Bali has been in many travel guide books for years now. Maybe too many. The Indonesian island has been receiving travellers from all over the world, taking in the breakfast bowl / salty hair / hipster aesthetic and wanderlusting their way through life. I joined their ranks this summer, and I was in awe at this Indonesian island. That’s why I’ve come up with a few reasons why you should visit Bali – and a few reasons why you shouldn’t.
When I was planning the blog posts that I would write about my travels this summer (I also went to Japan, by the way!), I just couldn’t seem to come up with a good blog post idea for Bali. Since it’s been so popular among travellers lately, it seemed like everything that could have been written about this island has actually been written and I had nothing more to add.
But after a while, I noticed that there weren’t many posts that highlighted both the positive and negative aspects of Bali. Most posts either focused on why Bali is worth a visit or why Bali is not worth a visit.
In this article, I’m taking the middle road and leaving the final decision up to you. These are the main reasons why I believe Bali should and shouldn’t be on your bucket list.
Before you continue reading: watch this Bali travel video I made to get you in the mood for this article. You won’t regret it.
Here’s an overview of everything I talk about in this post, in case you want to skip ahead and read one specific part (just click one of the links below!)
The food scene in Indonesia is unreal. Nasi goreng, beef rendang, chicken satay, not to mention the trendy breakfast bowls that are served daily in hipster cities like Canggu.
There are so many restaurants in Bali worth a visit that you’ll probably barely scratch the tip of the culinary iceberg that is Indonesia.
Also, if you’re used to paying $20+ for a meal, Bali restaurants are heaven on earth. So. Ridiculously. Cheap.
Also #2: breakfast bowls. That’s it.
One of the best things to do in Canggu (or any other city on the island, probably) is to get a massage.
Throughout our five full days on the island, we got three massages. Just throwing this out there to give you an idea.
If you truly want to relax and let go of any kind of stress or tension you have bottled up inside, a massage parlour on Bali is the perfect place for that.
There is nothing better to help you relax after a long, strenuous day of hiking around Bali than getting a foot massage. There’s something soothing about having a stranger rub your feet with essential oils and feeling the pressure leave your body.
Bali massage prices are definitely way cheaper than comparable services in Europe and Northern America. For a 1-hour full body massage, you’ll be set back between 60,000 and 100,000 IDR (about 4-7 USD). For a 30-minute foot massage (which I also highly recommend), you’ll pay about 50,000 IDR (about 3.50 USD).
Still wondering what to do in Bali?
If you’ve got a day left to spare, why not consider leaving the island and taking a day trip to Nusa Penida?
Nusa Penida is an island that is located southeast of Bali and can be easily reached by boat, crossing the Badung Strait. You’ll have to get to Sanur Harbor in Denpasar (ask your taxi driver to help you get there) and then spend about 30 minutes on a speed boat before arriving at your destination.
A Nusa Penida day trip will show you everything that’s worth a visit on the island, and it will also include some – how do I say this – interesting roads. (Read: wobbly and headache-inducing)
Notable sights in Nusa Penida include Kelingking Beach (you’ll know this one from all the Instagram photos), Broken Beach, Angel’s Billabong and Crystal Bay. All of these can be combined easily on a fairly cheap organised day trip, including your own personal driver to take you all around the island.
Bali rice fields are great.
I might just be saying this because I haven’t seen rice paddies anywhere else, but still. I recommend the Tegallang Rice Terraces (about 20 minutes north of Ubud), because you’re able to really walk between the fields and see some locals.
Of course, locals know that these rice paddies are popular among tourists and they try their best to make some money out of it. However, I can still say that Tegallang was the most beautiful rice fields I have seen. So far.
Tip: if you want to take a picture of a local farmer in traditional clothes, you might want to reconsider. As I said before, locals know that their rice fields are popular, and they exploit this knowledge. If you do take a picture of one of them, they’ll expect you to pay up and they won’t leave you until you do.
You might not agree with me if you’ve been to Bali yourself. And I completely get that. After all, local taxi drivers and market/street vendors will always try to find a way to get you to spend some of your hard-earned money on their products. And they probably won’t be very nice and approachable about it.
However, I still strongly believe that the Balinese people are some of the friendliest and most helpful people out there.
One of the most popular things to do in Ubud is without a doubt the monkey sanctuary. In this forest-like terrain, monkeys roam around freely (and sometimes they even try to steal stuff from oblivious travellers’ backpacks).
A visit to Ubud monkey forest is a welcome respite from days of going through traffic in the back of a cab, wondering whether or not today is the day you die in a car crash.
The monkeys have a better training than many people give them credit for. They won’t jump on you, become aggressive or steal from you unless they are provoked. And even if something does happen, the park is guarded by many attentive rangers who have years of experience attending to these monkeys.
Besides, at an entrance fee of only 50,000 IDR (3.50 USD), it’s a steal.
If you’re looking for an authentic view of what Indonesian people are actually like, Bali isn’t the place to be.
As I mentioned before, the Balinese know that their island is immensely popular among Australian, American and European tourists. And they take no shame in using this knowledge to get them some extra pocket money (see also the ‘local farmer’ who posed for pictures with travellers at the rice fields).
If you’re looking for things to do on Bali that haven’t been done a million times by thousands of people yet, you’re going to be looking for quite a while.
I’m not saying that visiting Bali off-the-beaten-path is an unattainable dream that you shouldn’t pursue if you really feel like it.
Everyone who went to Bali has gotten a massage and sat by the beach at Kuta or Canggu. But that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t do it.
Now, this is one of my personal main reasons why Bali is not worth a visit.
Although the people of Bali are generally very kind and accommodating to travellers, Bali is probably not a place where you’ll feel safe and secure as a foreign traveller.
For starters, traffic is crazy. I’m not exaggerating. Cars pass each other left and right on the highway, lanes don’t seem to have any significance and turn signals are not a thing, apparently. And I haven’t even talked about the scooters yet. (More on that later)
This goes without saying, but don’t try to smuggle drugs into Bali. You’ll be faced with massive cash fines and long jail sentences.
Be wary of taxi drivers and street vendors who try to get your attention in order to sell things to you. Once you give them some kind of attention (even just making eye contact or saying ‘No, thank you’ will encourage them), they’ll be difficult to get rid of. Just completely ignore them and move on.
I think you get the gist. I didn’t feel safe in Bali, and chances are that you won’t either.
I promised you more explanation about the problem of heavy traffic in Bali, right? Here it is.
Don’t go to Bali if you’re looking for a week of fun cruising through the island on a rental scooter, unless you’re a highly experienced scooter driver.
On our short stay in Bali, and especially on Nusa Penida, we saw several western-looking travel couples on scooters with bloody and bruised limbs. Admittedly, these might be from other accidents that had nothing to do with Bali, but there were too many for it to be a coincidence.
It’s no fun driving a scooter through rice paddies if you’re injured. Be very careful if you do decide to rent a scooter. Or, better yet, save yourself the trouble and don’t rent a scooter at all. There are plenty of other things to do in Bali.
You know which pictures I’m talking about. The ones on Instagram that show a pretty, tanned blonde girl in an infinity pool, turning her back to the camera, sipping on a coconut cocktail and overlooking the lush rice terraces of Bali.
The truth is, this isn’t what Bali actually looks like. Social media is giving us a false image of travel, and while social media-fueled tourism might be a good thing for local economies, it could lead to disappointment on the part of travellers convinced by this exact idealised image.
Yes, there are beautiful sights to be seen and wonderful things to do in Bali. But the road to these sights is paved with ugly concrete and garbage on the sidewalk.
I went to the beach in Bali twice. And I wasn’t impressed.
Tip: if you’re going to Canggu and you’re not planning on taking surfing classes, don’t go to Batu Bolong Beach. It’s not worth it.
You see, back in Belgium, I grew up in a coast city. Which means that it essentially takes a lot for a beach to impress me. The only beach that I saw during my week in Bali that came close to impressing me wasn’t even in Bali.
Kelingking Beach (Nusa Penida) looked great from up above. The beach down below doesn’t have a lot of people, because it takes a hell of a pathway to get down to the bottom. We didn’t get down, but at least it looked nice from a distance.
Undoubtedly, there are plenty of wonderful beaches in Bali, hidden away from the public. However, we were only in Bali for about six days, so we didn’t really get a chance to discover these.
If you really want to know what I think about it: yes. Bali is overrated. But you shouldn’t abstain from visiting Bali just because I say it’s overrated. I also think there are many things worth seeing and discovering in Bali, and in the end, it’s really your own personal decision.
This whole post boils down to this one question, and the truth is that it’s up to you to decide. You have to ask yourself “Is Bali worth a visit?” and come up with an answer before you make the decision to travel there.
My only hope is that this post might shed some light on the actual condition of the Indonesian island, so that you can make an informed decision for yourself.
Would you still want to visit Bali after reading this post? Why (not)? Let me know in a comment!
Thanks for reading!
-S
PIN IT!
I’ve never done as much travelling in one year as I have in 2018. I travelled to three countries in Asia and four countries in Europe. Not only did I travel with friends and with family, I also travelled with a bunch of people I had never met before. This is a short overview of all the trips and crazy experiences I was fortunate enough to go through this year. This is my 2018 travel report.
Note: whenever I mention ‘blog posts/video coming soon’, it might already be up and I forgot to update this post. Check my recent blog posts and my YouTube channel to stay up to date with everything I do!
Click the links below to skip to the destinations you’re most interested in!
I’m not sure if everyone will count this as travelling, but I’m including it anyway. There’s nothing you can do to stop me.
In September 2017, I set off on my most ambitious project abroad to date. I spent four months studying abroad in Salamanca, Spain. Since I came back home in January 2018, I’m going to say it technically counts for my 2018 overview.
During my semester studying abroad, I met amazing people from all over the world (see Instagram picture below), I learned how to be independent and how to solve problems that I had never come across earlier. My Spanish also improved tremendously.
(The only reason I’m not on this picture is because it was taken the night before my first exam and I went home early to revise. See, Mom, I can be a responsible student.)
Studying abroad is usually something you do on your own. I was in a special situation, where I had a classmate who went on her Erasmus stay to the same city as me. We made friends together during the first few weeks, we were in class together and we studied together for our exams.
Big shout-out to Amy for helping me out with all kinds of problems I came across. <3
I went to Amsterdam in February.
One of the artists I had been following for a few years, Quinn XCII, was touring Europe in January and February 2018. When he dropped the announcement for the Europe leg of his The Story Of Us tour, I saw that the closest he would come to Belgium was Amsterdam. I messaged a few of my friends and one of them was willing to go to Amsterdam with me for a concert by an artist she had never heard of. What an absolute legend.
I combined this show with a visit to my sister, who was studying abroad in Amsterdam at the time. She was in the middle of her exams and we met up a few times to go for dinner and to explore the city.
In total, we ended up staying in Amsterdam for three days. We didn’t really visit any popular tourist hotspots, since my friend and I had both been in Amsterdam before (on the same school trip, by the way) and my sister obviously didn’t need to visit them anymore after having spent a few months there.
As I mentioned before, I went to Amsterdam with one of my best friends from high school and we met up with my sister a few times once we were there.
I went to La Plagne in February.
As I mentioned in my travel story, yearly ski trips have been an essential part of our family bonding since I was four years old. Before 2018, we hadn’t gone skiing for a while, but this year we went to La Plagne for a week of fun plowing through the snow.
We skied a lot. I reached a top speed of over 90 km/h (55 mph) rushing down a slope with nothing but two long sticks attached to my feet. I believe everyone should go skiing at some point, but that’s not the question here.
Also: I ate a lot of food. Just thought I’d throw that out there.
I went skiing in La Plagne with my parents and my sister, and we met up with a friend of my sister’s who was there with her family at the same time by chance.
I went to Lille in May.
After I came back from my four-month stay in Spain, I realised how much fun it was to be in an international organisation of exchange students and Erasmus students. While I was in Spain, I went on many trips that were organised by the local office of ESN (Erasmus Student Network).
Many of these trips can be seen in my Travel Videos playlist!
And so, when I was back in Belgium, I wanted to return the favour to the international student community. I contacted ESN Ghent (the city I’m currently studying in) to see if there was anything I could do for them, and it turns out there was. We agreed that I would join an upcoming ESN trip to Lille and take care of the pictures and video.
No sooner said than done, I found myself filming an international group of students I had never met before in a French city.
I went to Lille with two guys who volunteered at ESN Ghent and a group of 30-something international students who were out to explore the best Lille had to offer.
I went to Japan in August.
It’s been almost four months since I came back from Japan, but it still feels surreal to me that I actually went there and it was not a dream.
I spent two weeks in Japan and I visited Osaka, Tokyo, Kyoto, Nara, Hiroshima, Itsukushima, Hakone, Shirakawa-go and Kanazawa. (More blog posts about Japan coming soon, by the way)
It was action-filled, ridiculous, exceptional, adventurous, unbelievable.
I can’t wait to go back and explore more of this crazy, crazy country.
I went to Japan with my parents and my sister. We also met up with a few people my dad knew from work when we were there.
I went to Bali in September.
After our two-week trip to Japan, my sister and I were still feeling energetic and ready for another trip. So we went to Bali for a week.
Admittedly, we had booked all this in advance, so it wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment kind of deal.
While we were in Bali, we visited Ubud (Monkey Forest, rice terraces and Bali Swings), Canggu and Nusa Penida (Kelingking Beach, Broken Beach & Angel’s Billabong). We also ate. A lot. And we got a few massages. #thegoodlife
Bali might be on your bucket list, but you might want to revisit that. Here’s why Bali may or may not be worth a visit.
I went to Bali with my sister.
I went to Singapore in September.
Since I was only in Singapore for a 30-hour layover, I didn’t do a whole lot.
In our short available time period, we managed to check out the Supertree Grove at Gardens By The Bay (during the day AND at night), the Flower Dome, Cloud Forest, Little India and Chinatown.
We also admired a light show at the Supertree Grove (called the Garden Rhapsody) and one at the Marina waterfront. We experienced both shows within about half an hour of each other and it was the perfect end to a perfect trip.
Blog posts and video coming soon.
I went to Singapore with my sister, after our visits to Japan and Bali.
I went to Slovenia in September.
We arrived in Ljubljana, where we stayed for two days and mostly wandered around its quaint streets and neighbourhoods and discovering everything the Slovenian capital had to offer. Some recommendations: a stroll along the Ljubljanica river, Dragon Bridge, Preseren Square and Ljubljana Castle.
After two days in the capital, we took a bus to Bled, where we stayed in an Airbnb located at about ten minutes of Lake Bled. Also, I accidentally walked all the way around the lake on our last day. But that’s a story for later.
Related: get €30 off your first Airbnb booking here.
From Bled, we also went on a day trip to Vintgar Gorge. It was extremely tiring since the hike up there took us a lot longer than we had anticipated, but it was totally worth it. The views were gorge-ous. (I’m so sorry.)
Blog posts and video coming soon.
I went to Slovenia with one of my best friends from school (who is also an avid world traveller and one of the biggest fans of this blog, by the way).
This 2018 travel report wasn’t just meant to make anyone reading this jealous of how much I travelled. It was meant to show you that anyone can travel. If I, a full-time university student, can go on seven trips in one year, there’s no reason for you not to be able to do the same thing.
I’m not rich. I don’t have more time than you do. But I do make travel a priority.
As a travel blogger, writing a travel report like this is like a photographer making a photo album. In the future, I’ll be able to look back at this post and relive everything I experienced in 2018.
All I’m trying to say here is that it doesn’t always have to be a big, fancy trip. You can go to a city one hour away from your hometown and discover things you had never seen before.
Travelling is not about collecting trophies from the most extreme destinations across the world. It’s about experiencing life and living your dreams.
Here’s to travelling more than you think you can in 2019. Let’s make this the best year of our lives.
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