Kuala Lumpur, Lombok and Bali

We landed late in the evening and took the train into the city, to a hotel in Bukit Bintang. Kuala Lumpur turned out to be a city of contrasts packed close together: glass towers and shopping malls, and a few streets away the old mosque of Masjid Jamek at the meeting of two rivers, Chinatown with the carved, crowded tower of the Sri Mahamariamman Hindu temple, and food courts that never seem to close.

On the second day we saw the modernist National Mosque and the Islamic Arts Museum, then spent the afternoon in the Bird Park among hornbills, peacocks, pelicans and scarlet ibises. Both evenings ended at the Petronas Towers, silver by day and glowing after dark.

A short flight took us east to Lombok, Bali’s quieter neighbour. Our hotel in Senggigi sat on the hill above the west coast, with a pool, a view of the sea and nothing in particular to do for two days, which was exactly the point.

Rinjani is Lombok’s volcano, 3,726 metres high, with a turquoise crater lake and a young cone smoking inside the caldera. We drove to Senaru on the northern slopes, saw the waterfalls in the afternoon and started climbing with a guide and porters around midnight.

We reached the crater rim at sunrise. Below us lay Segara Anak lake and the dark cone of Barujari, and beyond the ridges, far away, the sea. Then came the long way down through grassland, cloud and rainforest, in ponchos for part of it, ending with a cold dip at the foot of the Tiu Kelep waterfall.

From the harbour at Bangsal a boat took us to Gili Trawangan, a small coral island with no cars: you walk, cycle or ride in a cidomo, a little horse-drawn cart.

We spent a day on a snorkelling boat trip in the clear water around the island, and the evenings on the west coast, where the sun sets behind Bali’s mountains and the swings stand in the shallow water.

A fast boat and a long drive brought us to Ubud, the cultural heart of Bali. The first morning we cycled out past rice fields and villages to the terraces of Tegallalang; in the afternoon we wandered through the temples and the Monkey Forest.

The next day was a tour south of the town: the bathing pool and ancient carvings of Goa Gajah, under a banyan tree with roots like a frozen river, the Tegenungan waterfall, a butterfly park and a coffee tasting.

In the afternoon we headed west to Taman Ayun, the royal temple of Mengwi with its tall, many-roofed meru towers, and then up into the hills to Jatiluwih, where rice terraces cover whole hillsides. As we walked among them the clouds came down, and the day ended at a temple in the mist.

That evening we reached Kuta, the busy beach town in the south. We stayed just one night and spent the next day walking the long beach north towards Legian and Seminyak.

The last stop was Tanjung Benoa on the southern peninsula: a calm, sheltered beach and a hotel pool that looked best at night. For the last days we didn’t plan much more than that.

One afternoon we drove to the very south-west tip of Bali. The Uluwatu temple stands on a cliff seventy metres above the Indian Ocean, guarded by bold monkeys that steal sunglasses.

We watched the sunset from the beach at Dreamland and finished the day in Jimbaran, eating grilled fish and satay at tables on the sand.

The last full day was a beach day at Nusa Dua, with fine sand and clear water. The next afternoon we flew home via Dubai.