Sightseeing in Bali

Sightseeing in Bali is mostly temples, and it helps to know that they are working buildings, not museums. Tanah Lot sits on a rock that the tide cuts off twice a day; Uluwatu clings to a cliff seventy metres above the sea and stages the kecak fire dance at sunset, when a hundred men chant instead of a gamelan. Besakih, on the slope of Mount Agung, is the mother temple — the only one that survived the 1963 eruption when lava passed within metres of it. A sarong is required at all of them and is handed out at the gate.

Ubud is the other centre and works on foot. The Monkey Forest, the royal palace, the Saraswati water temple and the art museums sit within a few blocks, and the Tegallalang rice terraces are twenty minutes north — carved into the hillside and still irrigated by the subak system, a cooperative of farmers that UNESCO listed because it has run on the same rules since the ninth century.

Sightseeing tours in Bali usually chain three or four sites into a day, and the chaining matters more than the sites: Bali is small but the roads are slow, and two temples on opposite coasts can eat six hours of driving. Ask which route the tour takes before booking. Best light is early morning; by ten the coaches reach Tanah Lot and Tegallalang, and the rice terraces in particular are worth seeing before they fill.