Bali Travel Tips – Two Traveling Dumplings

Stuff to make your trip that much more magical

Bali is a fabulous island of mystery and magic. While you’ll need to plan for the standard tropical island adventure, here are some specific tips we can share from our experience that will make your Bali trip that much more epic. We’ve also included links to some of our favorite restaurants, hotels, homestays and other things we liked.

Horse carts sure don’t take Amex! Cash is king.

Mosquito repellent (Autan or even better, something with deet!)
Bali has mosquitoes- mosquitoes who especially love “sweet blood” folks like Tiffany. To help prevent this from happening, we HIGHLY recommend you bring some insect repellent with deet from home. Its hard to find deet based insect repellent in Bali so pack accordingly.
Use Gojek for getting around Seminyak and getting food
Gojek is kinda like Uber combined with Grubhub. It makes getting around Seminyak a breeze and they’ll deliver tasty food to you too. It’s also CRAZY cheap with most car rides costing 1-4 US dollars. Unfortunately this app doesn’t work well in Ubud because the local Taxi drivers have beaten up and threatened all Gojek drivers to stay out of their turf. Not a very enlightened and spiritual approach if you ask us but….
Prepare for some Bali Belly (travelers diarrhea 🙁 )
Ya, I think it happened to all of us here. Have your doc prescribe some medication to make it go away quick
Get money from ATMs before visiting small islands
The Gilis are beautiful but run totally on cash. If you’re visiting, bring as much cash as possible because if you don’t, you could seriously get stuck. We almost did but managed to BARELY scrape enough together to buy our ferry ride tickets back
Dry your ears out AFTER diving
I didn’t and got some mean ear infections 🙁
Be ready to haggle for taxis and horse rides
In Ubud, Taxi drivers will happily try to gouge you with inflated prices. Always stick to half of what they say and walk away if they won’t budge. They’ll change their tune fast when you do that.
Traffic is CRAZY- don’t trust google maps (add extra time)
Traffic all over the islands is insane. Add at least 2 to 3x the time google maps comes up with.