Coming to Bali for the first time? This is your itinerary for an awesome 10 day adventure! 

Bali, Indonesia

Bali Beginners (read before arriving)- 10 days for the budget conscious! 

Immigration can still take up to an hour depending on the time of year you travel, so this will give you plenty of time to have your documents organised, including boarding pass, passport, VOA and electronic customs declaration. 

Welcome! This first day will be about resting from a fairly long travel day.

Most of you will be arriving in Ngurah Rai, Bali's main international airport in Denpasar. Firstly, prior to arrival, I would recommend having your Visa on Arrival completed online at least a week prior to arriving. Upon arrival, the first thing my girlfriend and I saw was a massive line for visas that was not moving very fast. You will save yourself a bunch of time and stress doing the online visa option. I use Sherpa Travel for all of my documentation requirements whenever I travel: 

Sherpa – Move Freely

After getting past immigration and collecting your bags, you should proceed to your pre-organised Klook airport transfer. This was the cheapest and most convenient airport transfer I could find. Klook have their own desk with attendants in the arrivals hall who will help you:

Airport Transfer

You might be asking, "What about mobile plans?" and "What about money conversions?", and I would say, other than to simply withdraw money from an ATM, I would try and avoid doing these two things at the airport all together. Mobile Plans here are borderline extortionate. For example, Telkomsel will charge you 400k IDR at the airport (25GB plan), however if you purchase it prior online and go to their head office further in town, it will only cost 150k IDR:

Tourist Prepaid Card

As for money, we just used our Wise travel cards. The conversion rates are close to the live market, and is very inexpensive to register and use. I would use this card and withdraw 500k- 1mill IDR at a time:

Travel Money Card | Prepaid Currency Card

In regards to accomodation, I decided to book two nights in Seminyak at the Seminyak Square hotel. It's fairly cheap, and the rooms are really nice. For my girlfriend and I that meant A/C and a pool:

For the second day we decided to relax in Seminyak after Day 1 which will likely have been stressful for most of you. We had breakfast at the hotel to save money and headed out to go get a massage. Our place of choice was the famous Bodyworks Spa:

This recommendation isn't going to be for everyone from a price perspective. I payed about 1mil IDR for a full body massage treatment here, so keep that in mind. Bodyworks is super nice, staff are amazing, setting is incredible. However, if you want to save money, there are a bunch of cheaper options around Seminyak. Re Day Spa is a lot cheaper and offers a great selection of treatments:

For lunch after your massage I would head down the road to Atlas kitchen. Super quiet place, but their food was arguably the best we've had on this entire trip. Try their Mango Magic smoothie and Honey Butter Chicken dishes:

Activities after that for today? Chill at the pool in your hotel. Bali gets very hot and humid, and you will find yourself sweating and very uncomfortable in no time if you keep walking around. In general, this itinerary is very relaxed, as it should be in the island of paradise.

I know this will seem odd, but I actually recommend going to Mcdonald's for dinner just once. I typically try this once on a holiday to see the different food options. We had items like the Prosperity Burger, Dragonfruit Mcfizz, Custard and Blueberry pie, and Korean fried chicken... They were actually not bad and I had a good time. It's certainly better than the U.S locations:

Head north to the influencer paradise of Canggu. I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with this place. On one hand, there is an abundance of really cool markets, places to eat, good cafes, and the accomodation options were good too. On the other hand, the traffic was some of the worst I've ever seen, to the point where the place is almost ruined due to the fact that getting anywhere is super painful. Do not even think about bringing a car. I made this mistake and it took me 2 hours to go 5kms in the afternoon. If you can, just get a grab bike. Currently, it seems the local government has just let this place explode with foreign investment without actually providing sufficient infrastructure to support it. If you haven't been, try it and see how you like it, but it's not going to be for everyone, specifically families and older persons. 

After hopefully wading your way through the traffic safely, check in to your accomodation. My partner and I decided to stay at this nice place off one of the main roads called Roomates:

With some of the photos, we were worried about this accomodation being a bit rowdy, but when we were there it was super relaxed and quiet. That is with the exception of the villa next door letting off fireworks at 9pm every night. Your time in Canggu isn't really a strict itinerary. We would wake up, look at some recommended places, and just go. It's a very loose itinerary in Canggu, you can structure your day how you like. 

For lunch we would just go to the local Warungs for local food to save money, We went to Varuna Warung, Separately, also consider Warung local, Warung Sika, and Warung Jaba. Outside of Warungs, one really good local place we recommend is Happy Mie. Very local place and you won't find too many tourists here. 

For dinner we went to some staples. Sure, they costed a bit more money, but we felt it was part of the experience. La Brisa was a great little spot to watch the sunset, and the pizza here was really good too. Luigi's also has some amazing pizza. I feel like the best pizza I've ever had has been in Bali. Luigi's had specials for 80k IDR, and we just shared that with some chicken bites and we were set. Another place we were recomended for dinner but didn't get a chance to go to was The Lawn. Apparently they have some really good seafood dishes here, with a more relaxed scene compared to other beach clubs

If you're looking for brunch places I have a couple of recommendations. Gigi Susu is a cool spot about 2 minutes from the accomodation. Really good coffee and some decent pastries. We also went to Umane, just outside of Canggu to meet some friends. Really good coffee here too. We also went to Milk and Madu, which again had good coffee, but also had a really nice breakfast burrito. 

Most of the time I spent my time in local markets. Arguably one my favourites was La Brisa Sunday Market. Lots of boutique local vendors selling their products including cakes, clothing, jewellery, perfume, supplements, you name it. Even if you aren't buying anything here, it's a nice place to stroll around for an hour or so. I picked up some shirts and jewellery which have held up nicely in quality. In the afternoons I would just relax by the beach and watch the sunset or chill by the pool.

Some other recommendations include Samadi Sunday Market, Love Anchor, and Treasure Baliniki:

One other thing I regret not doing was some surf lessons. Echo Beach is one of the most recommended places to learn, and could be a fun activity if you're looking for something a bit more thrill seeking:

Some other recommendations I've been given include:

Ubud is a staple of any Bali itinerary, and after visiting I understand why. I liked Ubud the most out of the areas we went to on our this trip. It can get busy here, but it still felt really relaxed at the same time compared to the previous locations. Even though it's been commercialised a fair bit, I felt more in touch with Bali as a place here compared to Seminyak and Canggu. Most people recognise Ubud as the cultural hub of Bali, and I think I experienced more here in 3 days than I did anywhere else in Bali.

I would highly recommend hiring a driver for at least 2 days of your time in Ubud, since there are a lot of different places to visit that are spread out. Grab and Gojek are barred from some major locations like the Spring Water Temple, which can make using them difficult at times. I recommend Gusti, He was super friendly. Charges on average 600k IDR per day (can be more based on distance), which wasn't too bad between two people. He's always on time, and is a safe driver. Just make sure you buy him lunch, as is a custom with all private drivers in Bali. His WhatsApp is +62 85738478868. He needs about 24 hours advanced notification for pickup, just an fyi.

From Canggu checking out, try not to sleep in. Gusti picked us up at 8am and we drove 1.5 hours to Nungnung waterfall. There are a lot of waterfalls in Ubud, but I feel like this one is the most impressive in my opinion. I do recommend getting there as early as we did. When we arrived there were only 3 other people, and by the time we left by about 10:30-11am, there were about 25 people. Cost is 20k IDR per person, plus a 5k IDR parking fee. Bring some decent walking shoes, because there are about 500 steps to go down and up again. But, I'd say its worth it:

From here, we drove back into Ubud centre and dropped our bags off at our accomodation for the next few nights. This accomodation is nice, breakfast is good, price is reasonable, rooms are kept cool by an air conditioner and a fan. Pool was also really nice. My only critique is that the service isn't really a strong suit, and we felt we had to ask for them to help us a lot. The way it presents on booking.com is like a hotel, but its really closer to a homestay. That means they won't clean your room, or take out your rubbish unless asked. They were super nice though, and the location was awesome:

After this we went to lunch. Sun Sun Warung is just down the road and it was honestly one of our favourite places to eat throughout our time in Ubud, and in fact all of Bali. Everything here is really good, especially the Satay. The prices are also very reasonable, and placed in a beautiful shrine-like traditional setting.

After lunch, I'd walk back up the road to check out the Ubud Art Market. This was one of the biggest markets we'd been to in Bali, and there is a decent selection of trinkets and knock offs. It was alright, just to kill an hour or two before resting:

After spending some time here, you're probably starting to get a bit hot, so head back to the pool at your accomodation to cool off for the rest of the afternoon before heading out to dinner:

Simply Social was also another favourite for the great western food and equally awesome service. Like Sun Sun, its close by to the accomodation, and we also went back a couple of times. Pizza and their asian fusion dishes were great!

That night, we went to the Legong and Barong dancing event at Ubud Palace, which is something I would recommend. The cost is 100k IDR per person, and lasts about an hour. Show starts at 7:30pm, and you can get the tickets from the distributors at the palace enterance. This is a great cultural event, however if you have kids, keep in mind that this might be testing to sit through. We saw a lot of families having to leave early as a result:

The next day has some more cultural activities and site seeing ahead in various locations, so I recommend hiring Gusti again for the day. The first stop after you've had breakfast at your accomodation is Tegallalang rice fields:

As probably the most well known and instagrammed spot in Bali, it would be wise to get here early. We got there by about 9 and it was still reasonably peaceful. It takes roughly 30 minutes of driving from the accomodation to get here. It was actually nicer than I thought it would be. There are actual workers here who are maintaining the fields, and the light hits this place in such a way that you can get some great photos. If you have time you can even go on a trek. Enterance is 25k IDR per person.

After you've taken your photos, maybe swung on a swing or two, head over to the The Tirta Empul Holy Water Temple:

Bali Beginners (read before arriving)- 10 days for the budget conscious!

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