Leave before six. The lane outside is still cool, and the day’s first offerings sit on the gateposts — palm leaf, a flower, a stick of incense burning down. The morning market is a ten minute ride. Ice blocks sweat on the concrete. Women stack snake fruit and mangosteen into pyramids, and the fish come in flat baskets, still bright. Buy fruit for later. Eat a rice parcel standing up.
North of the market the shophouses thin out and the fields begin. Park the bike at the edge of a lane and walk in. The paths are narrow, packed earth on top of the bunds, wide enough for one. Water moves through the channels with a sound like a tap left running. Ducks work the flooded plots. Herons lift off when you get close, then settle again forty metres on.
By nine the light goes hard and the air thickens. There are small warungs at the field edges — four tables, a kettle, a fan. Order kopi tubruk and let the grounds settle. It comes sweet unless you say otherwise. Somewhere behind you a rooster in a bamboo cage, a radio, a strimmer in the grass. Sit long enough and a farmer will nod at the empty chair opposite.
Canggu is three kilometres on, and the change is abrupt: concrete, surfboard racks, hoardings, traffic that stops for nothing. Ride through it to the sand. The beach here is dark grey, almost black, and it holds the heat — wear something on your feet. Surf schools work the inside break in a line of orange rash vests. Watch for twenty minutes from the wall. Then go and find shade.
The sun drops fast this close to the equator — twenty minutes from gold to gone.
Lunch at a beach warung, the kind with a tin roof and plastic chairs sunk slightly into the sand. Nasi campur is the safe order and usually the best one — rice, a spoon of everything, sambal on the side that you should treat with respect. Fish comes grilled over coconut husk, salted, with lime. A young coconut afterwards, cold, opened with three strokes of a cleaver.
The hours after two belong to nobody. Take the back lanes rather than the main road — they run between walled compounds, past school gates and a temple with a banyan growing through the corner of its wall. Dogs sleep in the middle of the tarmac and do not move for you. If you are back at the resort by three, the pool is quiet and the gardens smell of cut grass.
Seminyak beach is five minutes from the gate. Go at half past five. The sellers come along the tideline with cold beer in buckets, and someone always has a kite up. The sun drops fast this close to the equator — twenty minutes from gold to gone. Stay for the part afterwards, when the sky goes the colour of a bruise and the beach empties out.
Ride home in the dark with sand still on your ankles. The lane back to the resort is lit by the odd bare bulb over a warung counter. De’ Kesambi serves until late, and the garden tables are cooler than the room. Order something simple. The day has already given you what it had — a market at six, a heron, a fish over husk, twenty minutes of gold.