It's been one year since I started planning my Bali trip which happened in March 2019. We were two couples - one from New Delhi (us) and one from Kolkata (our friends). In totality we spent less than 95k per couple for our trip to Bali. And here's how.
First of all, as I said, we started planning the trip 3-4 months in advance. We had booked our tickets in December last year which had costed us 43600 (to & fro for 2 people). For the Kolkata couple, they spent around 38k for the same.
We had also been reading about the places, where we wanted to go, which all spots we wanted to cover and what the itinerary was going to be.
This was mainly done by our friends Roshan & Ruchika and it was on their suggestion that our first stop in Bali was Uluwatu.
Uluwatu is one of the most beautiful places I have seen - in Bali & otherwise. Spick & span clean beaches, clear blue waters and wonderful people all around. What more could you ask for?
Plus, we also got amazing food in that part of the town (I'm gonna write a special blog on Bali food joints!). Incidentally, our friends got delayed due to their flight issues and we had to spend all of the first day in Uluwatu just roaming around the beaches and soaking the sun. But hey, I'm not complaining.
We were staying in Uluwatu Breeze Village there & had booked the place for 1 night in 3100 per room.
The next morning we started our day by going to the Suluban beach which mainly a surfer beach so we saw so many surfers coming in and out of the ocean. Also since it was still early-ish (around 7 am), we also saw a couple of people doing photoshoots there - for Instagram & such.
Post Suluban Beach, we came back to our resort by 9 am and the heartiest breakfast there. In fact out of all the days in Bali, I found this breakfast to be the best - in terms of variety & the taste.
After this amazing breakfast, we headed out to Uluwatu Temple & Padang Padang beach again. One very interesting thing we noticed on Padang Padang was that the tourists (mostly foreign) were cleaning the beach themselves. Their argument was that they themselves would like to come back to a cleaner beach, so why not sweat a lil for that.
Isn't it amazing!
The next half of our day 2 was for Tanha Lot.
Tanha Lot is a famous temple situation on a sea side rock. People go there to mainly see the sunset from the rock.
After spending some 3-4 hours in Tanha Lot, we took a drop to our hotel in Ubud where were going to sleep for a couple of hours before the Mt. Batur Trek the next day.
Since we would be sleeping only for a few hours in this particular hotel, we had decided to not spend much on the 2nd night hotel. We stayed in Donald Homestay which was located in the main Ubud market and was a clean even though basic hotel. And since it just cost us around Rs. 1700 per night per room, it was totally worth it.
The first thing on the schedule for Day 3 was the Mt. Batur Trek. Now, I personally did not go this trek (chickened out last minute!) but the three of them went and thoroughly enjoyed the experience.
For those who don't know, Mt. Batur is a sunrise trek quite famous in Bali which starts at around 4:30 am in the morning and lasts for 2 hours one way. As you reach the top, the sun is rising up and the view I've heard is quite spectacular.
My friends (and husband) left for the trip at around 2:30 am from the hotel and were back by 10 am.
After the trek, we went to our main highlight hotel of the trip - Bije Suits Villas. We had taken two pool villas - one for each couple and were booked to stay there for two nights for a total of Rs. 13000 per couple (for two nights).
Both the villas were extremely spacious and had a private pool each along with a huge bath tub filled with marigold petals as well.
I think the private pool was the highlight of this trip and and would suggest this to everyone going to Bali - please do not miss out on this experience!
After resting for a while, we head out in the afternoon to see the rice terrace fields and also the Bali swings.
Though we saw quite a number of swings in this region, we later found out that the original Bali swing is actually not near the Rice Terrace. And since Ruchika really wanted to go the original one, both she & Roshan went there the next day. We on the other hand, skipped the Bali swing.
The evening of day 3 was completely reserved for shopping at the Ubud market. Now, for those who think everything we get elsewhere can also be bought in India, you're wrong my friend.
The Ubud market is mecca of handcrafted decor stuff like dreamcatchers, ceramic items, tree of life wall hangings, plant hangers, jute & bamboo purses and whatnot.
This kind of stuff even if available in India is way too costly here - so fill up your suitcases as much as you can!
We even brought a few mini dreamcatchers and sent them out with Dohful orders as a complimentary gift from our side (Dohful is my own craft cookie company)
Day 4 was our last day in Ubud. Our friends were actually leaving Bali the next day and we would go to Kuta for the last two days of our trip.
So we decided to split up and cover the remaining parts of Ubud separately. They wanted to check out the Saraswati temple and Bali Swing whereas we wanted to see what the coffee scene of Bali was like.
We spent the entire day hopping from market to market all in and near Ubud - taking breaks in various coffee shops & cafes whenever we got tired! Somehow I couldn't get over the whole white cladded street shops in Ubud. I could have literally spent 2 more days just doing that.
We ended our day together again with a relaxing Balinese spa.
Day 5, in the morning we asked our hotel to serve us the breakfast in pool. They charge extra for the floating basket (even though the breakfast is practically the same) so we got only one floating basket and kind of pooled all our breakfast in it (yes, pun intended!).
After a lot of fun and games in the pool, we left the hotel around noon because Roshan & Ruchika had a flight to catch - back to Kolkata.
Our hotel in Kuta was Citadines. Its a proper corporate kinda hotel and I wouldn't recommend it too much but was okay if you want to be in Kuta. We mainly stayed in Kuta because we wanted to check out the whole Seminyak, Kuta, Canggu belt. For the two nights in Citadines we paid around Rs. 7000.
We spent some time roaming around our hotel in Kuta, checking out the local market & the beach bang opposite to our hotel.
We went to Canggu after that and were hooked! It was so surreal with the sun setting and the calm sea and some music playing in the background. Chaman & I we sat down over there for sometime and just talked. One of the most special evenings I had in Bali.
Of course the amazing evening would also be credited to Old Man's but as I said before, I will cover the food joints in another blog.
In fact we met a cute couple there who were so intrigued by what we were doing that they agreed to pose with our cookie. What began as a casual click ended 2 hours later with over 50 photos of Dohful cookies in all possible poses!
After this extensive photo shoot we decided to roam around the streets of Seminyak and soak up on as much of Bali as we could.
We went to a few different beaches, had a coffee in the oh-so-beautiful Coffee Cartel and even had a quick chat with its owner there.
All in all, we stayed for 6 nights in Bali & quite luxuriously if I may say so. All our properties were in the main areas. And we spend on an average of Rs. 4200 per night in the hotels. Which I wouldn't say is less for Bali. But it isn't even too splurging.
A few points to be noted -
- Hire scootys wherever you are in Bali. That's the best & cheapest daily travel option there. You would be able to hire scooty for Rs. 300 - 350 per day. In Uluwatu & Kuta we paid Rs. 350 but in Ubud it was Rs. 300.
- Hire a cab before going from India. There are drivers who are active on Facebook & Instagram or you can take a reference from someone - but have your cab prices negotiated from here only. You wouldn't have to haggle on the roads there saving time & money. Our driver charged around $220 for picking us up at the airport, dropping back to the airport, transfer from Uluwatu to Ubud via Tanha Lot (he waited for us there) and also Mt. Batur Trek. In totality, it came around to Rs. 8000 per couple which was not bad at all. If you need the contact info of the driver we had,
- Indian food is expensive there. So try to avoid it if you can. We had Indian food only twice in the whole trip. The most affordable is of course the Indonesian food, not to mention delicious (we were all vegetarians and we got by pretty nicely). Having said that, its obviously not the food we're used to eating every day so it does seem weird at first. The first time I tried Tempeh for example, I didn't quite like it, but then I had it again in a different place and didn't mind eating it at all!
And finally the cost breakup for two people was as follows -
Flights (to & fro) = Rs. 43600
Hotels (6 nights) = Rs. 24800
Cab Ride + Mt. Batur = Rs. 8000
Scooty Rentals = Rs. 1650
Food & Shopping = Rs. 15,000
Total = Rs. 93,050
Ruchika & Roshan spent a little lesser than us because they stayed for only 4 nights but they went for the Bali Swing which costed them around Rs. 5000 extra. Their overall spend was around 85K.
But all in all, it was a trip of a lifetime and if any of you guys are planning to go Bali - I would say don't hesitate, book your tickets now!
' fill='%23359391'%3e %3cpath d='M46.1538462%2c43.5714286 L41.5%2c50 L36.8461538%2c43.5714286 L36.8670256%2c43.5714286 C36.3173077%2c42.7142857 36%2c41.6851429 36%2c40.5714286 C36%2c37.4854286 38.4535641%2c35 41.5%2c35 C44.5464359%2c35 47%2c37.4854286 47%2c40.5714286 C47%2c41.6851429 46.6826923%2c42.7142857 46.1329744%2c43.5714286 L46.1538462%2c43.5714286 Z M41.4294872%2c39 C40.6150641%2c39 39.9487179%2c39.675 39.9487179%2c40.5 C39.9487179%2c41.325 40.6150641%2c42 41.4294872%2c42 C42.2439103%2c42 42.9102564%2c41.325 42.9102564%2c40.5 C42.9102564%2c39.675 42.2439103%2c39 41.4294872%2c39 L41.4294872%2c39 Z' id='Location-white'%3e%3c/path%3e %3c/g%3e %3c/svg%3e)
