At Tenganan village, about an hour out of Denpasar, the locals have made a conscious decision to embrace - and control - tourism. Buses stop at the village gates and locals act as guides; craftsmen produce intricately carved scrolls and silkwear, and the guides show visitors through the wee town where you get a taste of traditional Balinese living.
It was a horde of French visitors who unintentionally inspired the Balinese villagers to start paying attention to this tourism malarkey. One quiet day a decade or so back, a group of about 150 French arrived with a Balinese guide from elsewhere on the island and wandered about the village, paddocks and temples. By the time they had departed, the Gallic guests had blundered through fields damaging crops and irrigation drains and poked around in out-of-bounds temples. They departed with a cheery "au revoir", the embarrassed guide giving the locals a few US dollars and scarpering.
The villagers saw that, left to its own, tourism could damage their homes and lifestyles. But if they took control of it, they could make money and keep their lifestyle intact. So today, small groups wander with locals chatting and showing the way through the dusty streets. Village life potters away.
Later in Tenganan, we met a man in his 80s, the master of a Balinese artform that sees old folk stories hand-etched into intricate wooden manuscripts that fold up like a fan. You can get cheap knock offs all over the place for a couple of bucks, or you can shell bigger money - in the hundreds of dollars - for this bloke's work. A script can take months to produce, with fine illustrations and a the words in a language few can speak. The craftsman was wildly enthused when he learned I was a Kiwi. A guide translated, telling me that the "President of New Zealand, Helen Clark" had visited years ago and bought one of the scripts. Either Helen's been telling folk her job was a bigger deal than it really was, or there was something lost in translation.
Another local had his patience tested trying to teach me how to spin cotton, using the traditional centuries-old method of rolling a stick between the palms, threading the cotton away and swearing when it fails. To modern Western hands - clumsy when away from a keyboard or iPod - cotton spinning is an alien, frustrating craft; one that leaves you wondering how humanity ever evolved to the T-shirt. Eventually, the elderly cotton spinner rolled his eyes, waved me away and told us that, anyway, he preferred the cotton-spinning wheel introduced by Japanese invaders in 1942.
Just outside the village proper, a young man shimmied up a tree where, in the upper branches, a battered old plastic container was secured to the trunk, tree sap slowly filling the vessel. Hanging precariously by one arm a good 15m up the tree, he released the container and skidded down, bringing us wine made from fermented tree sap - a sweet and sticky cloudy white. It was given a touch of colour by bits of bark chucked into the mix, perhaps unlikely to appear on the finest tables, but a merry tot after an hour of strolling through the bush did me wonders.
If you're offered the chance to eat in the villages, take it. We ate fresh salads, sweet pineapple-like pandanas and light noodle dishes. We drank a sweet, delicious coconut, lime and ice concoction. In Tenganan, a friend and I sat with a bunch of local men as they carved up a pair of goats. Great hunks of meat were slapped about the place, the flies waved away as heads boiled in a giant pot over an open fire. A kitchen for the enthusiastic, not the faint-hearted.
Dotted throughout most Balinese villages are baskets, each containing a large, tough-looking rooster, kept lean and mean for the gambling past-time. Cockfighting is something of a local tradition. One Westerner living in Bali describes cockfighting as "the slot machine or the bingo game of the Third World".
Efforts to outlaw cockfighting usually fizzle out, the local cops not so keen to bust their neighbours and keen on a night at the fights themselves. It's not a sport for the faint-hearted.
One local tells me he took a Western visitor to a cockfight, but when a rooster was hacked to shreds by a rival's blade the guest's eagerness was quickly gone.
MUST DO IN INDONESIA
Temples: Quiet, contemplative and often staggering in their beauty, millennia-old village temples dot the countryside, the big ones a mind-boggling testament to the skill of ancient artists and craftsmen. Make time to see the Borobudur.
Beaches: Find a good one, park up and snooze. The Gili islands are recommended.
Haggle: The locals love it when a visitor tries to get a bargain. The best Indonesian haggling will inevitably end in laughter on all sides ... while you walk away with a T-shirt that would have cost less at the Warehouse.
AND MUST AVOID
Bali Belly: No need for details - this is a family paper - but stick to bottled water and hope for the best with the wonderful food.
Jakarta's traffic: Imagine all New Zealanders trying to go through Spaghetti Junction at once, with one in every 10 cars and every second motorcycle going the wrong way, head-on into other traffic. With no discernible road code. In 40C heat.
Kuta: Like a Contiki bus trip that planted roots and grew. Yuck. Head for the countryside and beaches instead.
Further information: See indonesia-tourism.com.
Winston Aldworth visited Bali as guest of the Indonesian Government.
