Things to Do in Bali: Itineraries, Costs and Food

Two Kecak shows nightly, 18:00 and 19:00, timed for sunset. Watch your belongings and hats around the macaques on the clifftop path, they steal.

Be honest about this one: it's a photo spot now, not a quiet rice paddy. Tour buses arrive from 10am. Go before 9am or skip it for a less trafficked terrace like Jatiluwih instead.

The temple sits on a rock just offshore and you can't enter it, only view it from the cliff path. Come for sunset around 4pm to get a spot before the crowd builds.

Genuinely worth it if you like the temple architecture and forest as much as the monkeys. Go right at opening, both for fewer people and calmer macaques. Don't carry loose food or open bags.

A real hike, not a stroll: dark, steep in places, and cold at the top. Worth it for the crater views, but exhausting if you're doing it on a short trip already packed with other days.

North Bali, 2.5-3 hours from Ubud, so this is a full day, not an add-on. The trek down is steep and often muddy. Fewer people than the south's waterfalls.

Large art and culture development near Tabanan with permanent installations, including Daniel Popper's giant Earth Sentinels sculptures and a 1km interactive walking route called Aurora Media Park, plus an annual art fair. Genuinely different from the usual Bali photo-op circuit, more like a walkable open-air art park than a single attraction. Worth a half day if you like installation art rather than a quick stop.

Network of jungle swings and photo platforms over rice terraces and valleys near Ubud, built purely to produce a single Instagram-style shot. This is the overpriced photo-op Bali is known for. You pay a premium for a five-second swing shot and queue behind other tourists doing the identical pose. Skip it unless the photo is the whole point of the trip.

Terraced rice paddies north of Ubud with a walking path through the fields, now surrounded by a dense ring of paid swings, nests, and photo platforms at the entrance. The terraces themselves are still worth seeing on foot, but the entry strip has turned into a wall of paid photo props. Walk past them into the paddies rather than paying at every stand.

Waterfall inside a narrow rock cavern near Tegalalang where sunlight beams down through a gap in the rock and lights the water below. The lighting effect only works midday in the right weather, and it fills up fast once the sun hits. Go early if you want the shot without forty other people in the frame.

Clifftop beach on the Bukit peninsula reached by a cut-through-limestone access road, known for white sand, turquoise water, and sunset views. Access has genuinely improved and it's less packed than the Uluwatu temple crowds, but it's still a beach-club scene at sunset, not a quiet spot.

Fast-boat day trip from Sanur to Nusa Penida covering the T-Rex-shaped Kelingking viewpoint, the wave-blowhole cove at Devil's Tears, and the natural rock arch at Broken Beach. This earns its reputation, the landscape is real and dramatic, not a built photo-op. The tradeoff is a long day, around 10-12 hours door to door, and every viewpoint is now roped and crowded at peak hours.

Bali's signature dish: whole pig stuffed with turmeric and chili paste, spit-roasted until the skin cracks. It's pork, worth flagging since Bali's Hindu majority sets it apart from halal norms elsewhere in Indonesia.

Rice with a rotating mix of small dishes scooped from trays at the counter. The best gauge of a good warung is turnover, fresh trays mean a busy kitchen.

Duck rubbed in spice paste, wrapped in banana leaf and palm bark, then cooked for hours until it falls off the bone. Worth the advance order over the fast tourist-menu version.

Minced fish or chicken mixed with grated coconut and spices, pressed onto lemongrass or bamboo skewers instead of threaded like regular sate. Different texture, worth trying alongside skewered satay.

A minced vegetable and meat salad with grated coconut, sometimes made with raw pig blood, lawar merah. Ask before ordering if that's not what you want; a cooked version, lawar putih, is common too.

A small banana-leaf-wrapped rice packet with a few spoonfuls of shredded chicken, sambal and noodles, sized for a snack rather than a meal. Cheap enough to buy three.

What Canggu is known for now as much as surf. Good, but priced closer to Australian cafes than to anything local, and it's not what most Balinese eat.

A cluster of specialty coffee shops and roasters across Canggu and Uluwatu, serving flat whites and single-origin pour-overs to a mostly foreign clientele. This has been building for years, not a flash trend. Quality is genuinely high in spots, but you're paying Melbourne prices in a rice paddy.

Long-running Ubud restaurant known for crispy duck served with rice paddy views, part of a small local chain with several Bali locations. Predates the influencer era by decades. The duck is solid, the setting is the real draw. Expect a tour bus crowd at peak hours.

Rows of open-air seafood grills right on Jimbaran Bay, where you pick your catch and eat at a table in the sand at sunset. A genuine Bali institution, not a new discovery. Prices vary a lot by stall and menus aren't always clear upfront, so ask first.

Matcha has moved from a passing drink trend into a fixture of Bali's cafe menus, showing up as lattes, smoothie bowls, pancakes and soft serve. This is real, not hype. Worth seeking out if you like matcha, but it's on nearly every menu now, not a hunt for one spot.

Gelato and ice cream shops have multiplied across Uluwatu and Canggu, mixing classic flavors like pistachio and lemon with local twists like soursop sorbet. Good heat relief in that climate. Quality swings hard from shop to shop, so ask around before you commit a stop to one.

New wine-focused bars are opening alongside Canggu's existing cocktail scene, pairing wine lists with dinner menus rather than treating wine as an afterthought. A sign the scene is maturing past smoothie bowls and coffee. Worth a look if you drink wine, skip it otherwise.