The minivan shows up in the parking lot of Green View Village at six in the morning.

This feels like a truly ungodly hour — we’ve been wandering and shopping a bit at night, sleeping late, spending mornings close to the fan in the bungalow, so we’re completely unaccustomed to an early rise.

We have a quiet breakfast of peanut butter sandwiches by ourselves on the steps of the restaurant, then dance around waving at mosquitoes until the van arrives.

Packed in with a sleepy, silent mix of travelers and locals, we doze and read and watch the scenery all the way to the (nearly) border town of Hat Yai, where we transfer to a bus. Hat Yai is bigger, uglier, and more raw than anything we’ve seen lately. A few beggars and their kids sit on the sidewalk, and as we pass, the kids jump up and start grabbing at our clothes, shouting. The adults rise to their feet and approach slowly. It’s creepy and threatening, and unlike anything we’ve experienced yet in Thailand. Touts and scam artists, sure, but not this.

After a long bus ride through the beautiful countryside of Malaysia, we pull into Kuala Lumpur, where we’ve made reservations at what turns out to be the splendid Tune Hotel.

Not only does the place have a great website, they’ve also got a kick-ass concept: a la carte accommodations, where $20 gets you a “basic” room with 5-star bed and shower (and little else). Want wi-fi? Four bucks for 24 hours of high-speed in your room. Need towels? Another two bucks to rent them. Air con? Pay as you go.

We recharge our batteries and set out to check out Kuala Lumpur. Our cultural adventure aspirations begin to crumble, though, when like moths to a flame, we are drawn into the air-con mega-mall paradise that is Kuala Lumpur City Center, the giant complex at the foot of the Petronas Towers.

There’s food, clothes, electronics, a movie theater. As nice as the idea of a day at the hectic outdoor stalls of KL’s Chinatown sounds… we settle in for an air-con afternoon and watch Ironman on the big screen instead.

Our beloved Pentax Optio stopped working on a snorkelling trip to Phi Phi Island back in Thailand, so we take it to J-One Camera at Amcorp Mall. Jason, the owner of the shop, pronounces it dead. After less than a year, a water leak has rusted the board and rendered it useless. We tuck it into the bottom of a backpack, start writing a letter to Pentax, and splurge on a Nikon D80 to replace it. We’ve wanted a DSLR for some time, so why not buy one on the trip of a lifetime? (And in a country without sales tax.

Before we know it, it’s time for our Air Asia flight to Bali.

We barely make it to the airport in time, and spend the flight reading the enchanting camera manual. (I worked a few years as a technical writer, so sincerely appreciate a great manual. Yeah, geeky, but hey.)

We spend our first few nights in a decent hotel in the sleepy town of Sanur, the southeast coast fifteen minutes out of Denpassar. We soon come to understand why Sanur’s nickname is “Snore” — lots of older travelers drinking cocktails, watching people fish, and waiting for their tee-off time at the resort’s golf course. We go for a walk up the beach and although the view is nice, the beach isn’t good for swimming (tidal pools bordering on murderous-looking reef breaks) and is packed with touts and aggressive shopkeepers.

Great kites, though.

After our second night, we check out and head to Kuta. Kuta is a sort of cross between Cancun, L.A., and Bangkok. It’s nuts. I love it immediately; Lindsie, not so much.

The beach is immense and makes me drool — big, regular swells, half a dozen breaks up and down the beach, big enough to excite but (mostly) not big enough to make you soil your Billabongs.

There are billions of surfers and sun worshipers up and down the beach, and trillions of hawkers selling everything from beer to massages to temporary tattoos. The town looks like it will be crazy, tiny streets packed and crawling with vehicles, people everywhere, the usual fast food joints… but after we get used to it, we actually start liking the end of town where we end up staying. It’s called Poppies Lane, and is barely wide enough to accommodate a single car, yet is constantly packed with jeeps, scooters, dogs, barefoot surfers, and all other manner of vehicles and creatures. One side is lined with booths selling almost nothing but nasty bumper stickers (My Other Ride Is Your Mom, etc.), but the other side has a great selection of super-cheap, funky restaurants, often with live music and/or Hollywood movies projected on a wall.

We stay at the Hotel New Arena, which looks nice but turns out to SUCK. The pool looks nice at first, but upon closer inspection is murky with vague filth. (And I’m not talking about the weird, drunk Euro surfers.) The room looks great, but the mattress turns out to be completely infested with bedbugs, which savage me so badly while I’m napping that it takes a week before the infected sores finally heal. The staff seem nice, but when we fetch them at one in the morning, horrified with the crawlies that have appeared everywhere, they (1) replace our mattress with ANOTHER infested one, then (2) ask if we’d mind paying more for a ‘premium’ room.

After Lindsie delivers a spectacular freakout, they change their tune and we’re moved to a poolside room for no extra charge.

Like the fools we are, we’ve prepaid three days (never do this), so tough it out even though the weird Euro surfers engage in bizarre group hugs and singing competitions long into the night directly beside our room.

Conclusion: Avoid the Hotel New Arena at all costs.

I go surfing and catch enough great waves to convince me that Kuta’s really a fine place to be. Even though I suck on a surfboard (i.e., I do best on a soft top), I paddle out and get pounded over and over, every now and then picking up a wave that reminds me why I’m taking this beating. No barrel rides, no cutbacks, but a few good slinky Endless Summer-style cruises on my softy longboard.

And wish I could catch them like the kids of Kuta catch them.

Lindsie, however, is soon tired of the noise and chaos and the Europeans, and I don’t blame her. There’s little to recommend this place besides the waves and the cheap Nasi Goreng (Balinese style fried rice with fried egg and shrimp crackers)… though I do also find a lovely used bookstore — the Pangloss Bookshop in Poppies Lane — with a great long-haired chess-playing proprieter.

Time to go, for good or ill.

We rent a Suzuki Katana (ten bucks a day!) and roar off to Amed, a little fishing/diving town on the east coast. The Balinese countryside is incredible. The rice fields shimmer like impressionist paintings in the afternoon sun. We begin to fall in love with Bali.

Amed is wonderful, a little seaside community on the east coast with black sand, coral reefs, and lovely sunsets, but upon arrival, Lindsie comes down with a vicious case of dysentery. Her last gesture before becoming bedridden for the next five days is to curse herself for ordering salad in Kuta. I order takeout from the hotel restaurant and deliver it to her; the staff start asking “How’s your wife?” every time they see me.

Our hotel, the Amed Cafe, is a dream: $15 for a beautiful room with fan and balcony up in the trees. There’s a pool, a ping-pong table, and a lovely beachfront restaurant, and a little minimart nearby. The Internet is dial-up, though — savage and wimpy. Oh well. It’s paradise.

I pass the time by diving a reef and a wreck (awesome) and coming down with another ear infection (distinctly not awesome; my second of this trip). More antibiotics. Lindsie and I lie around, read a few books, slowly recover. I stay out of the water, which is truly a sad thing to do in a place like Bali.

I spend the week ogling Gunung Agung, the highest volcano on Bali at more than 10,000 feet. Amed is right at the foot of the volcano, and it’s mesmerizing to look at from any angle — a great, swooping cone with a peak often swirled in clouds. It looks like Mount Kilimanjaro, minus the (receding) snows.

I decide that I must climb Gunung Agung. Lindsie, though still weak from the dysentery, decides to come too.

We set out at 2am from our hotel, arriving at about 3:15 with our guide Ketuk at the temple that serves as a 1,500-meter base camp. There’s a full moon, which sets soon after we start up the mountain from the temple. The stars are magical, and as we pause to look up at them, the three of us see a meteor blaze across the sky. Light and colors begin to creep across the pre-dawn sky. We look down just before sunrise and see that the volcano casts a shadow that probably stretches 25 kilometers across the island of Bali. This is awesome.

Ketuk is a great guide, often stopping to encourage us to smell the bark of eucalyptus trees or chew a leafy stalk of lemongrass. He’s middle-aged, decked out in sweatpants and tennis sneakers, and has climbed this volcano a hundred and five times. We are in awe.

By six, we’re scrambling up scree slopes, and by seven, we’re on a solid slab of volcanic rock. It’s bare, exposed, eerie, and breathtaking. We take a break every few minutes to catch our breath. Finally, after a last white-knuckle scramble to the razor-sharp ridge at the crater’s edge, we’re rewarded with a view of a crater that looks like a little Grand Canyon.

The peak itself is tagged with plenty of graffiti, which kills any impression we might have had of being intrepid explorers. There are also plenty of ceremonial offerings from the locals: small baskets of rice, sticks of incense, and a scattering of duck corpses (which are a bit shocking when you stumble across one). We ask Ketuk if they’re brought up here alive and he tells us no.

The descent starts out fine, but by a third of the way down, there’s almost nothing left of our leg muscles but quivering jelly. By halfway down we’re praying for it to be over, inching ever more slowly down this insanely massive mountain. We’ve both overestimated our fitness level — too much time reading Grisham novels in bungalows and bobbing around with snorkels. Lindsie is startled by a pack of monkeys trooping steadily toward the summit. Ketuk tosses one a banana, and as we watch him peel and eat it, Ketuk explains that they climb to the top to scavenge the offerings of food left by locals.

The last half is sheer hell. Ketuk is helpful, patient, and a talented cheerleader. Somehow we make it down.

After a day of recovery in Amed, we set out in the Suzuki for the return trip to Denpassar, via the town of Ubud. We had planned to hit Ubud for at least a few days, but Lindsie’s convalescence has shortened the timeline to a one-night stopover. After a few hours of total madness on the Balinese motorways, punctuated in the middle by a pleasant break for pizza in Candidasa, we pull into Ubud and are amazed by the place. Ubud is an endless succession of furniture shops, artists’ studios, markets, theaters, and restaurants, punctuated ever so often by temples and other monuments of staggering beauty. Every shopfront, hotel, and home is decorated with statuary and flowers to a degree I’ve never seen before. It’s inspiring and amazing.

After checking in, we find an enormous rice field — right in the middle of town — and set out for an afternoon stroll.

After half an hour or so, we’re in the middle of the field, wandering past farmers herding ducks across the paddies, when we stumble upon a restaurant right in the middle of the thing. Surrounded by organic gardens, it’s a perfect open-air spot to relax on a couch and watch the sun set over Ubud. We drink delicious fresh fruit shakes and eat the tastiest pasta coated in rich homemade pesto. The full moon rises over the paddies and I declare the evening perfect.

On the way home, we stagger through dark fields. Lindsie sinks halfway up to her knees in mud after a misstep. We catch a mind-bogglingly weird Balinese opera about gods, monkeys, and marriage at a small outdoor theatre, grab a crappy martini and undrinkable glass of wine at a shite club, and call it an evening.

Thence back to Kuta for our final night in Bali. Next to Kuala Lumpur to rest up before flying out into the great unknown: Cambodia.

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