Bali — Seminyak, Ubud & Nusa Dua

A wide, open beach with real surf and no reef in front of it, which is why the sunsets here are the ones people photograph. Beanbags come out on the sand in the late afternoon and stay until dark.

• Watch the sunset from the sand
• Walk north towards Petitenget temple
• Eat at one of the beachfront kitchens

The beach that started Bali's tourism, still the easiest place on the island to take a first surf lesson. The break is gentle and there are boards and instructors along the whole length of the sand.

• Try a beginner surf lesson
• Walk the promenade to Legian
• Browse the shops along Jalan Pantai Kuta

One of the six sea temples that guard Bali, sitting on a cliff edge about seventy metres above the surf. The walkway along the headland gives the best view, and a troop of long-tailed macaques lives on it.

• Walk the cliff-edge path
• See the split gate and the shrine
• Watch the surf break far below

A retelling of an episode from the Ramayana performed in the open-air amphitheatre next to Uluwatu temple. There are no instruments — the rhythm comes from a circle of men chanting, and the final scene is danced around a real fire as the sun sets.

• Take your reserved seat early for the sunset
• Watch the Hanuman fire scene
• Photograph the amphitheatre against the sea

The headland shaped like a dinosaur's spine, with a white beach at the bottom of a two-hundred-metre drop. Almost everyone stops at the clifftop viewpoint; the path down is a steep, unmade scramble and takes about an hour each way.

• Photograph the headland from the viewpoint
• Walk part of the ridge path
• Take the descent only in dry weather and proper shoes

A collapsed sea cave that left a circular bay with a natural arch through the cliff, and a clear rock pool beside it that fills and drains with the swell.

• Walk the rim of Broken Beach
• Look for manta rays in the bay below
• See the billabong at low tide

A sheltered west-facing cove with clear water and a reef close to shore — the one beach on Penida that is easy to get into and swim from.

• Swim or snorkel over the reef
• Late lunch at a warung on the sand
• Rest before the boat back

A sea temple built on a rock offshore, cut off from the mainland at every high tide. It is a working temple, so visitors stay on the rock and the shoreline rather than going up into the shrine.

• Walk out to the rock at low tide
• See the Batu Bolong arch along the cliff
• Follow the clifftop path to the viewpoints

Twenty-seven acres of forest in the middle of Ubud, with three temples inside it and several hundred Balinese long-tailed macaques living around them. Paved paths run down through the trees to a river gorge and a stone bridge.

• Walk the ravine path and the dragon bridge
• See the fourteenth-century temple complex
• Keep food and loose items out of sight

The two-storey market opposite the royal palace, selling the woodcarving, batik and basketwork made in the villages around Ubud. Bargaining is normal and expected.

• Buy woodcarving or batik
• Look across at Puri Saren palace
• Walk Jalan Raya for the galleries

Steep valley slopes cut into narrow paddy steps and watered by the subak system, a cooperative irrigation network the Balinese have run through their temples for a thousand years. Paths drop from the roadside cafés down into the terraces.

• Walk down into the paddies
• See the bamboo subak channels
• Coffee on the terrace edge

From the village of Penelokan on the caldera rim you look straight across at Mount Batur, an active volcano that last erupted in this century, with Lake Batur curled around its base. Mornings are clear; cloud usually closes in by mid-afternoon.

• Lunch at a restaurant on the rim
• Photograph the crater and lake
• See the old lava fields on the slope

A temple built around a natural spring at Tampaksiring, where Balinese Hindus have come to bathe for purification since the tenth century. Spouts run along two rectangular pools and worshippers move down the line one at a time.

• Watch the purification ritual from the walkway
• See the spring bubbling up in the source pool
• Wear the sarong provided at the entrance

A sheltered lagoon behind the reef, which is why every operator on the island runs from this one beach. Banana boat, jet-ski, parasailing, sea walking and a glass-bottom boat out to Turtle Island all leave from the same jetties.

• Parasailing over the lagoon
• Glass-bottom boat to Turtle Island
• Jet-ski or a banana-boat ride

White sand and shallow, reef-protected water — the calmest swimming on the island and a complete contrast to the surf at Kuta. A paved promenade runs the length of it past the water blow, a cliff spout where the swell fires up through the rock.

• Swim in the flat water
• Walk the promenade to the water blow
• Last evening by the sea