‘Organic food, handmade soaps, homeopathics, Ayurvedics, oils. Hemp clothing. We’d make vegetarian meals, grow our own vegetables and herbs. It’d be a place with authenticity and soul.’

Jason’s cross-eyed Siamese cat padded into the room, stretched out on the floor in front of us in a rectangle of white sunlight. Sal kept talking. I willed my heart to slow down, my cheeks to cool.

‘We’ve talked about how great it’d be if you joined us there,’ Sal said. ‘Will you come?’

The cat had offered me a distraction while I calmed down, and I’d stopped listening. But I heard Sal say she wanted me to come to Bali. It wasn’t the move I’d had in mind, but as soon as she said it my bags were as good as packed.

By the time I arrived in Kuta, Ryan and Sal had decided to set up a restaurant that would serve noodles, juice and cheap beer. Not the vibe we’d originally talked about but there was a garden behind the kitchen and the food was right for the location. Ryan made an offer to rent a place on the beachfront. I wasn’t convinced there’d be customers for what they wanted to do; there were already two restaurants on the main road. But life in Bali was intoxicating – no other word for it. My days were filled with sun, surfing and getting high with my friends.

Work did kick in. People showed up to eat and drink, but we’d chosen this work so we didn’t mind – we enjoyed it. Our surfer mates came by late morning, ravenous, along with their girlfriends, the people we knew from beach parties, random travellers. Ryan cooked, Sal waited tables and I washed dishes and spruiked for business. We went to the market in the morning and spent the night figuring out what would make the place even better: floor cushions in the back corner, more potted plants. We hammered up a noticeboard and left paper and pencils on the tables, made nice with anyone who had good drugs to sell. Sal put candles around the room. She wanted to call the place Kuta Dreaming, inspired by her favourite Mama Cass song, KD for short. Ryan painted a sign on a piece of driftwood and we hung it above the front door.

Our first big purchase was a fridge. We rented a rust-bucket truck – one day for two dollars – and headed up to Kerobokan, the three of us squashed on the cracked vinyl bench seat, Sal in the middle. We drove on a narrow track through jungle, keeping the ocean on our left, for lack of any other marker. It was rugged driving. Twice we had to stop to move logs off the road, and Ryan rested one hand on the horn to beep at monkeys when they wouldn’t get out of our way. It must’ve been forty degrees. Sal sang ‘A Horse with No Name’ and passed around a joint to keep our spirits up – from Ryan to her to me, so each time I put the wet end to my lips I tasted her, smelled her.