Bali’s top five tourist spots

Before it became a Dutch colony in 1908, Bali was divided into nine independent kingdoms or regencies. Politically, economically, culturally and religiously, they were as different to each other as chalk and cheese. Some were rich from agriculture. Some specialised in sculpture, music or the arts. Some were Buddhist, others were Hindu and some were a mix. Some were pacifists. Others were warring. Bali today is unified as a province of Indonesia, though the regencies still exist as government areas. To an extent, the differences remain too, with some parts of the island seeming alien compared to others. Here, we run you through the five most popular tourist precincts in Bali to help you plan your next holiday on the Island of the Gods.

KUTA

Once a tranquil surf town, Kuta is a concrete jungle set on a long surf beach that is currently covered in ocean-born trash. Hawkers hassle you non-stop on the street, the beach and just about everywhere you go. OK,’ I hear you say. Enough of the hard sell. Why would anyone go there?’Well to begin with Kuta is cheap. Dirt cheap. You can get a room for less than $10 and a meal for $1. It’s also a lot of fun, if your version of fun is cheap beer and a 24-hour party vibe. It’s not for nothing that Kuta is the No.1 schoolies destination outside of Australia. Kuta is also a good place for anyone who has never been to South-East Asia before, just to test the waters. And speaking of water, the beach gets pretty clean during the dry season (that starts around now and ends in November) and Kuta is only a 10-minute drive from the international airport.

CANGGU

The Brooklyn of Bali. Bali’s hipster haven. Bali’s capital of cool. Canggu is all these things and more, a frenetic, crowded, crazy beach town with hundreds upon hundreds of trendy restaurants, cocktail bars, exclusive nightclubs, cafes, high-end gyms, yoga and pilates studios and too many nail salons, waxing salons, tattoo studios, co-working spaces and hairdressers to count — plus the largest and second-largest beach clubs in the world, Atlas Beach Fest and Finns Beach Club. Canggu is where all the beautiful people and digital nomads stay in Bali, one of the world’s most popular locations for Instagram content, a place where an eclectic health and wellness industry competes for tourist dollars with the nightlife sector. The beach in Canggu has big waves and strong currents and is only suitable for surfing, not swimming. And every day at dusk, thousands of people head down to Canggu’s golden shores to catch magical Balinese sunsets. At night, the beach becomes one big outdoor party.

UBUD

Set in the southern riverlands of Bali, Ubud is the creative, spiritual and artistic capital of Bali, a magical place in the jungle with thousands of Hindu temples and shrines, hundreds of art galleries, little museums and boutiques and cafes and some of the most awarded fine-dining restaurants in Indonesia: Locavore NXT, its vegan cousin Herbivore, Syrco BASE and Gajah Putih, just to name a few. Ubud is also home to the world-famous Monkey Forest, the Ubud Royal Palace, the Ubud Art Market and Campuhan Ridge Walk, where Julia Roberts went for a delightful stroll among the rice fields in the 2010 box-office hit Eat, Pray, Love. Ubud is ground zero for hippies and alternative lifestylers in Bali, a world centre for yoga and yoga teacher training and plant-based cuisine. But word to the wise. The main drag, Jalan Raya Ubud, has become a traffic-choked quagmire lined with shops selling international brands and massage joints. But walk down any gang (alleyway) or ride or drive five minutes out of town, and you will see the knockout natural beauty Ubud is renowned for is still mostly intact.

SANUR

Set on Bali’s lower east coast, Sanur is Bali’s original tourist town where the rich and famous, people like Mick Jagger, Japanese Crown Prince Akihito and Barbara Hutton, the famously wealthy Woolworth heiress, stayed in Bali in the 1960s. Today Sanur is a bustling urbanised area favoured among expat retirees in Bali for its clean, still waters, modern hospitals and relaxed atmosphere compared to Kuta. It’s also a great place to stay if you’re travelling with kids, with a bunch of family-friendly hotels, restaurants and beach clubs, plus resorts with massive swimming pools and a beach that is safe for swimming. Sanur is, however, developing rapidly. It now has a massive shopping centre full of fast-food chains and international brands called Icon Bali, and the traffic is just about as bad as it is in Canggu. Sanur is only 13km from Bali’s international airport but the trip takes an hour or more during peak hours in the afternoon. But ask just about any grey nomad and they’ll tell you that when it comes to value and convenience, Sanur is hard to beat.

NUSA DUA

Half an hour’s drive south of Sanur, Nusa Dua is Bali’s most upmarket holiday precinct, a gated community home to more than 20 luxury hotels and resorts plus a private hospital specialising in cosmetic surgery. But unlike gated communities in the Americas, you don’t have to stay in Nusa Dua to get inside the gates — a friendly wave to the security guards at the entrance will get you in and let you see how the other half lives. Think manicured parks and gardens, gregarious water fountains, footpaths (an anomaly in Bali), whisper-quiet roads, clean white beaches with baby waves and surf schools that specialise in coaching beginners, great little restaurants, an 18-hole championship golf course, upmarket day spas and more. Whether you’re a backpacker partying in Kuta, a digital nomad rocking it in Canggu or a yogi meditating in Ubud, Nusa Dua is a great place to spend a day in Bali.