The day we arrived at the Oberoi Beach Resort just so happened to be the day that the hotel was releasing its recently hatched Olive Ridley turtles into the sea. If you’ve seen that nail-biting David Attenborough clip, following the baby turtles as they make the perilous journey from their nest to the sea, you’ll know that only about one in every 1,000 survive into adulthood. So, the Oberoi gives them a helping hand, safeguarding the eggs from predators, caring for the hatchlings until they become strong swimmers, and then scooping them into little bowls and depositing them on the shoreline.

My turtle, however, had the odds stacked against her (statistically it probably was a ‘her’, because the sex of a turtle is determined by the temperature of the sand which, due to climate change, is increasing, resulting in more females than males). Seemingly nonplussed by the braying crowds and content to wait for a bird, dog or human foot to end it all, as her siblings propelled their tiny bodies into the water, she did nothing.

After what seemed like an age of willing her to notice that big blue thing in front of her with the resigned optimism of a parent supporting their unathletic child on sports day, finally she began shuffling towards the sea. Then disaster struck: a particularly powerful wave surged up the beach, sweeping the remaining turtles six feet back.

Eventually, it became clear that my hatchling and a few of her less adept siblings weren’t grasping the urgency of the situation, and a hotel staff member scooped them up and placed them in the shallows. I hope she has better survival skills in there than she did up here.

Seminyak, the area the Oberoi calls home, is peak Bali. You know, the party Bali. Australia’s Ibiza. The town is a compact network of streets where mopeds – both personal rentals and the ones you can summon, Uber-style, from local apps (you quickly get used to clinging to the back of the driver, whom you have to ask for a non-mandatory helmet) – file past each other, Tetris-style. Tattoo parlours awaiting drunken punters, sports bars showing Australian footie leagues, and souvenir stands flogging bottles of petrol line the streets, alongside a cohort of bougie ‘coffee labs’ and boutiques exclusively selling white kaftans.

The beach, covered in a rainbow of parasols and loungers, is just as frenetic. Each bar and restaurant blares its own tunes, and every hundred metres or so local men flog Bintang beers out of a cooler for the equivalent of £1 – maybe they’ve invested in some plastic furniture, too, where you can enjoy said beer while watching the sunset. And you will want to enjoy the sunset – with the weather while we were in Seminyak averaging 30 degrees and clear every day, sunset became a daily spectacle of one-upmanship: this day it was a little more orange, that day more purple. One night wispy clouds dappled the horizon; the next was simply a lilac-to-yellow ombre as far as the eye could see.

As night falls on Seminyak Beach, the fairy lights strung between umbrellas go on and the tunes really ramp up. Tables of tourists, locals and a mixture of both become rowdy, intoxicated by the cheap beer and humidity. The beach isn’t beautiful, necessarily – there are no white-sand paradises on this stretch of coast – but it is alive. Voraciously so.

If you’re not the type to get a drunken tattoo, however, Seminyak is not without pockets of sanctuary – the Oberoi being one. It was the first luxury resort to put down roots here and, having hosted the likes of Mick Jagger, Salvador Dali and Princess Grace, is considered something of a grand dame, so much so that the street outside is known as Oberoi Street.

As you drive through the gates, the incessant humming of mopeds and clamouring of vendors falls away, and you find yourself among manicured lawns, pastel hibiscus trees and lotus-filled ponds. The hotel is a collection of stone and thatch buildings, many of them without walls, as is the Balinese style. Villas are standalone, with limestone courtyards containing algae-covered fountains, yellow-and-white striped loungers, and a raised pavilion with an outdoor phone for room service.

It's the sort of place that still uses old-fashioned bronze keys as opposed to anything biometric or automated. Inside, the villas are large and comfortable, with a mahogany four-poster bed so big that a little step is provided to help guests climb in, and a sunken marble bath with views to the (very private) courtyard.

Only one-fifth of the 15-acre property is given to buildings; the rest is tropical gardens populated with gnarled trees and hidden temples, connected by paved paths that lead to a central amphitheatre. We visit during Galungan, a 10-day Balinese Hindu festival which celebrates the victory of good over evil, so the amphitheatre was surrounded by penjor – tall bamboo poles decorated with flowers, fruits and coconut leaves.

Just metres from the beach, the pool, surrounded by the Oberoi’s signature fringed parasols, is a preferable spot to pass an afternoon. This is not least because, at five o’clock, a musician starts up and the hotel serves afternoon tea with an Indonesian twist in the neighbouring amphitheatre (I still think about the pumpkin fritters with coconut cream). This is where all of the Oberoi’s entertainment takes place: one night, we were privy to a legong performance, where a gamelan (a traditional Indonesian percussion orchestra) played as dancers enacted a story of unrequited love. It’s quite the spectacle, with the women contorting their bodies and darting their eyes, heavily rimmed in black make-up, left and right in time with the music.

The show can, if you wish, come with dinner courtesy of the Oberoi’s signature restaurant, Kura Kura, where we, having subsisted on a diet of nasi goreng and sabal matah for some days, opted for something non-Indonesian: fresh sashimi. The other food spot is all-day dining restaurant, Frangipani Café, which is the locus of breakfast and lunch, Balinese or otherwise.

The bars, the mopeds, the Australians… the Oberoi was here before all of them, built in the early 1970s, when it was still surrounded by rice paddies. As the town grew, the Oberoi remained, and remains, a port in the storm of the sea of revelry that is Seminyak.

From £310 per night.

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