It’s 2am on Jalan Raya Legian, the main drag in Kuta for clubs, bars and pubs that draw schoolies each year like a magnet from Australia to the resort island of Bali, and a group of four young men have just drunkenly stumbled past a couple of local ladies of the night.

Four days into schoolies week - which actually runs for about three weeks in more than a dozen locations including the Gold Coast and Airlie Beach in Queensland, Lorne in Victoria, as well as Bali, Fiji and Vanuatu - and after pre-loading on drinks and luxuriating in pools with swim up bars, the kids are out in in force in the early hours of Friday morning.

A 300-metre stretch of road from Crusoe's bar to Paddy's pub is the epicentre of schoolies week in Bali, with other multi-storey clubs like Engine Room and Sky Garden. It is also home to the Ground Zero memorial that commemorates the 2002 Bali bombings, in which 202 people including 88 Australians were killed.

Over the course of Thursday evening and into the early hours of Friday, Fairfax Media visited some of the biggest and most popular clubs in this part of Kuta, and spent hours out on the street to observe what mischief (if any) the schoolies got up to.

Fist fights, underage drinking, youngsters dancing through traffic, the ever-present smell of vomit and (a few) locals offering to sell illegal drugs were some of the "highlights" of the night.

A fight witnessed by Fairfax Media began when two young Australian men, clearly inebriated and egged on by their friends, began pushing and shoving at around 12.30am.

An errant fist collided with the face of a young woman with mousy brown hair; as the woman was steered towards the kerb to steady herself while attended by three friends, the scene reached boiling point in an instant.

Few blows, if any - other than the awful blow to the girl - connected, but a scrum of 30 or more young men (and a couple of women) quickly formed and the rolling maul went this way and that, crossing the street more than once and stopping traffic repeatedly.

Eventually, about half the group retreated into a local convenience store while the other half milled around outside, waiting to re-start the fight.

Locals gathered, amused but unsurprised and a sea of smartphones were raised to record the evening's entertainment. They'd seen it all before, but that didn't mean that frisson of fight wasn't still worth checking out.

Eventually the groups dispersed, clearly inebriated but cheerfully waved into different night clubs along the strip nonetheless.

Sereia and Georgia, first time schoolies from Perth who were necking vodka cruisers at 1am and hanging around outside the clubs, explained the allure of coming to Bali like this:

"We relax here during the day and have a party at night," Sereia said.

"We've been having a great time," Georgia chimed in.

Both are tipsy, but not much more, and they dismiss queries about whether they would look to take drugs while in Kuta.

“It’s Bali, you just don’t take drugs, everyone knows that," Georgia said.

Shelby, from Newcastle, is a toolie on her seventh schoolies trip and she agrees to speak to Fairfax Media as the evening wears on.

She has brought along her friend Chloe, who is from the UK, to experience the cheap thrills of schoolies for the first time.

"I’ve been to Surfers Paradise a couple of times but unless you’ve got money there, forget it. Here, you come here and you don’t know anyone but you meet people and you have a great time. I love it," Shelby explains.

"Tonight we are just taking it easy so went to Engine Room. Tomorrow night we’ve got a big night planned so we will go to Sky Garden."

Inside the clubs and on the streets, it's true that the occasional whispered offer of pot or ecstasy is made but by and large, it seems that alcohol is the cheap and legal drug of choice.

The thump-thump-thump of DJs across four floors and six rooms at Sky Garden is most obviously accompanied by the chug-chug-chug of youngsters - and toolies - downing shots, beers and brightly-coloured cocktails into the early hours.

Sky Garden is one of the best-known venues along the strip and while entry is expensive, at 200,000 Rupiah (about $18), patrons are immediately steered toward a bar where they get two free shots, pre-mixed drinks or beers to offset the cost.

The security guards that roam around on all levels are almost as visible as the scantily clad local girls who are paid to dance on stage and on the bars on each level, while the venue also offers a huge buffet of free, mostly western food to soak up some of the huge amounts of alcohol people are consuming.

George, an American who describes himself as the "sometimes manager" of the venue, stresses "we do everything we can to make it a safe environment for schoolies, so we can give everyone a good time".

Despite these good intentions, and Sky Garden's high profile, it's clear there is still a seedier side.

At one point, a young Aussie bloke up on level four who looks like he has never shaved in his life is rushed over to the edge of the open-air rooftop bar by his mates and lets fly with a spectacular vomit that plummets four storeys down and splatters onto the street below.

His mates, half-cheering and half-horrified, take care to move him back from the edge after the business is done, and then steer him downstairs towards the exit. We last see him with sitting down outside the club, a plastic bag over his mouth, ready to catch the next chunder.

Over indulgence in alcohol, it seems, is the most obvious danger to schoolies and toolies alike.

Chris George, the national schoolies coordinator for the Red Frogs organisation - which is deploying 1500 volunteers to 17 locations in Australia and overseas to ensure the safety of schoolies - says alcohol and more seriously, methanol poisoning are probably the biggest risks facing youngsters in Bali, rather than drugs.

A drink like a Blue Lagoon, which contains four generously poured shots of alcohol, costs just 160,000 Rupiah (about $15); four vodka and Red Bull drinks are about the same price - perhaps a quarter of the cost in Australia - and a Bintang beer can cost less than $2.

But in some of the less reputable bars which are off the main drag in Kuta and desperate to attract customers with even lower prices, corners are cut and locally-made alcohol masquerading as premium vodka, for example, is served.

If that locally-made alcohol includes methanol, as it occasionally does, poisoning that causes violent illness, blindness and even kill in extreme cases can ensue.

"Intoxication is a big one for us in Bali. The access to alcohol and how cheap it is, when it is cheap and accessible it is a recipe for disaster. And sometimes, unfortunately, we see methanol poisoning," he says.

"Alcohol is the number one drug [in Bali]. There are isolated instances of ecstasy and other party pills, but it is nowhere near the alcohol problem as there is some fear and awareness around the penalties in Indonesia for drug taking."

Red Frogs have been operating for 20 years and their young volunteers' mission, in places like Bali, is to connect up with schoolies both out on the street and in the low-price hotels and ensure that if the worst happens, help is at hand.

George estimates many as 5000 schoolies will descend on Bali in the next couple of weeks to undertake the rite of passage.

For the kids, schoolies week offers a chance to let loose after a lifetime of schooling comes to an end. For their parents back in Australia, though, there might understandably be a few anxious days and nights ahead.