I arrived in Ubud with a backpack full of loose cotton clothing, a Kindle loaded with books about mindfulness, and the unshakable confidence of a man who’d watched exactly three Netflix documentaries about spirituality. I was ready. Ready to shed my ego, open my chakras, and maybe—if the universe was feeling generous—figure out what I was supposed to be doing with my life besides refreshing my bank app and pretending emails don’t exist.
Ubud, according to Lonely Planet, is the “spiritual and cultural heart of Bali.” According to Instagram, it’s a place where impossibly calm people in white linen drink green liquids and stare meaningfully into the middle distance. According to my mum, it’s “nice but don’t drink the water.” All seemed reasonable.
Within an hour of landing, I was sweating through my third outfit, dodging scooters like it was a live-action version of Frogger, and questioning whether enlightenment required this much humidity. The World Health Organization will tell you that heat stress is a real thing. Bali, I would argue, is the peer-reviewed study.
My guesthouse was exactly what I’d hoped for: bamboo furniture, a small shrine in the corner, and a yoga schedule pinned to the wall that made me feel deeply inadequate. Sunrise yoga. Power yoga. Yin yoga. Something called “sound healing” that involved gongs and vibes. I nodded along politely while the owner explained it all, silently reassuring myself that I’d “ease into it.”
Instead, I went straight to the pool and ordered a Bintang.
This is where Bali first began gently mocking my intentions.
Bintang, for the uninitiated, is Indonesia’s most famous beer. Light, cold, and aggressively refreshing, it has been sustaining Australian tourists since time immemorial. There’s probably an academic paper somewhere on the spiritual significance of a Bintang singlet, but I didn’t look it up. I was too busy having a minor religious experience as condensation dripped down the bottle.
I told myself it was fine. Balance, after all, is a core principle of many Eastern philosophies. Even the Bhagavad Gita talks about the middle path. Surely one beer by the pool didn’t disqualify me from enlightenment. If anything, it made me more present. Very present. Presently ordering another one.
Ubud has a way of doing this. You arrive with lofty plans and find yourself gently redirected by reality. The streets are chaotic but charming, lined with yoga studios, vegan cafés, and shops selling crystals that promise to realign things you didn’t know were misaligned. Every second person seems to be on a journey, and every third person is named Dave.
Dave is everywhere in Ubud. Dave from Byron Bay. Dave from Fremantle. Dave who “used to work in finance but now teaches breathwork.” Dave will sit next to you at a café unprompted and ask if you’ve “done the work.” Dave has opinions about turmeric. Dave is very kind, deeply earnest, and absolutely convinced that the reason you’re feeling lost is because you haven’t tried cold exposure at sunrise.
Anthropologists from places like the Australian National University have written about Bali as a site of cultural exchange, where Western seekers project their desires onto Eastern traditions. Sitting across from Dave, nodding as he explained his theory of “quantum alignment,” I felt like a footnote in one of those papers.
To be fair, Bali really is spiritual—but not in the Eat Pray Love way we tend to imagine. Balinese Hinduism is a rich, complex belief system grounded in ritual, community, and balance between humans, nature, and the divine. UNESCO has recognised the subak irrigation system as a World Heritage cultural landscape, not because it looks pretty on postcards, but because it represents a centuries-old philosophy of cooperation and harmony.
That kind of spirituality doesn’t announce itself with hashtags. It’s quiet. It’s the daily offerings placed outside shops. It’s the sound of gamelan drifting through the evening air. It’s the way life just… happens, whether or not you’re ready to be transformed by it.
I, meanwhile, was late to a meditation class because my scooter wouldn’t start.
Scooters deserve their own paragraph. They are the lifeblood of Bali and the primary reason your travel insurance premium quietly judges you. Riding one through Ubud traffic is an exercise in surrender. You can’t control the flow; you just merge into it and hope everyone else is paying attention. In many ways, it’s the most effective mindfulness practice I encountered. Nothing keeps you in the present moment like a bus appearing out of nowhere.
Eventually, I did make it to a meditation session. I sat cross-legged, eyes closed, focusing on my breath as instructed. Within seconds, my mind wandered. Was that my stomach growling? Did I lock my room? Why is there always a rooster? The instructor’s voice floated gently through the room, reminding us to let thoughts pass like clouds.
My thoughts were less clouds and more a full-blown storm system.
Afterwards, I felt… fine. Not enlightened. Not transformed. Just slightly hungry. I went for lunch and, without really meaning to, ordered another Bintang. The waiter didn’t judge me. That felt spiritual.
There’s a concept in psychology, often discussed by researchers at places like Harvard, about the “paradox of striving.” The harder we chase happiness or meaning, the more elusive it becomes. Sitting there, beer in hand, watching the afternoon rain roll in over the rice fields, it dawned on me that maybe I was trying too hard.
Maybe enlightenment isn’t a lightning bolt moment where everything makes sense. Maybe it’s a series of small realisations: that you’re allowed to enjoy where you are, that it’s okay not to have answers, that peace sometimes looks suspiciously like doing nothing at all.
By the end of my time in Ubud, I hadn’t mastered yoga. I hadn’t unlocked my higher purpose. I hadn’t even stopped swearing when my scooter stalled. But I had slowed down. I listened more. I worried less. And I learned that chasing a perfect version of yourself can make you miss the perfectly decent version sitting by the pool with a cold beer.
As the Buddha himself is often paraphrased (and occasionally misquoted on café walls): “There is no path to happiness. Happiness is the path.” I don’t remember him mentioning Bintang specifically, but I like to think he’d understand.
I came to Bali looking for enlightenment and found something quieter, less glamorous, and far more useful: permission to just be. And if that being involves a Bintang by the pool, well—there are worse ways to find the light.