After having spent the last two weeks in Vacationland, it’s nice to be back in Real Life. Or is it? Real Life, that is.

I think I have some insights into this, but before I write more about Jakarta, I want to be fair to Bali, which is definitely Vacationland, but which maybe isn’t so terrible after all.

Ubud, which is about 37km north and slightly east of the airport in Denpasar, which means it will take you an hour and a half to get there from the airport by car when you arrive in Bali, is Vacationland and terrible. I’m certain of this. At least, it was for me.

Ubud is tourist central. They are everywhere, and Ubud is ready for them. There’s lots of high-end boutique shopping, posh restaurants where the service is impeccable and the food will be decent and not spicy, and if having a nice massage is your thing—and it should be—the options for this are limitless. The traffic is horrendous.

The tourists themselves tend to be European and deeply tanned. The ladies’ bras have clearly been left at home and side-boob is prominently displayed. The bros have spent a lot of time in the gym. Lots. If you want to see and be seen—and you want it now, daddy—Ubud is the place to be. We didn’t actually go to the places in Bali that are famous for their beautiful white-sand beaches—Kuta and Seminyak Beach, for example—because, after witnessing the scene in Ubud, we decided to stay far, far away from the other touristy places in Bali.

So we did what we always do: We rented a motorcycle and started driving until the scene and landscape became more enjoyable for us.

We started with day trips. We drove, for example, pretty much straight east to the coast and enjoyed a pleasant black-sand beach that we had pretty much all to ourselves except for the ladies who worked out there collecting the black pebbles they use for paving walkways around Bali and the one blonde who wasn’t going to let being on the wrong beach spoil her opportunity for achieving a deep, deep tan with no tan lines. None. On the way back from the beach we stopped at a waterfall, which, I admit, was glorious, that had the sort of resort that could be the location of one of those reality shows where they put a group of young and wildly attractive and vain people together and give them lots of alcohol and see who hooks up.

Next day we drove north into the hills to see the rice terraces. These, too, were glorious. And they had the benefit of there being not a t-backed woman or a jacked bro in sight. It was a nice drive. We got to stop for some roadside grilled meat and rice, which is the only way to eat when you’re on the road. And if driving by a primary school as the kids are mounting their motorbikes to head home doesn’t make you grin, I worry about the state of your soul. The kids are especially cool in Bali.

The problem with our day trips was that we’d always have to go back to Ubud and cope with the traffic and find someplace to eat and so on. So, problem solvers that we are, we decided to light out of Ubud for good, stopping first in the mountainous region of Munduk for a few days, then heading to the northern coast to a place called Lovina. The improvement was vast.

I particularly enjoyed Munduk because the ladies who ran the restaurants there were happy to let me into their kitchens, let me taste their hot peppers—”Balinese candy,” which nobody in Bali eats like candy—and teach me some of the tricks to Balinese cuisine. And the place we stayed in Lovina was nice because it had a large outdoor kitchen and a really well-stocked grocery store nearby so we could cook every night we were there. Lovina started to look particularly promising the last night we were there when we met Yoshiko, a fellow traveler from Japan who’s so interesting she will get an entire post devoted to her. Yoshiko was pretty disappointed that we were leaving because without her drinking buddies there she will no doubt be bored, bored, bored.

So here’s my final word on Bali: If you enjoy resorts and places that are totally set up for tourists, go to the tourist areas of Bali. They’re clean and beautiful and safe and fun for the whole family and relatively affordable. Plus, you can still, unlike in most resorts, experience some of the local culture. If you’re more adventurous, you can rent a motorbike and drive around the island and see and do things that are pretty special. And if you’re an avid motorcyclist who’s waited all your life to get into some truly tight twisties and switchbacks in the mountains, it’s hard to argue with Bali.

If you’re as adventurous as I am, you will enjoy much of your time in Bali, but you will still likely be a bit bored. Because you will want the sorts of extreme experiences with people and cultures you’ve had elsewhere. And I’m not talking stuff like skydiving, etc. Some people are adrenaline junkies. I am an intimacy junky. I enjoy raw experiences. And Vacationland is no place for someone like me.

That said, if I ever really slow down physically and mentally and want to settle someplace quiet, Munduk is a good candidate for that. The people are lovely. The scenery is outrageous. And the food is good once you manage to convince them that you really do want it spicy.