Bali, Indonesia
Jan 20 - Jan 27, 2020
Bali, a popular vacation destination known for its endless beaches, rice fields, waterfalls and spas. The beautiful Instagram shots only added to its popularity. Planning ahead and keeping the itinerary flexible is important here — Heat and humidity is bad year-round, and traffic is horrendous. With proper planning and a nice hotel resort, this can indeed be a vacationer’s paradise. If you don’t like heat, however, it’s best to pick another destination.
Voyagers tips:
Where to stay: I’d recommend Nusa Dua or Seminyak for relaxation, or Ubud for adventures. Here are some popular neighborhoods:
Kuta – Best for cheap eats, local shopping and night life. We’re staying here. While there are many restaurant choices, they tend to be lower-end and many don’t have A/C. We consider A/C mandatory for lunch time. It’s a fine place to stay, but we wouldn’t pick this location next time.
Seminyak – More up-and-coming and more upscale than Kuta, seems to strike the right balance between lively and luxury.
Nusa Dua – Upscale resorts. Great to stay inside the resorts, less convenient to go exploring on foot. But given the size of Bali, many attractions are spread out, so needing transportation isn’t that big of a deal. The bigger con is probably the lack of restaurant choices within a short walk, so you’d be stuck with expensive food at the hotel. That’s just speculation though, we didn’t check it out too carefully. If you are looking for a relaxing stay in Bali, this can be a great choice.
Ubud – Central Bali, away from the beaches. There are lots to do around here, like rice fields, waterfalls, monkey forest, coffee bean fields, etc. It’s only 22 miles away from Kuta, but it takes an hour and a half to get there due to traffic. We ended up doing one long day trip to Ubud to hit most must-hits and didn’t go back due to the long drive. We love waterfalls, and many waterfalls are north of Ubud, too far from any beach neighborhoods, so they’re reachable only for people staying in Ubud.
Jimbaran: Known for seafood restaurant on the beach. Seems less developed for other activities.
Here’s a good website that describes the different neighborhoods: https://santorinidave.com/best-places-bali
Transportation: Traffic here is crazy! The number of cars and scooters have outgrown the narrow streets, so it takes a long time to go anywhere. Our kids got tired of spending about four hours in the car in our Ubud day trip, they grimace at the thought of hour-and-a-half drives to get to some spots. But the attractions are spread out, so incorporate traffic into your itinerary.
Private drivers: This is the best option to get around. Basically, the driver picks you up in the morning, takes you wherever you want to go, and stays with you until he drops you off back at your hotel. If you find a driver directly without going through a middle-man, you can negotiate a cheaper price. Our driver sent from our hotel to pick us up at the airport offered to be our driver, charges us 600k IDR ($44 USD) a day, which seems like a good deal compared to what we found online. Another way to find a driver directly: use Grab to go somewhere, and the driver will undoubtedly try to get you to hire him as a daily driver. Negotiate a good rate and book him. Every driver you meet will try to be your daily driver.
Grab / Gojek: If you want to go to just a single destination, Grab / Gojek is the best way to go. We’ve only used Grab. It’s just like Uber, and the rates are cheap. Be careful though, some places like Jimbaran Beach don’t allow Grab/Gojek drivers to pick up passengers from there, the local drivers have monopoly there. We went to Jimbaran for seafood dinner on the beach and negotiated to have our Grab driver wait there for us and drive us home after dinner. This way we avoided having to find local drivers and be blackmailed due to their monopoly. Grab is very cheap. Download the app before you get here.
Scooters: Many tourists rent scooters so they have total freedom to roam. Traffic here is crazy though. Megan didn’t feel comfortable riding one, so we didn’t go this route.
Airport pickup: It’s best to ask your hotel to arrange for pickup so you have someone waiting for you at the airport with your names on a sign. It’s just easier and is worth the small price premium. Our pickup was $17.
Attractions:
Ubud:
Monkey forest – Monkeys roam free. A must-do.
Rice fields
Real rice fields (Tegalalang): Can be beautiful, depending on the season. If you’re going after harvesting or before they flood the field for germination, there may not be much to see.
Touristy rice fields / coffee plantation / Bali swings: These aren’t real rice fields, they’re tourist oriented. We visited one that looks like a rice field but also has coffee plantation and bali swings (huge swings) all in one place. These places are very touristy but are also lots of fun. We spent several hours at one of these places (Alas Harum) and had fun despite the heat.
One word on the swings – They make for great pictures. You can wear a dress with long skirt/tail or rent one from them, you’ll see plenty of these pictures online.
Waterfall – Tegenungan Waterfall is the most popular and the most crowded. There are many more less-crowded waterfalls but they’re farther from Ubud. This one is spectacular also, just very crowded. We had this as our last stop and hit bumper-to-bumper traffic. It might be better to come here first if you do a day trip. Bring swimsuits so you can jump into water. The walk down isn’t too strenuous, sandals are fine.
Ubud market – We skipped this due to the day being already long. If you do two days in Ubud, this is a good place to stop.
Gold/Silver factory and weaving shop – These are quick stops on the way to Ubud. Nice quick stops, worthy of 10 mins each.
Uluwatu: A cliff-top temple, very picturesque, also good for seeing the Kecak dance. Reviews say the arena for the dance is crowded and you have to show up early to get good seats. This temple is one we crossed off of our list so I don’t have first-hand experience.
Tanah Lot (sunset): A temple on rock formation in water, famous for its sunset view. I really wanted to do this, but it’s 1.5 hour drive from Kuta, and reviews say traffic is extra bad around sunset. The pictures do look amazing though.
Jimbaran Beach: Known for seafood meal on the beach with sand between your toes. We did this and loved it. Be careful though, Tripadvisor is full of reviews where people get brought to a specific restaurant by taxi drivers, and these restaurants charge ridiculous amounts and serve up mediocre food. The taxi drivers get good money for bringing customers to them. Many of these expensive restaurants get 2-star reviews on Tripadvisor. Make sure to do your homework and find the restaurant you want, and don’t let the taxi driver sway your choices. The one we found was good, the food was good and prices were reasonable: Radja Seafood Café. Good reviews on TA. You supposedly can pick your own seafood but we ordered off of a menu and let them do the rest.
Nearby islands: We heard good things about Lombok, and there are signs everywhere for day trips to Nusa Penida. Lombok day trips do exist, but they’re pretty intense, flying out early morning and returning by boat late in the day. Many people choose to spend a few days in Lombok, you can look into this if time allows. For us, we couldn’t even fully explore Bali, so we didn’t look into these nearby islands.
Currency: They use IDR here. There’s currency exchange places everywhere, but there are many stories of shady places that cheat unsuspecting tourists. Be careful. We typically just get money out of ATM, but be aware that the ATMs here cap the amount to about $90 USD, so you’ll have to make frequent withdrawals. Bigger establishments take credit cards, small restaurants don’t.
Other thoughts: We had a full itinerary for Bali, but ended up reducing it way down given the unbearable heat. I wish we were able to explore more of Bali, but the truth is we were all happy to lounge around and enjoy the hotel amenities and avoid the heat: Swimming pool, Lunar new year feast, floating breakfast where we booked the entire rooftop pool and they prepared breakfast in a floating basket for us in the pool, and massages. It felt nice to recharge our batteries. It’s hot even early in the morning, but does cool down a bit late at night, so late nights might be a good time to explore the town a bit.
