There are 3 types of travels we used in Bali
- Inter city in Bali mainland
- Intra city
- Bali mainland to islands
If you’re planning a 5+ day trip to Bali you will need all of them, so read on!
Link to overall Bali itinerary post here - checkout for planning!
Intercity in Bali mainland
We travelled via cabs in Bali mainland intercity. There were different cabs we tried
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Klook - Used their service for to & from airport travel. Generally pretty cheap with good drivers, who are on time and helpful. Overall good experience. We had pre-booked these.
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Mydaytrip - Used their service for Ubud to Amed transfer. It was a long route & we were charged $29 (₹2250). We had pre-booked this too.
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Gojek - Booked for Sanur to Nusa Dua, reasonable enough & easy to book on app.
💡Pro tip: When you download Gojek you get discounts for first 7 days - so don’t download too much in advance 🙂
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Local drivers - You will find them on busy ports where boats come from islands - used that. Also took a cab from our stay. We cross-checked prices from Gojek app for the same and they were almost the same. The best is BlueBird (from others’ experiences)
Intracity
Most of the times we rented scooty in Bali. It is best to do it from the hotel as it is super convenient & prices are almost always the same. We got per day price of a scooty ranging from IDR 40K (Amed) to IDR 100K (Seminyak). Riding scooty is easy in Bali, especially if you've driven in India. A lot of blogs say it is dangerous, but that's for people who haven't really seen Indian traffic either!
We hired a car for a day and the experience was great (Reference: WhatsApp JJ +6285237111703)
In Gili islands, there are no motor vehicles so we got a cycle & used horse cart for transport to port.
Bali mainland to islands
There are lot of boats that travel to both Gili islands & Nusa islands. Due to covid the frequency of boats had reduced which is increasing again. We pre-booked all our boat travels, and were glad we did it. We searched many operators for boats and below are findings
- Ekajaya - Took from Padang Bai (near Amed) to Gili islands (and back). It is a biiig boat & generally comfortable. They take extra local village charges etc while boarding & generally make you wait a lot, so not the best, but still reliable enough.
- Glory - Took from Sanur to Nusa islands (and back). It is a small boat (like all the ones from Bali to Nusa islands), so there was a feeling of nausea on the sea. The way you board these boats is really weird - you’ve go in knee deep water and then get on. Everyone keeps their footwear in a box before boarding and get after reaching. So keep a bag for your footwear handy and carry with yourself if you want to! And wear shorts.
- Rocky - We looked into it for travel to Nusa but found the reviews generally non-satisfactory.
Another tip for boat travel - they generally charge you extra for transfer to port from hotel and from port to hotel. When you communicate with them (will be on WhatsApp), write down VERY CLEARLY what all is included. The Glory people tried to charge us port to hotel in Nusa islands, but we had clarified this beforehand and hence saved 100K IDR. So please clarify everything before going.
Travel around Bali and have fun :)