But his unswerving belief in a benevolent afterlife, can't help him reconcile what he has done to his parents, Ken and Helen.
''It is like stabbing your own mother and father in the heart and ripping out that knife and watching them bleed to death,'' Chan told The Age yesterday, in his first interview since his final appeal against the death sentence was rejected.
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''It has been agony for them.''Ken and Helen Chan, immigrants from China, worked long hours in their Sydney restaurants to put their children through school. When Chan became a teenager, he took advantage of their long absences from home to indulge his teenage whims. He was ''young, stupid'' and self-obsessed. He took drugs, raised hell.
''They couldn't control me,'' Chan said. ''While they were working, I was just cruising around.''
The six years Chan has been in prison have taken a heavy toll on Ken and Helen. Ken is in poor health and Helen has become an insomniac, haunted by nightmares about her son's death.
''She's stuck in this loop, she's in between,'' he said. ''She's constantly thinking about me.''
The two can barely communicate because Helen speaks only Mandarin and what little of the language Chan ever learnt has all but disappeared while he has been in prison.
What would he tell her if he could speak freely with her? ''How sorry I am, for how much pain and agony I've put her through,'' he says. ''I hope they can see that when I done what I did, I was young, and didn't think too much about what I was doing.''
Chan hopes they will draw some comfort from his transformation behind bars. He is unlike any of the other members of the Bali nine smuggling syndicate or, for that matter, Schapelle Corby. He is almost always upbeat and quick with a joke, often at his own expense.
Most other prisoners like him, even though he was an organiser of the venture to Bali to smuggle 8.1 kilograms of heroin to Australia.
The governor of Kerobokan prison, Siswanto, admires him and defended him in court, asking for clemency.
Chan organises courses in prison, leads the English-language church service and is a mentor to many, even complaining ''sometimes there's not enough hours in the day''.
When he heard the news on Friday night that his appointment with a firing squad was closer, he says it didn't faze him.
''I don't really fear it, death. Even if I pass away, I'm still going to have a life up in heaven and obviously that's going to be for eternity.
''I still have faith that things can turn around,'' he said, talking of his final option to avoid execution, an appeal to Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
''I believe God will intervene and do something amazing within my life.
''A lot of people might think I'm putting on this Christian act, it's a facade or whatever. But it lifts me up,'' he said.
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