, in the best way.
This was just the beginning. I had the whole island still to go.
