What’s your favourite sound? Mine is either bird song (vomit) or the sound of wind in the trees (bleurgh). Ideally the trees would be orchard wind breakers, and I would be lying on the grass. But it has to be warm or sunny. If there are grey clouds in the sky the leaves can tinkle like Serafina Pekkala and it won’t sound right.

Yesterday evening I heard some Balinese music from far away and I am still deliberating on whether it will join my favourite sounds. I hope it isn’t too rude to describe this music as one-third wind chimes, one-third the thump of a nightclub from outside and one-third playing with saucepans on the kitchen floor. But when you put them all together it sounds quite cool. Definitely greater than the sum of its parts.

Picking a favourite smell is more difficult, I reckon. Perfumes are rubbish. The smell of freshly washed clothes makes me feel guilty for using evil fabric softener. Apparently the smell of a baby’s head is a winner, but I don’t have a baby of my own and I think it might be a bit creepy if I nominated someone else’s baby as my favourite smell.

Well, roses smell pretty super. Sawn wood, ditto. But the smell of smoke outdoors at night is probably my favourite. I think I like it because it reminds me of this imagined Middle Eastern village I have in my head where everyone’s out under the stars riding donkeys, eating Fry’s Turkish Delight and smoking frankincense (is that possible?). I got this idea aged six from pictures of Bethlehem on Christmas cards, but no matter. Whenever it’s dark but warm and smoky outside it feels claustrophobic in a nice way, as though the dark were a big room where cool things happen.

You don’t come across this smell very often (not as often as the smell of other people’s babies anyway). I can remember one night in Bath when the atmosphere felt almost Bethlehem-esque, which can’t be right because I don’t think chimney fires are allowed in the town and, besides, there haven’t been any Roman census takers there since at least 126 AD. And, not to get too pretentious here, I remember smelling My Favourite Smell one night in a coastal village in Tanzania where the streets were narrow and people were grilling maize on the pavements. Well, excitingly, I have already smelled the smell here in Asialand: a mixture of incense, darkness and the smoke of… er, something.*

Talking of l’Afrique, I have been reminded of it quite a lot here. I know Bali is very different really, but I’m afraid I am an untravelled person so my comparisons are a bit basic: the heat, the tiny bananas, the colourful shops and, because I like looking at the ugly things, rubbish in the streets. In Africa, there were often piles of Bethlehemy maize husks (post-prandial), among other detritus. Here there seems to be a lot of plastic, and maybe coconut fragments, I can’t tell. I’m not saying rubbish is everywhere, but it’s still noticeable in some places, like behind the beach, or sometimes piled in a yard. This morning I saw plastic bags tangled up in mangrove stumps. I imagine this is Not Good.

Being a handwringing, guilt-ridden tourist and pretend eco sort, I googled on this subject immediately, and discovered that Bali has lacked for some time a proper waste management infrastructure thing. Until very recently, most domestic waste was organic, so it could be buried or thrown into rivers (actually, that doesn’t sound like a super solution either, but who am I to say?). But then “we saw that from a society where waste had been manageable, the situation was changing quickly,” according to I Made Suarnatha, a director of the [Wisnu] Foundation, quote from here. “Suddenly there was a lot more plastic, packaging, paper and cans that needed to be dealt with.” Hence its appearance in makeshift landfills. ”To this day [2001], there is no government or community system to deal with solid waste in Bali.”

I quite like talking garbage talking about garbage. Isn’t it interesting what happens to all this STUFF we use? Perhaps this is the pernicious influence of Germany’s recycling system on my subconscious: I am now fascinated by solid waste. Terrific. Meanwhile, charities are trying to increase awareness of rubbish disposal in Bali, where “people who collect garbage or work in waste management are looked down on by Indonesians of all social levels.” Boo!

* To be investigated.