“Nuanu is an experiment in living differently,” James Larkin, Nuanu’s chief project director, tells me as he prepares to thrash my back with a branch of steaming hot leaves.

This morning I was in Sydney. This afternoon I’m in Nuanu. The 44-hectare “creative city” is at Nyanyi Beach, north of Canggu, about an hour’s drive from Denpasar Airport. It’s home to the upmarket Oshom Hotel, the manicured Luna Beach Club, the futuristic Aurora Media Park, plus a 5000-patron theatre, library, glass-making studio, alpaca park, butterfly garden and more.

Meanwhile, Lumeira spa is a sleek collection of pools, saunas, steam rooms, massage pods and clay huts. If it weren’t for the bamboo forest enveloping us, it would look like a day spa on Tatooine. I’m face-down inside what claims to be the world’s largest wood-fire thermal dome, surrounded by other masochists waiting their turn. The leaves are tightly compressed against my body, then I’m smacked again. My only protection is a badly wrapped sarong. The process – which supposedly increases your blood flow and overall zen – is repeated. Over and over.

Between rounds with the branch, I cycle between saunas and cold plunges. The cold plunge is shaped like a nautilus shell, a famous expression of the Fibonacci sequence. In nature, the sequence shows up in everything from the petals of a sunflower to the scales of a pineapple. Earlier today someone told me Nuanu is obsessed with Fibonacci. I’ve seen it everywhere since, from Nuanu’s swirling logo to its helical domes and shell-shaped buildings.

Because I’m not a biohacking Huberman bro, this is my first-time cold plunging. I step into the first pool. Eleven degrees. Not bad. Then I enter the second. Six degrees. Jesus. A Lumeira staffer sees me grimace.

“Your ego is telling you to get out, but you can handle this,” he calls out. “Let it sit for longer than you’re comfortable with.”

So I do.

The cold turns into numbness, then a euphoric warmth spreads through my body. Suddenly cold plunges make total sense.

“There are things in your life you’re probably avoiding because they’re uncomfortable,” he says. “Now they don’t seem as difficult, right?”

An hour ago, I would have found that statement cheesy. Now it feels profound. He also says the hot sauna, paired with the cold plunge, will purge toxins from my lymphatic system. The main evacuation method? Urine. (While saunas have many proven health benefits, this isn’t yet one of them.)

“Your pee tonight will have 100 times more toxins than usual,” the staffer warns.

“I’ll make sure not to drink any this evening,” I say.

We both chuckle, then he gets dead serious and says: “I know you’re joking, but there’s actually lots of positive health properties to drinking your own pee.” I’ll take his word for it.

Lumeira, like much of Nuanu, is still in its early stages. It plans to become a “healing hotel” with treatments from around the world. The company plans to fly in an Ecuadorean shaman and construct a one-to-one replica of his hut on-site. Seriously. That philosophy – of collecting people like they’re Infinity Stones from the Marvel Universe – undergirds the Nuanu ethos.

“I want to build the best place to live in the world,” Nuanu CEO Lev Kroll tells me over lunch the next day. “I was drawn to the idea of building an international community.”

Of course it was bound to happen in Bali, already so many things to so many people around the world. Some see it as a place to Eat, Pray, Love themselves towards spiritual healing. Others see a digital nomad’s paradise where the man-bun dream never died. For some it’s just about breakfast buffets, ill-advised tattoos and getting on the turps. It’s all of those things. Last year, more than 6.3 million foreign tourists – a new record – descended on the island to experience their version of it.

The largest numbers still come from Australia, but as anyone who’s been to Bali since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 can tell you, more and more visitors are flocking from that part of the world. And the locals aren’t happy with the violent, drunken and disrespectful behaviour that sometimes comes with them. Last year Sandiaga Uno, Indonesia’s minister for tourism, called for long-stay visitors from Russia and Ukraine to respect Bali’s culture. Australians were left out of the conversation this particular time.

In a way, this is just business as usual. What’s causing real angst among Balinese is Russians allegedly working without visas and developing vast tracts of land, such as Ubud’s Hidden City, into exclusive enclaves. (Despite persistent rumours and the nickname “Kampung Russia”, Russians are reportedly not involved at Parq Ubud, an illegal development shut down last month.)

Which brings us back to Nuanu and its founder, Russian tech multi-millionaire Sergey Solonin. He left Russia and his company in 2018 to travel the world with his family and scout locations for his dream city. At the onset of the pandemic, he found himself stranded in Bali and fell for the island.

Nuanu has gone to considerable lengths to distance itself from the aforementioned controversies. It says 90 per cent of its staff is Indonesian, with around 50 per cent in management roles – Larkin and Kroll being two obvious exceptions. It’s not funded solely by Solonin, but by a global consortium of investors. And it touts its “triple bottom line” approach – balancing profit-seeking against social and environmental goals, including planting 15,000 trees and recycling 70 per cent of waste produced on site. Every business at Nuanu allocates five per cent of income to the Nuanu Social Fund, which provides Tabanan locals with education and healthcare. Nuanu also won’t build on more than 30 per cent of its land.

“A successful business can – and should – do good,” says Kroll, who has a startup background. “We’re finding value without using every square metre – there’ll be more trees here once we’re done than when we started.”

It's a funny conversation to have at a beach club. Luna, where we’re eating, is a labyrinth of cascading pools, bars and daybeds. A whirling bamboo pavilion sits in the centre, housing the main restaurant. A huge wire installation of a figure striking a yogic pose watches over the club. In the distance, the 30-metre-high THK Tower looks over Nyanyi Beach. The rattan and timber structure, designed by French architect Arthur Mamou-Mani, projects light shows every evening.

It's a lot to take in, which is probably why I’d been struggling to describe Nuanu, both to others and myself. Is this the future, or just a self-actualisation enclave for the elite? You try seeing a nightclub that’s entered via waterslide or touring a Balinese hobbit-house-looking recording studio or visiting a free on-site art school for locals, then have a go at categorising it – it’s hard.

But as I was being driven by electric buggy back from the unveiling of Nuanu’s Magic Garden biome and butterfly hatchery, passing by the alpaca park and under the gaze of the Earth Sentinels – towering faces, two storeys high, whose inscrutable visages swirl with AI-generated light projections – I finally got it. Nuanu is a cultural theme park you can visit, stay or live in.

Everyone here talks about Nuanu’s attractions the same way theme park fans talk about their favourite rides. But instead of vertical drops, acceleration speeds and corkscrews, it’s all about immersive audio-visual domes, crypto conferences, fun runs and healing modalities. Around every corner, there’s a motivational speaker, a yoga class or an artist-in-residence – it’s a festival that never ends.

The buggy passes another building shaped like a nautilus shell. The Fibonacci sequence is never too far away. It’s fitting. Nuanu’s name is derived from a Balinese term meaning “in the process,” and the Fibonacci sequence is infinite, always in process. In coming years, Nuanu is launching a museum, a vertical farm, more townhouses and apartments, and a food precinct shaped like – that’s right – a spiralling seashell.

Wherever you look in Nuanu, you’ll see cranes on the horizon, craning away. Like the Fibonacci sequence, Bali is always growing. And so is this place. But at least, unlike so many others, it’s trying to do some good as it takes space from the locals.

The writer travelled as a guest of Nuanu.