It was a privilege to be in Bali during the COVID-19 pandemic from 2020. As many of the world's liberal democracies turned into locked-down quasi-police states, this Indonesian province took a softer approach. Beaches and most food and beverage venues were closed for the first three months of the emergency, but there was never a hard lockdown and personal liberties were never significantly curtailed.
"Are you stuck in Bali?" people back home in Australia would often ask me. "It's not me who's stuck," I would reply. "It's you."
