Bali

Bali is small enough to cross in a few hours and varied enough that you would not want to. The centre is volcanic and green — rice terraces cut into the hillsides above Ubud, irrigated by a cooperative water system that has been running for a thousand years. The coasts are entirely separate places from one another: black sand in the north, surf in the west, calm water and reef in the east.

What holds it together is that Bali is still, visibly, a Hindu island in the largest Muslim country on earth. Offerings appear on doorsteps every morning. Temple festivals close roads. The landscape and the religion are not separable here, and that is most of what makes the island feel unlike anywhere else in Southeast Asia.