Today’s post is bought to you by my good friend Andy W. Andy and his family recently returned to Canada from a trip to Malaysia and has been kind enough to allow me to post his thoughts on his recent trip to Bali. I hope you enjoy this guest blog.
A few people have messaged me regarding Bali and what we thought about it and would we recommend it.
Our resort was in the south, just a half hour from the airport in an area called Nusa Dua. All throughout this Southern area is heavily built up due to hotels and resorts. On the roads in and around this section, it is a bit grubby and tight… But not terrible. Restaurants are everywhere as are stores of all kinds. However, in order to see beauty outside of your slice of beach on the resort, you have to head out to the neighbouring towns and country side.
Liking Bali (like any other destination) depends I guess on what you like from your holiday experience. If you like Crystal clear waters, white sand, and are big beach people, you will be going a hell of a long way to be disappointed. As I mentioned before, they are nice but not stunning. The coastline however, can be dramatic away from most resorts, and impressive to look at in many areas, but you won’t necessarily be able to swim in them, or even access them.
If you like to leave the resort and travel around, you will find Bali more rewarding. There are some (many) cool temples, volcano, water falls, rice fields and countryside to explore. As I mentioned I loved the architecture. Mind you it is small scale architecture. Nothing on the island is allowed to be built higher than the tallest palm tree.. No joke, it is an interpretation of Hindu law they follow.
The food there pretty much anywhere we went is really good. Really good ingredients, wide variety, and well prepared. Pretty much the best we have had in our travels.
The people are extremely friendly, warm, honest and genuine as far as we could tell. Always trying. Always smiling and taking an interest. I guess when tourists are responsible for over 65 percent of your economy… You are going to be nice. But beyond any practical reason for their warmth… I do think it is cultural and it is very nice to be with them. Even the kids noticed when we left and we missed all the warm, open people there. We traded them for the more businesslike, less inviting people in Singapore.
So, I would say overall you won’t have a bad time there. In fact, you will probably have a great time. But it is a long way to go no matter how you slice it from our part of the world. You are looking at minimum, probably 20 hours with a stop. I wouldn’t necessarily go all that way just for Bali….especially if you are into beaches. I heard there are some awesome surf spots if you are into it, and some great diving areas which we didn’t see as we had the kids.
We tied in Kuala Lumpur and were going to do Singapore as well, but the latter got shot down with the Covid nightmare. We just got to sleep in the airport…Beautiful airport mind you lol. If we had more time than an extended March break, we would have seen Thailand too.
Seeing other places including Bali while you are in that part of the world, is the way to do it in my opinion. It is just way too far to go, to simply lay on a beach. You can find better beaches, similar pools, and high end resorts a lot closer than Bali. However you won’t find some of it’s unique geography, cultural particularities, or definitely its friendly people, anywhere else in the world.. Or it’s exotic mystique and the ability to say.. Yeah.. I’ve been to Bali..
Hope this helps those that are interested. – Andy
I hope you enjoyed my guest blog today. Please share your comments in the comment section and I will be sure to pass them along to Andy and his family.
Until next time, stay healthy and safe
Mary – the Traveling Baroness
