The soul destination of my summer has at last been met. Three months spent in park in London, fuelling with funds from a summer job, I’ve finally completed the journey across the Peninsula to Bali.

It has always been a dream of mine to go to Bali, yet Bali has always seemed an exotic and evasive place. A treasure chest of rice fields, pearly beaches and smiling people, the key has always been hidden from me. Maybe its intangibility has something to do with the 16 hour flight (not including layover time) and the hefty price tag that naturally accompanies this. But, when it came to making summer plans in March, logistics were for once not priorities.

Arriving late at night in Kuta, the centre of Bali’s booming tourist industry, we had two options: to either catch up with the thrash of drunken party-goers or to check in to a hostel and sleep off the effects of the long flight. Opting for the latter, we soon realised we had made our first mistake. Having surrendered our sensibilities on the plane, lured into sleeping by the soft lighting, eye masks and reclining chairs of Qatar Airways, it wasn’t until we were happily cocooned in our hostel bunks that it became clear that no amount of willing would send us to sleep when it was only 3pm back at home.

In an attempt to tire ourselves out we took a walk through the streets of Kuta, but despite being every bit as brash as the guidebooks say, even the overwhelming glare from the lights of fast food chains and seedy cat-calls from passing motorbikes couldn’t tame our growing restlessness.

At around 4:30am we gave up, and heading to the lobby of our hotel room to get wifi we decided it was about time to devise some sort of plan to structure our month in Bali. Having decided early on to be spontaneous about our travels, we sketched out a rough route on the plane, beginning on the west coast and working our way down through Bali, with visits to some Indonesia’s many islands dispersed inbetween.

However, here we made our second mistake: high season in Bali means things get booked. Accommodation in the North Kuta region is disorienting enough on its own, being spread out across long distances, without the added hassle of only the scrapings of the accommodation barrel being left on airbnb. Rather than stay another night in the chaos of Kuta therefore, we re-routed, going back to basics by heading straight to Ubud, the iconic heart of the island.

So as soon as day broke, or for many in Kuta, as the night was just drawing to a close, we headed out of the hostel in search of a bus to Ubud, with the hopes that there ‘x’ would mark the spot.