I’ve read a lot about Bali on reddit in the “digital nomad” community the past few years. Especially since COVID and the explosion of work from home one of the prevailing themes of discussion is the country has been overrun with wannabe influencers and scammy startups. The cynic in me assumed that this was going to be the case, but that turned out to only be part of my experience.
It turns out a lot of popular destinations do indeed feel overrun with people specifically there to take selfies, but the island is so incredibly beautiful that it largely made up for that.
Anyway our trip to Bali began with a fairly unpleasant 24-ish hour series of flights starting with an 11PM redeye from Haneda here in Tokyo and a layover in Kuala Lumpur before arriving in Bali the next day where we had some amazing airport food. Actually after eating this food I think this is a country whose cuisine I know almost nothing about might be a favorite.
Again I am incredibly ignorant about the country, customs, and food of Malaysia so I can say almost nothing about how authentic the food at this generic chain looking place was, but it was some of the best food I can remember eating in years.
It sort of reminds me of the best parts of Indian and Thai food or something like this. Really really great. Again I understand this is a bit of a sad thing for me to be talking about, this airport food, making a broad assumption over a countries food based on what could be a McDonald’s of Malaysia for all I know, but it really was so good. At least it’s a positive assumption.
Anyway,
Bali
When we were planning our trip to Bali (we had 7 full days) we decided to split our time between Ubud and Sanur. The general advice people give seems to be that different areas of Bali have very different “vibes” and it was worth check out multiple areas to have a more complete experience. Ubud is at higher elevation and in the middle of the island, or at least away from the coast / water. Basically Ubud === waterfalls and beautiful rice fields and green, Sanur === coast.
Getting to Ubud was easy enough for us as we hired a taxi with AC but the traffic is absolutely terrible and I feel for our driver and anybody else (in particular locals) who have to deal with the traffic daily. I did some quick googling on our 2-3ish hour drive between the airport and Ubud and apparently there is no easy solution. It is one of these situations where in my head I’d think, “surely this must not be normal, and I’m sure somebody is working on a solution if it really is this bad!” but apparently the traffic really is always this bad, and there isn’t a great solution. In tourist forums and such you read a lot about people getting fed up with the traffic so perhaps the problem will self correct, or at least not get much worse because it really feels like it can’t get that much worse.
After arriving the first order of business was renting a scooter next to our guesthouse. While in Ubud we spent most of our time scootering around and checking out out various temples / waterfalls / etc.
I originally started this blog out with photos of the “influencing” we ran into all over the place but starting there is perhaps a bit mean spirited and not really fair because the reality is I was shocked at how beautiful the Ubud area was. Where we stayed was busy with lots of traffic, but even our guest house just 5 minutes off the street was lush and green. And riding a scooter 15 minutes outside of the main traffic areas and you had beautiful fields.
I also very much appreciated the small offers (Canang sari) everywhere. I feel like even saying I appreciated them could be a bit much given how little I understand the cultural / religious significance (I have read some article but because of the huge number of aforementioned influencers writing blog posts to try to live the #digitalnomad life it’s tough for me to know when I’m reading something through the eyes of somebody who also doesn’t really understand – hence the link to Wikipedia above!), so forgive me in advance but simply from an aesthetic perspective the offerings are shockingly beautiful and give such a nice feeling.
We also went to a “Sacred Monkey Forest” which I don’t have a ton of photos of but would recommend to anybody who likes watching monkeys close up. I should acknowledge that they feed these monkeys – they seemed fairly well respected and there were a few injured monkeys they took care of, but just be aware. Anyway, this place was beautiful and really well kept and I could sit for an entire day just watching the monkeys existing.
One small unimportant memory was there was a family who hadn’t listened to the “don’t bring plastic bags into the park” rule (because the monkeys can hear plastic bags I guess even inside of another bag and will try to get the plastic bag out) and we sat and watched as this group of monkeys essentially attacked this family’s bag while a little kid was sitting screaming and crying and the parents were not sure what to do. It was mildly entertaining because they looked so shocked, and I would have felt bad except for the blatant disregard for the rules (and nobody got hurt or anything). They were just sort of stunned unsure what to do as these monkeys wouldn’t leave them or their bag alone and ended up ripping a bunch of food out of it.
Influencing
Here is where I will mention we really saw a lot of the influencer crowd on this trip.
The photos don’t really do it justice but this particular waterfall was 100% taken over by a line of people waiting to climb up to various spots to have their photos taken.
To be fair, just down stream from where the influencer photo shoots were happening was beautiful and Lindsay had a great swim there.
Other more secluded waterfalls we went to had many fewer people but still signs of influencing.
Anyway enough of the negative thing. My opinion is that there is too much of this stuff in Bali, it felt like it was sort of everywhere and it took away some from a few of the otherwise naturally beautiful spots. We weren’t even in the worst of the areas. But it certainly did NOT ruin our trip.
Other stuff in Ubud
Lindsay had some work to do one day so we found ourselves a nice little cafe / pool / whatever and hung out and drank fresh fruit smoothies. Honestly this was one of the best things about Ubud for us, it was just really comfortable and easy. Arguably too easy.
One day we also decided to check out a “day club” (or something like this) – this is maybe a big thing all over the world in tropical tourist destinations, but not something we normally tend to visit. In the case of Bali it felt like a thing to do and frankly when we were in Ubud we wanted to go swimming and this was a pretty reasonably priced option. I believe we paid something like $40ish for the day but that was 100% used towards a food credit. So basically we got more fancy food than we needed plus a place to hang out and read and feel fancy for the day and swim for a reasonable amount of money I think.
The next day we took a cooking class which was great. The class itself was pretty standard in the “you’re not working too hard because all of the hard stuff like shopping and the dishes and figuring out what to cook is taken care of” but it’s fun sometimes to just sort of chop up some peppers and have your hand held as you sort of Lego kit a fancy meal together. If that makes sense.
One small unimportant thing but just a small memory: on our way to the cooking class (we were picked up at our guest house as part of the cost) we rode with two women from Algeria. I don’t think I’d ever met or talked with anybody from Algeria before, at least not knowingly. It was sort of eye opening in that I didn’t really know what to expect but hearing about their lives / home / beautiful things to see in Algeria it was another reminder that the world really is a big place and I know very close to nothing.
I think it’s nice to be reminded of how big the world is sometimes. Anyway, the cooking class was great!
A few quick trips to urgent care
Not worth dwelling on because it wasn’t a huge deal, but was somewhat of a pain and a bit scary, but while riding the scooter around one day Lindsay got something stuck in her eye. She toughed it out at first and ignored it, but unfortunately it didn’t go away.
We realized fairly early on that you could actually see the (something) stuck in her eye, a small black speck of something that turned out to be asphalt (apparently). After the thing was clearly stuck in her eye and bugging Lindsay quite a bit we went first to a pharmacy and bought and eye wash kit (which didn’t help), then an optometrist at an eye glass store in hopes they might be able to help (which understandably they couldn’t and referred us to a nearby urgent care facility), and finally to urgent care.
The doctor numbed Linday’s eye then apparently used a metal pokey bit to get the thing out of her eye. Frankly I was worried about them just sort of YOLOing it (vs going to somebody specifically working with eyes) but it worked out OK in the end!…
… that said before working out in the end, the next day Lindsay had what seemed to be the start of conjunctivitis and we decided (after having dealt with the same in Brazil / Argentina (see: How to remove your appendix in Argentina (via Brazil) for only $4,403.23) not to mess with it and went and got an antibiotic.
There was a scary moment where her eye was really bulging out and was jelly like, I was a bit freaked out thinking somehow her eyeball had exploded or something… but I guess this is normal and again in the end it all worked out!
I kept records and both trips to the urgent care (two different places actually) cost around USD $90. Not bad!
A quick word on food and prices
To be honest we didn’t eat at many small, super casual food places while in Bali. Most of where we ate were pretty tourist friendly although in theory traditional Balinese food. Some of it was certainly catering to tourists.
Regardless it was great food and I really enjoyed it. Coming from Japan, whose food I absolutely love and feel is probably my favorite in the world, it was a nice change of pace to have some more spicy (not hot, just more lemon grass and shallot and garlic, etc) food.
Prices across the board were also very affordable I would say. For example this slightly more upscale dessert store you can see the prices for these beautiful and very good tasting things were around 8000 to 12000 Rupiah.
In general we ate whatever we wanted and never spent more than 10-20 bucks for a meal. I do think because it’s so “easy” to go out to eat beautiful / fancy food and it feels so relatively cheap it would be easy to spend a lot of money over a month or something, but we were only there for a week-ish so it was OK.
Sunar and Potato Head
We knew we wanted to see Ubud but weren’t sure where else we should stay in Bali to have a bit of diversity in our trip. We had considered Uluwatu, Amed, Sunar, Nusa Dua, and a few other places. Amed is a lot further away from most other places in the North and probably would have been a great choice but given we didn’t have THAT much time we decided against it. Sunar was sort of splitting the difference between “not being in the super hip area” and “not being super far away.” There is a boardwalk along the ocean and I was picturing going for runs.
Our accommodation was pretty nice and I did enjoy swimming in the pool a few nights. It was very comfortable and I could see staying there for a long longer and using it as more of a home base because the place had a pretty nice shared kitchen.
The reality is that when we were there in mid June 2024 at night the onshore wind was super strong and the “vibe” wasn’t really what we were looking for. A bit more commercial in a still touristic but not as nice sort of way. The beaches also weren’t really speaking to us much, especially after our time in Cebu.
So what is one to do when you aren’t exactly feeling the public beach and the traffic is such in your area that you don’t really want to drive around, but you want to relax and eat some food and read a book for a day or two?
The answer is: Potato Head
Potato Head is the name of another beach resort club thing. It was pretty hip and cool and mainly just a nice place to hang out at.
We stayed at this place most of the day until fairly late at night, swimming in the pool and reading. The beach is also right there and I took a few walks.
I’m not sure what else to say about Potato Head besides it felt like a real luxury. Part of me felt a bit sad not to be riding through green fields on the scooter and instead hanging out by the beach / pool reading, but it was still a nice experience.
Another small thing that was nice about this is how diverse the tourist crowd seemed to be. There were people from all over. When you’re in Mexico or something on the beach you tend to see a lot of tourists from the US, but I’m not sure we specifically noticed a single US / Canada accent. Not to say there aren’t plenty of tourists from the US in Bali of course, but there seemed to be even more representation from other parts of the world. Not surprising I know given the location of Bali relative to the US vs the rest of the world, but still it was nice to really notice and feel it.
I think if I went back to Bali sometime, which I could see doing eventually, I would stay somewhere other than Sanur (and I should point out that Potato Head was on the West Coast across from Sanur in the East). I think the middle ground of Sanur (between super hip touristic areas and further away / chill areas) ended up being a bit lukewarm, we should have probably went all in on one or the other.
Heading home
The final night we ended up going back down to stay near the airport as we had another redeye flight at 6AM or something. This actually worked out really well and we were able to make a fairly easy 15 minute walk through the quiet streets directly to the airport without having to rely on transit.
And that was about it. Another 18 hours of travel or something and we were home!
Overall, Bali was beautiful and I’m really happy I was able to visit. I do think the intensity of the tourism or something detractor, especially when we compare to our experience in Cebu. It left a bit of an empty calorie feeling for me I think. A lot of this is my fault and I fully admit that, I am positive if I was a bit more adventurous and went further outside of the main tourist areas we’d feel differently (and I like to think we would have given more time, or if we went back).