What We Learned in Bali: The Things We Wish We Knew Before We Went

Bali is incredibly easy to romanticise before you arrive.

You see the beaches, infinity pools, temples, cafés and sunsets online and assume everything is going to fall neatly into place.

Some of it absolutely does.

Other parts involve sitting in traffic wondering why somewhere that looked ten minutes away on a map is taking an hour to reach.

After travelling through Bali and then continuing around Indonesia, these are the things we’d tell someone planning their first trip.

This isn’t meant to be a definitive Bali handbook. It’s simply what we learned from actually being there — what we loved, what we’d skip, what surprised us and what we’d do differently next time.

Bali traffic affects your trip more than you think

This is probably the biggest thing we underestimated.

Two places can look ridiculously close together on Google Maps and still take ages to travel between.

A day that looks perfectly reasonable on paper can quickly become:

hotel → traffic → attraction → traffic → lunch → traffic → sunset → traffic → hotel.

It gets tiring.

Our biggest advice would be to plan Bali by area rather than by attraction.

If you're spending the day around Uluwatu, stay around Uluwatu. If you're exploring Seminyak and Canggu, don't randomly add something on the opposite side of the island because it looks close on the map.

We would happily do fewer places and enjoy them properly.

Grab is cheap. Your time isn't.

Taxis and apps such as Grab and Gojek can feel incredibly cheap compared with Ireland.

The problem usually isn't the price.

It's the traffic.

A €3 or €4 journey doesn't feel like such a bargain when you're sitting in the car for 70 minutes.

For short trips, Grab was incredibly useful. For days involving several locations, we'd seriously consider arranging a driver and building a sensible route beforehand.

And always leave more time than you think you'll need.

Some of our favourite days weren't complicated

One thing Bali reinforced for us was that a good travel day doesn't need six attractions.

Some of the experiences we enjoyed most were simple:

a surf lesson, a good lunch, time at the beach, a spa treatment and somewhere nice for sunset.

Those days often felt much better than rushing through a huge checklist.

If we planned Bali again, we'd deliberately leave more blank space.

Do a surf lesson

Even if you've never surfed before.

Bali is one of those places where trying it makes sense, and having an instructor takes away most of the intimidation.

You don't need to turn it into a serious surfing trip. A beginner session followed by lunch and a few hours around the beach is enough to make a brilliant day.

It's one of the experiences we'd happily pay for again.

Bali does spas extremely well

Spa treatments became one of those things where we kept thinking: why don't we do this more often at home?

Compared with Ireland, massages and treatments can feel extremely affordable.

And after several days of walking, swimming, surfing and travelling around, they make even more sense.

We'd actually plan spa time into an itinerary rather than treating it as something to do only if there's spare time.

Don't assume the most famous beach club will be your favourite

Some of Bali's beach clubs are brilliant.

But popularity online doesn't automatically mean you're going to love the experience.

We found that some of the more hyped places could feel expensive and surprisingly transactional once you were actually there.

You're sometimes paying a significant premium for the location, view and name.

That doesn't mean don't go.

Just ask yourself what you're actually going for.

If it's an incredible sunset and a few drinks, there may be a restaurant or smaller venue nearby that gives you exactly what you want without turning the afternoon into a €150 exercise in minimum spends.

Our rule now would be:

pay for an experience, not simply because somewhere is famous on TikTok.

Sunset is worth planning around

Bali sunsets became one of the easiest parts of the trip to enjoy.

Rather than randomly finishing somewhere at sunset, we'd deliberately build the day backwards from it.

Choose where you want to be around 5–6pm, then plan everything else in that part of Bali.

It removes a lot of unnecessary driving and gives the day a natural ending.

Leave space for local experiences

Beaches and restaurants are great, but one of the things that made travelling through Indonesia more memorable was meeting people and learning something about where we actually were.

Traditional crafts, local villages, guides explaining how communities live, cooking, weaving and conversations with people gave us far more context than simply moving between Instagram locations.

We wouldn't fill an itinerary with cultural activities every day.

But we'd include at least one experience where someone local is actually showing you their home, work or traditions.

Bali can feel incredibly touristy in places

There are parts of Bali where you can almost forget you're in Indonesia.

Western restaurants, smoothie bowls, boutiques, Australian accents, beach clubs and luxury villas are everywhere.

That's not necessarily bad — sometimes it's exactly what you want.

But if you're spending two weeks in Indonesia, we'd recommend getting outside that bubble at some point.

For us, continuing beyond Bali made a huge difference.

Lombok felt different.

The Gili islands felt different again.

And Jakarta was almost the complete opposite of Bali.

It made the whole trip much more interesting.

Consider Lombok rather than adding endless Bali day trips

If you have enough time, we'd rather spend several nights somewhere genuinely different than keep travelling three hours across Bali to see another beach.

Lombok gave us beaches, surfing, scenery and a slower atmosphere without feeling like another version of Seminyak.

It also made us appreciate the differences between Indonesian islands rather than treating the whole country as Bali.

Don't panic about “Bali belly”, but take it seriously

“Bali belly” is basically traveller's diarrhoea or gastroenteritis.

And despite the name, it isn't exclusive to Bali — you can get the same thing elsewhere in Indonesia.

We'd stick to bottled or properly filtered water, be sensible about food that has been sitting around, wash or sanitise hands regularly and pay attention to how busy a restaurant is.

Ice in good restaurants, hotels and established cafés is normally much less concerning because they generally use commercial purified ice.

You don't need to spend the trip terrified of eating anything.

Just use common sense.

Keep some Indonesian rupiah on you

Cards are accepted in loads of tourist-facing places, particularly hotels, restaurants, malls and beach clubs.

But cash remains useful.

Small shops, tips, drivers, local stalls, markets and unexpected little purchases are easier when you've got rupiah.

When we travelled, a rough mental conversion we kept using was around:

Rp100,000 ≈ €5

Not exact, obviously, but extremely useful when looking at menus quickly.

Once you start seeing prices like 150k, 300k or 500k, you stop thinking in hundreds of thousands surprisingly quickly.

Indonesia can feel cheap and expensive at the same time

You can have a very inexpensive taxi journey or local meal and then walk into a trendy restaurant or beach club where the bill suddenly looks European.

That contrast surprised us.

Bali can absolutely be inexpensive.

But a holiday built around high-end restaurants, villas, cocktails and beach clubs can become expensive very quickly.

The value is often best when you mix them.

Nice dinner one evening.

Local food the next.

Beach club one afternoon.

Cheap beach day the following day.

Cheap doesn't mean insignificant

Something that travelling in Indonesia constantly reminded us of was how different the value of money can be.

A taxi fare equivalent to €1–€2 feels almost negligible when you're visiting from Ireland.

Locally, that money still has purchasing power.

We tried to keep that perspective with drivers, tips and small transactions rather than arguing over tiny amounts simply because we could.

Service can vary enormously

We had some incredibly warm interactions throughout Indonesia.

We also encountered places where service felt cold or very transactional, particularly in heavily tourist-facing businesses.

A high price doesn't necessarily mean better hospitality.

And a cheap local experience can sometimes be the one where someone gives you the most time and care.

Reviews helped, but we also became better at trusting the feel of somewhere once we arrived.

Don't try to “complete” Bali

This might be our biggest lesson.

You aren't going to finish Bali.

There will always be another waterfall, beach, café, temple, restaurant, viewpoint or beach club someone says you absolutely have to visit.

Trying to squeeze everything in can make the trip worse.

If somewhere isn't working for you, leave.

If you're loving a beach, stay longer.

If you're tired, book a massage.

If you've had enough sightseeing, get food and have a drink.

An itinerary should help your trip — not control it.

What we'd prioritise next time

We'd definitely do againWe'd be more selective aboutSurf lessonFamous beach clubsProper spa afternoonLong cross-island day tripsSunset dinner/drinksOverpacked sightseeingBeach daysPlaces visited purely for photosLocal guide/cultural experienceTourist traps and excessive feesGood Indonesian foodConstantly eating Western foodStaying within one area each dayChanging areas several times a dayAdding Lombok/GiliTrying to see every corner of Bali

The type of Bali itinerary we'd create now

We'd make it much slower.

A typical day would have one main thing.

Maybe surf in the morning.

Lunch somewhere good.

A couple of hours doing absolutely nothing.

Then sunset, dinner and drinks.

Another day could be a driver and cultural sightseeing.

The following day might be entirely beach and spa.

That rhythm gives you enough experiences to feel like you've travelled without needing a holiday after your holiday.

Our final Bali advice

Don't build the trip around what looks impressive online.

Build it around how you actually like spending your days.

We realised quite quickly that we enjoyed good food, beaches, surfing, spas, sunsets and genuinely interesting local experiences far more than racing around ticking off famous landmarks.

And once we started planning around that, the trip became much better.

That's ultimately what we want Go Sorted itineraries to do too.

Not give you the maximum number of places possible.

Give you the right amount of the right things, arranged in a way that actually makes sense.

Go Sorted note

If you're planning Bali and staring at 75 saved TikToks, 30 Google Maps pins and absolutely no idea how they fit together, that's exactly the problem we built Go Sorted to solve.

Tell us how you actually like travelling, and we'll turn it into a practical itinerary that accounts for where you're staying, realistic travel times and what is genuinely worth fitting in.