Travel: Bali, Kuta

Travel: Bali, Kuta

INTRODUCTION

Here I am again, this time with another review on another place that I been to. This should be probably one of the more expensive reviews to come out with so read on if you are wondering whether this should be a holiday destination that you can consider in the future.

The beautiful land of Bali is basically known as a place famous for its beaches and scenic views. To my recollection, this place is not well known for anything else besides this, at least to me, and as you read on, you will see why this is so. Also another thing of note of Bali was that there are many westerners who visit the country. So expect to see many westerners on the beaches and in the hotel lobbies.

Here are some stuff that i saw in my time there.

Beaches

With People

Follow the entire beach line all the way to the background. Yep its all Beaches

So as you can see from the last picture, actually the beach stretches from Kuta area all the way past the Legian area and so on and so forth. Along the way you will see different densities of tourists and locals alike. Legian area will be more full of tourists as well as many drinks, tattoo and surfing lesson shops or touters.

But besides that, there are many other places to see in-land and for city centric people like Singaporeans it could be a pretty eye opening sight. So I shall go into the tourist attraction section.

Tourist Attraction


Bali seems to be a place that has everything for everyone... Except shopping.... of course that is my opinion only because i did not visit the city center denpasar but was in the more scenic areas. Shall speak more about this in the later section.

Here are some of the advertised things to do in Bali. The first is the standard visiting whereby you go see many many scenic places. Some are pretty good to see and rare to see at a cheaper price anywhere else unless you go off to further countries.

Things to see include:

Sunsets! This one is at Uluwatu

Its right on top of the cliff

Like i said, scenic

Look at the nice cliffs! Seen similar in Aussie i believe

There are like a few waterfalls, this is the smaller one

This is the elephant cave temple, their pool

And here is the elephant cave itself.. its tiny inside really

There is a spice garden that you can stop along the way to get some coffee and stuff

Here is the volcano Kintamari or something. Its a good view from the restaurant we ate in

Another angle of the volcano. Note the black soil areas

This is the rice terrence that you could see also. But it was raining for us

This is the other temple that people would visit for the sunset. This one is Tanah Lot

On high tides the temple will be completely surrounded by water.

So the above is for the scenic lovers. There are also a few tours or stops that show you a bit of their culture and the things they might sell like gold and silver smiths, wood carvings and the like. But didn't visit cause it feels more like a tourist trap.

Next there are those who might like sea sports or sports and adventure in general. Unfortunately in my time there i didnt have the chance to go for white water rafting but according to the brochures there are also things like cycling adventure as well as volcano climbing if i am not mistaken. So here are some pictures for the sea sports that we actually did.

This is the glass bottomed boat.. but in reality you probably cannot see much

This guy is the flying fish thing, it will be dragged by a speed boat and start to fly in a while

This is some guy doing parachuting attached to boat in the back ground

This is the snorkeling activity

Turtle island, where they allow you to touch turtles and some other animals

This is how turtle island looks as we were leaving it

So for those who like water sports, probably by adding white water rafting you should be able to have a full day of water activities to play. There are other stuff like jet skiing but to be honest everything is charged USD basis and it is not what i would consider cheap.


Final group of people might wanna just relax in the city or resort area and they could do stuff like visit this water park called waterbom

Big shopping center that contains Centro

This is the water theme park

Walking along the sea side from the road area

Surf boards indicate a surfing teacher or rent surf board thingy

So you could just spend a day chilling possibly at your hotel pool and then pay these places a visit for your souvenir shopping. Just go to the beach and tan or something to that effect. Or just have a nice stroll along the beach side all the way upwards. But remember to bring along plenty of sunscreen.

Shopping


So like the picture above, there is only a single giant department stall or shopping center in the Kuta Legian area. There was supposed to be a more local version of a shopping center but no matter how i walked and followed the map i could not find it. There was one more smaller department stall that was still under construction when i was there. That being said, the single shopping center is diverse enough but the road side stall basically follows about 3 or 4 categories. Within these categories they would basically sell exactly the same stuff but just at varying prices.

The categories are, shirts/caps/clothings, tourist stuff... ok i guess i was wrong.. its basically just these two stuff. What i am saying is that there is not much of a diversity in the shops itself. They are all selling the same stuff and when you seen one you seen all there is to offer already.

The trend however, shows that the people will sell their goods at about 3 times the price. So be assured, for the road side stalls you could try to cut it down to about a third of the price and try to work from there. For example, a stall was trying to sell those bali key chains with a starting price of 120000 rupiahs for 2. In the end, we managed to cut the price down to 30000 rupiahs. Its the exact thing you can find in the department stall also. IN FACT, check the department stall for the base price. It is surprisingly low actually. I believe the key chains cost about 24000 rupiahs EACH in the department stall.

The shopping center has quite a good choice of places to eat also, in particular fast food stalls. So if you have no idea what to eat, you could go down to the shopping center and have a look see.


Food


To be honest, I would say that i was kind of disappointed with the food in general in Bali. There are many many many small food stalls that cater to their local people, unfortunately it seems that they all sell about the same food and many of their choices depend on the time of day.

If you try looking for the more touristy places to eat, you will have to pay touristy prices which I would say is about the same price of eating in Singapore. For example in the volcano view restaurant, it costs 100000 rupiah for each person without drinks. This would be about 15 SGD and the food was nothing impressive to be honest. It was served buffet style but there are only like 10 choices.

Juices however is pretty cheap, ranging from about 1 SGD to about 3 SGD depending on the place you eat. For accurate estimation, their canned drinks like coke can be bought at about 5000 rupiah, but they will try to sell it at 10000 rupiah.

We did eat at this place called Mades Warung which according to some research was a place we had to eat at in Bali. 

Babi Sate which is pork satay

Their Shish Kebab

Not impressive. We did ask our various drivers and they kept recommending the Babi Sate in Bali in general. It was above average at best. The shish Kebab meat was hard though. So to be honest, i wasnt really impressed by the food in Bali.


So if you are going to find food, try researching a bit more because I was really not impressed by the food given the prices also.

There was another place we ate at called Jimbaran whereby the tables are all beside the sea. The sea food there is not what i consider cheap so just go for the experience sake. We ate a crab dish that came with soup veg and rice at 250 000 rupiahs. 

So the tables are here on the beach

And there is some simple show that they have

There is one more place of note called Night Market which was totally not what i expected. I thought i would see a nice giant place full of shops and life but this was what i got.

Empty Tables, little activity

Yep, and the food was not really great.. in fact it was below average. The price luckily was also well below average. Not a place you need to go... thats all im saying.

People


The people in general are sadly, not all that great. Hotel staff are nice because they are in the service side but aside from that, it gives me the feeling that the people are all very money driven. From the starting high prices for all the stuff that they sell, when you try to bargain, they don't seem to actually enjoy the process and are pretty annoyed by you bargaining... EVEN THOUGH they are the ones charging the high prices first.

When booking tours, also beware when you bargain. Because they will seem to give you a good price, but they are actually reducing and removing certain things that were initially incorporated into the price. For example entry fees that actually added to quite a bit, the removal of a english speaking tour guide that some tours provide. They will just tell you their driver can double as a guide which is not true. So make sure you clear out everything with the person. To be clear, this was done at the tour desk in the hotel itself so its good to be cautious everywhere.

Also when we got on a taxi, the person wanted to charge us more for a 7000 rupiah trip. He wanted like 30000, then dropped to 15000 then 10000. He kinda threw a mini fit when we asked him to follow the meter which i felt was a bit unnecessary.

Also like when we got on the turtle island, they specifically said that we should give a donation to the island and volunteers. It was 5000 per head. Lets be clear, thats not a donation. Its an entrance fee. So there are many places like this who would charge for every small thing, BUT they wont tell you before hand. So be very very careful.

Even when you leave the place, at the airport you also need a 150000 rupiah exit fee! Yep this tax is not including and it is compulsory. So even in the airport this happens.


Accomodation/Getting around


Getting around is pretty simple, choose to use the taxi, walk or just hire a car for the day complete with driver. There seems to be an option that includes a tour guide so this is just information for you. A full 12 hours transport is about 55 USD subject to bargaining skills.

Don't use taxis if you are trying to go to scenic areas cause it is likely it will cost more then hiring transport for a few hours at a stretch. Also any eating places that the transport brings you will more then likely be a tourist trap. Apparently you could even bargain at these tourist area. I heard the restaurant at the volcano area should have costed 70000 rupiahs only.

Remember that any other places you visit like the temples all require an admission fee. According to my driver, the prices seems to be going up so be prepared.

There are many hotels at many different prices so i recommend using Booking.com and find out the reviews of the people before choosing the hotels. Note that stuff like 5 mins walk to Kuta beach does not necessary mean that your portion of the beach is the nice portion. The beach is a real big stretch and there are nice but also horrible portions of the beach with blackish waters. There are also other hotels that are really cheap, but to be honest, they look really dangerous and run down. So please do some due diligence to ensure that the hotel you choose is really reputable and safe.

My hotel looked something like this.

Nice cosy room, aircon wasnt cold enough

It was a stand alone villa room

And here is the pool... its 2.4 meters deep though. there is a shallow side but no other depth in between

Cost


Finally with regards to cost, for our entire trip inclusive of airfare and hotel, we spent a total of 600 SGD each for a 4 days 3 night stay. I admit that we were a bit more scrimpy in the way we ate and lived but we did have a vehicle for all 3 days.

Costs was divided amongst hotel, airfare, many entrance fees, food, a minor bit on souvenirs and tips also. Remember that this is still a place where tips are kinda expected. I tried to keep it to about 1 to 3 SGD overall. Expect to spend maybe 100 dollars more if you want to have the entire water sports package down to play more water activities.

Like i said, food is not cheap and neither is it that worth in general, but there exists nearly no cheaper alternatives that would actually taste good. Just expect to pay prices you pay back home and eat at those hotel restaurants and you probably will feel better.

Overall


Tourist Attraction     : 4.0 (Things for mostly everyone to do, good variety and choices)
Shopping                   : 3.0 (Very little things to shop for, nothing special, just a single giant mall)
Food                          : 3.0 (If you are willing to spend, the food should be ok as long as its hotel standards)
People                       : 2.5 (Too money driven, only saving grace is the hotel staff. The rest are just too greedy to the extent of being annoying. I'm sorry but this is but an opinion)
Accomodation           : 3.5 (Convenient to get around, just have to know how to spend. Hotels have a good range of choices for all budgets)
Cost                           : 3.0 (It is not cheap, probably the con of being such a touristy destination. Plus the people really really seem to want to earn just that bit more)


Overall            : 3.167 (Yep, i would say that this is an accurate score. If you are willing to just enjoy the touristy spots and scenes, then you would enjoy this trip. But dont expect too much from anything else. Still, for a relaxing getaway I would say this is a pretty good choice just for the change of environment and how easy it is to plan compared to going to other countries)


Well give your own comments or complaints here and i promise I will take a look at it.