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Activities

Things to do in Bali, described honestly

What each experience actually is, how it is organised on the ground, and what nobody mentions before you pay. Prices appear only dated, on rule pages, never guessed at here.

Ubud and around

  • A raft crew mid river, paddles up, taking a small rapid between green banks

    Rafting the Ayung river

    The island's classic raft run: two gentle hours through a jungle gorge near Ubud, suited to first timers and children, with the honest catch waiting at the stairs.

  • Bathers in sarongs and green sashes queueing at the spring-fed purification spouts of Tirta Empul

    The purification bath at Tirta Empul

    The one temple where visitors are invited into the ritual rather than kept behind it: how the melukat purification actually works, what to wear, and which spouts are not for you.

  • Long-tailed macaques grooming on the brick paving of the Ubud Monkey Forest in hard light

    The Sacred Monkey Forest of Ubud

    Macaques who own a temple complex in the middle of town: the rules that keep the visit funny instead of bloody, and why the forest is worth seeing even if the monkeys were not there.

  • The paved path along the Campuhan ridge running through tall alang-alang grass

    The Campuhan Ridge walk

    The only famous thing in Ubud that is free, flat and impossible to do wrong, and the one variable that decides whether it is a stroll or a sweat: the clock.

  • Tegenungan waterfall dropping into its jungle amphitheatre south of Ubud

    Tegenungan waterfall

    The closest big waterfall to the southern resorts, which is both its entire appeal and its entire problem: what the easiest falls on the island actually offer, and when they offer it quietly.

  • A stone mortar and pestle with garlic and aromatics on a wooden board

    A Balinese cooking class in Ubud

    A class that hands you bowls of pre-chopped shallot and chili has already done the work for you. The one worth booking starts at a market or a garden, hands you a mortar, and teaches the base paste first.

  • Coffee cherries ripening red and green on the branch

    The coffee plantation tour and kopi luwak

    Almost every plantation stop on the Ubud circuit sells kopi luwak, coffee from beans passed through a civet. What separates a tasting flight from a cage twenty metres away, and how to tell before you buy a ticket.

  • A wide valley of jungle and plantation fading into mist, seen through foreground leaves

    The jungle swings of Tegallalang and the Ayung gorge

    The swing photograph that sells Bali is made at a built installation that charges admission, runs a queue and rents the dress. Not a scandal, a business: here is what buying the ticket actually gets you.

  • Stallholders among hats and woven crafts at a covered market

    The Ubud palace and the art market

    Puri Saren Agung and the Ubud art market sit ten minutes apart, both free or nearly free, both widely dismissed as tourist traps. Half right: the morning produce market and the palace's evening dance performances are the genuine article underneath.

  • An open-sided practice pavilion built above the tree line, a single figure on the floor inside it

    Yoga in Ubud

    One of the world's genuine yoga capitals, and also the town where every hotel deck calls itself a wellness retreat. How to tell an established school from an add-on before you book.

  • The Tukad Cepung gorge from below, daylight coming through the open cave roof onto the falling water

    Tukad Cepung waterfall

    The shaft of light through the cave roof that every photograph shows belongs to a narrow window of hours and months, not to the site itself. Most visitors arrive outside it and see a limestone gorge instead. Also: getting in means wading a river that floods.

  • Oil poured from an amber bottle into a therapist's cupped hand

    A Balinese massage, and how to pick where

    The word covers a trained therapist working a real technique and a stranger on a beach chair with oil already on your shoulders. What the technique involves, what Indonesia's national system does and does not settle, and the signals that separate a spa from a room with a table.

The highlands and the volcanoes

  • An active volcano climbed by headlamp before dawn, cold at the top and crowded in season

    The Mount Batur sunrise trek

    Two hours of climbing in the dark for the most booked dawn on the island: what the trek actually involves, and the one thing to settle before your alarm rings at three.

  • Wide flooded rice terraces with farmers at work among palms, the classic subak landscape

    The Jatiluwih rice terraces

    Tegallalang is the photograph everyone takes; Jatiluwih, further into Tabanan, is the working terrace system UNESCO actually listed. What the subak is, how far the drive costs, and when the fields turn gold.

  • A split temple gate of dark volcanic stone against a mountain ridge at dusk

    Pura Besakih, the mother temple

    The highest and most important temple complex in Balinese Hinduism, built up the flank of Agung, and for years the worst-reviewed approach on the island. What the complex actually is, and how the visit is organised now.

  • Mount Agung rising above the coast at Amed, its summit clear of cloud in the early morning

    Climbing Mount Agung

    Bali's highest and holiest mountain, climbed at night on loose volcanic ground. The two routes, why a guide is not optional, and the status check that comes before either.

  • The tiered shrine of Pura Ulun Danu Beratan standing in the lake, the Bedugul hills rising behind it

    Ulun Danu Beratan, the lake temple

    The shrine everyone photographs stands on one islet, seen from one angle, and the lake's level decides whether it stands in water or on exposed grass. Also: it is cold and wet in the highlands when the coast is neither.

  • The Handara gate, two tall stone towers either side of the resort road, a visitor posing in the gap with forested hills behind

    The Handara gate

    It is not a temple. It is the entrance to a golf resort in the Bedugul highlands, and what visitors buy is a turn in a managed queue for one photograph from one fixed spot. What else the drive up here is actually for.

The Bukit and the south

  • The Kecak amphitheatre at Uluwatu at dusk, the chanting circle at its centre and the ocean behind

    The Kecak fire dance at Uluwatu

    Dozens of chanting men, no orchestra, and a limestone cliff above the ocean at sunset: why the island's most photographed performance is worth planning around, and what the monkeys will take from you while you watch.

  • A beginner surf lesson gathering on the dark sand at Canggu, boards laid out on the beach

    Learning to surf in Canggu

    The island is one of the easiest places on earth to stand up for the first time: which beaches teach kindly, how a lesson is actually structured, and the flags that separate a school from a guy with boards.

  • Surfers and swimmers on a small cove beach below a jungle headland

    The cliff beaches of Uluwatu and the Bukit

    Padang Padang, Bingin, Thomas, Suluban and Dreamland all share the same access problem before they share anything else: a stairway cut into a cliff. The stairs decide the day more than the sand does.

  • Water slides curving down toward a pool between tall palms

    Waterbom Bali

    A landscaped water park built into mature gardens in the middle of Kuta, repeatedly ranked among the world's best. The least Balinese thing on this site, and the most useful family answer south Bali has.

  • Jukung outriggers on flat water at sunrise off Sanur beach

    The Sanur beachfront path

    A paved, flat path runs the length of Sanur's beach with no traffic on it. The least dramatic activity in south Bali and the most useful one, for families, older travellers, and anyone who wants to walk or cycle without negotiating scooters.

  • An infinity pool crowded with people at sunset, the sea beyond it and festoon lights overhead

    The beach clubs of Canggu and Seminyak

    What a day bed actually costs is a minimum spend, not an entrance fee, and the two follow different rules entirely. How the model works, what a walk-in gets against a booking, and which clubs sit on sand while others sit on a cliff with no beach under them at all.

  • Rows of candlelit tables set out on Jimbaran beach at dusk, the bay and the lights of the airport road behind

    The Jimbaran seafood dinner

    The fish is sold by weight, and the weighing in front of you is the whole transaction. How the beachfront grill warungs price a plate in four separate charges, and what to settle before anything goes on the scale.

The east coast

  • The split gate of Pura Penataran Agung Lempuyang, the volcano behind it hidden in cloud

    The Gates of Heaven at Lempuyang

    The most famous photograph on the island is made with a mirror held under a phone: what the Lempuyang queue actually buys, and why the temple is better than the picture.

  • The corroded hull of a sunken ship rising through clear water toward the surface light

    The USAT Liberty wreck at Tulamben

    A US Army cargo ship torpedoed in 1942, beached, then pushed into the sea by the 1963 eruption of Agung. What a snorkeller reaches from the sand, what a diver sees along the rest of the hull, and the walk over stones between them.

  • A snorkeller finning over a shallow coral reef crowded with fish

    Snorkelling the Blue Lagoon at Padangbai

    A ten-minute walk over the headland from a working ferry harbour gets you coral and reef fish close enough to see from the sand. The most accessible good snorkelling on the Bali mainland, current at the mouth included.

  • Rice terraces and irrigation channels in the Sidemen valley, hills rising behind

    Walking the Sidemen valley

    No ticket, no gate, no operator: the walking at Sidemen is the rarest thing left on the island, a landscape you visit by opening the guesthouse door and turning uphill.

  • A freediver descending through clear blue water below a sunlit reef opening

    Snorkelling and freediving at Amed

    Bali's dry corner keeps calm, clear water reachable from the sand, which makes Amed the island's most forgiving place to put your face in the sea, and the natural base for Tulamben rather than a day trip to it.

  • The tiered fountain and stone-edged pools of the Tirta Gangga water garden, the hills of Karangasem behind

    Tirta Gangga water palace

    A royal water garden of pools, fountains and stepping stones, damaged by the 1963 eruption of Agung and rebuilt: a young monument on an island full of ancient ones.

The north and the west

  • The twin falls of Sekumpul dropping through dense jungle in the Buleleng hills

    The Sekumpul waterfalls

    The island's most spectacular falls are the hardest ones to reach, and that is the entire arrangement: a real trek, a village that organises the access, and a north-coast day that has to be earned.

  • A dense soft coral outcrop crowded with small orange fish in clear water

    The coral wall at Menjangan Island

    Inside Bali's only national park, a coral wall kept in better condition than anything in the south by distance and protection at once. What the island is, what the reef offers snorkellers and divers, and why this is an overnight, not a day trip.

  • Two spinner dolphins swimming just below the surface in open blue water

    The dawn dolphin trip at Lovina

    Wild spinner and bottlenose dolphins do surface off Lovina at dawn, and so do dozens of boats chasing the same pods for the photograph. What the trip is, why the crowding happens, and what a better operator does instead.

  • A footpath through dense jungle leading toward a waterfall

    The waterfall walks around Munduk

    Where Sekumpul is one big descent to one big waterfall, Munduk is a string of falls linked by paths through clove and coffee, the closest thing the island has to waterfalls as a walk rather than a stop.

  • A waterfall dropping into a plunge pool with swimmers at its edge

    Aling-Aling and the waterfall jumps near Sambangan

    Most Bali waterfalls are a view. Aling-Aling, in the hills behind Singaraja, is sold as an activity, with guided jumps and natural rock slides, and that is the one waterfall site on the island where a real safety conversation matters.

  • The Tanah Lot headland at low tide, the rock shelf below the temple exposed and the surf breaking beyond it

    Tanah Lot at sunset

    The most photographed temple in Bali and the most crowded sunset on the island. What the tide decides, what visitors actually get to see, and when to go instead.

The Nusa islands

  • A reef manta gliding over a coral reef, wings spread, photographed underwater

    Snorkelling with mantas off Nusa Penida

    Reef mantas gather at cleaning stations off Penida's southwest cliffs the year round. The encounter is real and so is the swell: what the boats do not always say before the crossing.

  • The Kelingking headland on Nusa Penida from above, white sand and turquoise water under the cliff

    The Nusa Penida day trip

    The most photographed cliff in Indonesia is a fast boat and a rough road away: what a day on Penida actually buys, what it costs you in hours, and why the swim under Kelingking is not part of the plan.

  • Dream Beach on Nusa Lembongan, a white sand cove below low cliffs with almost no one on it

    Nusa Lembongan and Nusa Ceningan

    The quieter two of the three Nusa islands, linked by a narrow yellow footbridge that scooters cross one at a time. Why travellers who found the Penida day trip too rushed often prefer these two, and why the seaweed farms are not the unbroken tradition the photographs sell.