A holy shower at Gunung Kawi Sebatu Temple. [Photo provided to China Daily]

The labyrinthine resort partnered with Iwan Tirta Private Collection, which provided the national dress for the APEC Economic Leaders Meeting in Bali in 2013. Chinese President Xi Jinping picked a red one.

The official visit to Bali, part of Xi's maiden weeklong trip to the region, saw China sign a five-year program for economic and trade cooperation with Indonesia, the largest member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

Xi also proposed raising bilateral trade to $80 billion by 2015 and confirmed China's commitment to reviving a former shipping route from South China to Europe via the region and Africa through the new Maritime Silk Road.

On the 210-day Balinese calendar, its end-of-year festivities only play second fiddle to Galungan, a 10-day period when ancestral spirits visit the earth. Tony Stark and the rest of the Avengers will no doubt get to beat them up when Marvel runs out of other ideas.

While many Chinese may not relate to Nyepi's theme of spiritual cleansing, the idea of taking a day off from human pollution resonates.

In fact, spending a weekend locked down at the Conrad in Nusa Dua makes you appreciate how bueno life must have been for Colombian kingpin Pablo Escobar, who famously built his own five-star prison and was then thrown in it.

In between heavenly treatments at Jiwa Spa, which start and end with a gong, you can sip strawberry mojitos by three lagoon-like pools and enjoy candlelit dinners at its beachfront Eight Degrees South restaurant as you reflect on your sins, or dream up new ones.

The private beach also features a beachside chapel.

"We picked the chapel because of the scenery and symbolism," says a man in his early 30s from Shanghai. "We like how the (converging vertical) axes represent the union of man and woman, joined forever."

Once the gates of liberty reopened on Sunday I opted for a $45 surfing lesson on Kuta Beach and lunch at Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. That was when the penny dropped: Nyepi may be weird, and a bit boring, but it has become the necessary yin to Kuta's congested yang.