The fastest way to find a cockfight in Ubud is to find yourself a man with a cock. (The double entendre, as Clifford Geertz put it in his seminal piece on the Balinese cockfight, is entirely deliberate: ‘For it is only apparently cocks that are fighting [in the ring]. Actually, it is men.’)

Such men are everywhere, squatting on street corners and loitering in garages, grooming their birds, whispering sweet nothings to them, bouncing them up and down on their feet to strengthen their legs for each upcoming bout. I found an old man with a particularly aggressive-looking bird, asked when and where the shit was going down, and was given a time, an address and a sly wink. It was happening three days hence.