Bali

What Bali is actually like

Bali rewards travellers who get out of the Kuta strip. Ubud's terraces are genuinely quiet before 8am, the north coast has some of the best diving in Southeast Asia, and a private villa in the rice fields costs less than a mid-range hotel back home. The trade-off is traffic — Seminyak to Ubud can take two hours on a bad afternoon, so we plan routes around that rather than pretending it isn't there.

Worth building the trip around

• Sunrise trek up Mount Batur
• Private villa with a rice-field view
• A full day at Nusa Penida's cliffs
• Ubud's morning market before the tour buses arrive