Bali: How to Visit and Get Around
Bali is an island and a province of Indonesia, not a country of its own, and that distinction matters the moment you start planning: the entry rules, the tourist levy and the transport options are all Indonesian national or provincial systems, not something Bali runs on its own. Land at Ngurah Rai International (DPS) near Denpasar, pay a one-time IDR 150,000 tourist levy through the official Love Bali portal, and clear a paid Visa on Arrival before you even think about which beach to hit first. Get that right up front and the rest of the trip, from Ubud’s rice terraces to a driver-led sunset at Uluwatu, actually goes to plan.
Bali at a glance: what to sort before you land
| What | Detail |
|---|---|
| Airport | Ngurah Rai International (DPS), near Denpasar |
| Tourist levy | IDR 150,000 per visitor, one-time, paid via Love Bali |
| Visa | Paid Visa on Arrival, IDR 500,000, 30 days, one extension |
| Best months | April to October (dry); avoid flying on 19 March 2026, Nyepi |
| Getting around | No public transport network; driver, Grab/Gojek or scooter |
| Currency | Indonesian rupiah (IDR) |
| Trip length | 5 to 7 days for a first visit; 2 to 3 covers one base only |
Getting to Bali: Ngurah Rai and the paperwork
Every international flight into Bali lands at Ngurah Rai International Airport (DPS) in Tuban, just south of Denpasar and a short ride from the Kuta and Seminyak hotel strip. Domestic flights from Jakarta, Surabaya and other Indonesian cities use the same terminal.
Two payments happen before or right at arrival, and they are separate systems, not one combined fee. The Bali tourist levy, IDR 150,000, one-time, is paid through the official Love Bali portal and funds provincial conservation and culture programs. The Visa on Arrival, IDR 500,000 for 30 days with one 30-day extension available, is Indonesia’s national immigration fee, arranged online in advance at evisa.imigrasi.go.id or paid on the spot. Skip either one and you’re sorting it out in a queue after a long flight instead of before you left home.
Do you need a visa for Bali?
Yes, and it is not visa-free for most Western nationalities despite what older guides claim. It is a paid Visa on Arrival: IDR 500,000, 30 days, extendable once for another 30 days and another IDR 500,000 at an immigration office. A handful of ASEAN nationalities get genuine visa-free entry, and Indonesia restored reciprocal visa-free arrangements with a short list of other countries starting mid-2025, so check your own passport at evisa.imigrasi.go.id rather than assuming. Your passport needs at least 6 months’ validity and two blank pages, and the tourist levy above is billed separately from this visa fee.
Getting around Bali: scooter, driver or Grab
Bali has no metro and no tourist-useful public bus network, so three real options cover almost every visitor: renting a scooter yourself, hiring a private driver for the day, or using Grab or Gojek ride-hailing.
A scooter is the cheapest and most flexible choice, and also the single biggest safety risk on this page. Riding without a valid motorcycle-endorsed International Driving Permit is illegal, checkpoints do check, and going without one voids your travel insurance if anything happens, on top of any traffic fine. Wear a helmet and treat a valid IDP as non-negotiable if you ride at all; tourists are hurt and killed on Bali’s roads every year, and it is not a risk worth shrugging off.
A private driver, booked for the day through your hotel or a local driver-booking service, is the practical default for multi-stop sightseeing days: cheap by Western standards and it removes the traffic and navigation stress entirely. Grab and Gojek are widely used too, but expect friction: local taxi and transport groups have pushed informal no-go zones for ride-hailing pickups in parts of Ubud and Canggu, and app drivers sometimes cancel or reroute rather than risk a confrontation there. Whichever you choose, build in real slack: the Canggu-Kuta-Seminyak corridor and the roads into Ubud carry heavy, slow traffic, and a route that looks like 20 minutes on a map can easily eat an hour.
Bali’s regions: where to actually base yourself
Bali is bigger and more varied than a single beach-island label suggests, and where you base yourself shapes the whole trip.
The south, Kuta, Legian, Seminyak and Canggu plus Jimbaran and Nusa Dua, is the surf-and-nightlife strip and the most convenient base near the airport; Canggu doubles as Bali’s digital-nomad cafe scene. The Bukit Peninsula, south of the airport, is cliff coastline, serious surf breaks and the Uluwatu temple, with its nightly Kecak fire dance at sunset. Ubud, inland, is the cultural and spiritual base: temples, rice terraces and a wellness scene, bookable as a day tour on GetYourGuide if you want the highlights sorted in one day rather than self-driving between them. The quieter east (Sidemen, Amed, Candidasa) and north (Lovina, Munduk) trade convenience for black-sand beaches, coffee country and far fewer visitors.
One rice-terrace detail worth getting right: Tegallalang, the terraces everyone photographs near Ubud, is not the UNESCO-listed site. That designation belongs to Jatiluwih and the wider Subak irrigation system , the thousand-year-old cooperative rice-irrigation network inscribed in 2012, which sits further northwest. Tegallalang is real and worth a look, it just isn’t the World Heritage one.
Nusa Penida, reached by fast boat from Sanur in well under an hour, adds the Kelingking cliff and Angel’s Billabong as a day trip or overnight. Don’t confuse it with the Gili Islands: Gili Trawangan, Gili Meno and Gili Air sit off Lombok, a different island in a different province, and the crossing from Bali runs a genuine 1.5 to 2.5 hours each way, not the quick hop Nusa Penida is.
When should you go, and what about Nyepi?
Go in the dry season, roughly April through October, for the most reliable weather; July and August bring the biggest crowds and highest prices. The wet season, November through March, trades some rain and humidity for thinner crowds and cheaper rates, and the rain itself is usually a short, hard downpour rather than an all-day washout.
Mark one date now if your trip is anywhere near it: Nyepi, the Balinese Day of Silence, falls on 19 March 2026, and the entire island shuts down for 24 hours, including the airport. No flights land or leave, everyone stays indoors, and even hotel guests are asked to keep lights low. It is enforced, not a soft suggestion, so do not book a flight for that date and build a full rest day into your plans if your trip overlaps it.
Money and the risks that actually bite
Bali runs on the Indonesian rupiah (IDR). Cards work at hotels and established restaurants, but warungs, markets and most drivers want cash, and it is worth using bank-branch ATMs (BCA, Mandiri and similar) rather than standalone street machines to cut skimming risk; when a card terminal asks whether to charge you in IDR or your home currency, always choose IDR.
Scooter accidents are the single biggest real risk to visitors, covered above and worth repeating here: no IDP means no travel insurance if you crash. Beyond that, three honest health notes. Tap water is not safe to drink, so stick to bottled or filtered water. Rabies is present in local dogs and the Ubud Monkey Forest’s macaques, so any bite or scratch needs immediate medical attention, not a wait-and-see approach. And methanol poisoning from counterfeit spirits, including drinks served at legitimate-looking bars and hotels, has caused real deaths in Indonesia, so treat unbranded arak and suspiciously cheap cocktails with real caution. None of this should keep you home; it should just make you a more careful drinker and a considerably more careful rider. For current official guidance, check the UK Foreign Office’s Indonesia page before you fly.
Once the logistics above are sorted, the scheduling is the fun part. Our Bali guide covers where to eat and stay in more depth, and the 5-day itinerary or 7-day itinerary turns this overview into a real day-by-day plan, including how much of the island you can honestly cover without spending the trip in traffic. If you are choosing a base, compare Ubud and Seminyak stays on Booking.com before rates move for your dates.
One concrete tip: sort your Love Bali levy payment and e-VOA before you board, not after you land. Doing both from a phone in the immigration queue on patchy airport wifi is a genuinely bad way to start a trip.