Thirty-one years ago, I hated our first trip to Bali. The sterile resort with weeks-old landscaping. Nusa Dua was more boring than Year 9 biology on a hot afternoon. A tailor made me an ugly suit.

The food was just OK, the sea wanted to kill me, my baby – seeing my milk bar bust in a bikini – wanted to breastfeed all day. The airport lounge smelt of dirty nappies and everyone in it had grubby feet and raided the noodle bain-marie like it was end of days.

So I was never “a Bali person”. You know this: you either are or you aren’t. It’s like being Ford or Holden in the 1970s. No in between.

Those of us who aren’t Bali people are embarrassed when friends say they’re off for sound baths in Ubud. Good luck seeing the rice terraces through a forest of influencers in red outfits. FYI, that famous local pig dish is revolting.

Taking a boat to snorkel? Enjoy swimming with the plastic straws. Canggu? Fine, if you’re someone who says things like, “I’m a digital nomad”. The rest? Strictly for sunburned, trolleyed Aussies haggling to knock 50 cents off a fake Adidas singlet.

Or so I reckoned. Bali was too bogan even for me, and I love Bathurst, Aerosmith and lemon chicken.

Which is why, fresh from our second trip in 12 months, it’s really weird to have joined the 1.5 million annual visiting Aussies who are mad for Bali. Yeah, WTF.

Here’s why: it gets the basics right – short flight, great weather, cheaper than holidaying at home. But it’s the intangibles that get me. The way chaos and calm sit side by side without apologising. How you can see art, volcanoes and temples or just lie down for a week.

The shopping is now what my mate Jaydo calls Vogue Bogue which feels cool in a way curated destinations never do. The live Keroncong music at Seminyak’s Biku is joyful. And the people watching is elite.

Our hotel pool, second morning. A woman who looks like the stunt double for Cameron Diaz’s housemate Magda in There’s Something About Mary – uber real tanned, bleached hair turning yellow from chlorine – rasps into her mobile.

“I’m feeling shithouse. You dusty?” Her voice like a million packets of Stuyvos. “I had to get the ambulance for Indigo last night. Yeah, stomach infection. Nah, she’s right. I’ll text her later.”

Waiting for a happy hour mojito at the bar, I chat to a fella called Kurt. Everyone else is in a rashie and been in a good paddock. Kurt is Barry Manilow slim in a chino, loafer and plunging crisp shirt.

From New York, he’s been addicted to Bali since the ’70s. Says David Bowie wrote a song about him after they met on a beach.

One bloke poolside has wings tattooed on his back, a face you could bust a chair on. My husband: “Contract killer.”

For days, the man plays tirelessly with his small daughter. Whizzes her in the water, plaits her hair, laughs as she uses him as a climbing gym. We call him Killer Dad and mean it in the best way.

One afternoon we bump on a scooter down a narrow dirt road next to a black sand beach. Walk through a sun-dappled jungle to a memorial to those aboard Pan Am flight 812 which slammed into a Balinese mountain in 1974.

Eight plaques. 107 names. 16 Australians. One: Halfpenny, Margaret. My dad’s cousin. A Melbourne thirty-something on her way home from a Hong Kong holiday.

It’s the strangest sensation, seeing my surname carved in the rare corner of Bali most tourists never know exists. Marking a tragedy that made global headlines. I lose it.

My dad was at the memorial’s opening 50 years ago. He brought back a painting of a jungle temple to remember the beautiful place Margaret died.

It hangs now in our lounge room. Maybe Bali has been in my heart longer than I knew. In 1994, I think I willed it to be awful. Now it feels like something close to home.

Kate Halfpenny is the founder of Bad Mother Media.

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