Ubud & the rice terraces
The cultural heart — art, temples and Tegalalang's terraces.
Bali in pictures
Bali
The full reset
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Temples, terraced rice fields and surf breaks — Bali is a long flight but an easy place to slow down. Getting around the island (and to the Gilis) is the part most first-timers get wrong.
Fly into Denpasar (DPS) from Toronto with one or two stops. On the ground, book buses, shuttles and ferries — including the Gili Islands — through 12Go.
There are no trains. Most people use a private driver for day trips, a scooter for short hops, or the Grab/Gojek apps. Roads are slow, so plan generous travel times.
The cultural heart — art, temples and Tegalalang's terraces.
Clifftop temple with a Kecak fire dance.
Car-free islands reached by fast boat — book the ferry ahead.
Quieter rice-field valleys away from the crowds.
The east-coast strip most people overlook, and the right answer if you're travelling with parents or small kids. A long, flat paved beachfront path runs for kilometres, the offshore reef takes the swell out of the water so the sea is shallow and calm, and Sanur's harbour is the main departure point for fast boats to Nusa Lembongan and Nusa Penida. It faces east, so it is a sunrise beach rather than a sunset one, and it is not a nightlife town. That is the trade.
Inland, uphill, greener and a few degrees cooler than the coast. This is the cultural base: palace dance performances, the art market, temples, rice valleys on the edge of town. No beach. Be honest with yourself about central Ubud though - the main streets are choked with traffic, the pavements are narrow with open drains and abrupt steps, and it is nothing like the quiet retreat the photos suggest. Stay a little out of the centre and use a driver.
The beach-club and cafe belt on the southwest coast, Canggu to the north and Seminyak below it. Good food, good surf, a scene. Also some of the worst traffic on the island, near-constant construction, and stretches with no usable footpath at all. Suits couples and younger travellers who plan to stay put. Wrong for anyone who wants to walk anywhere or sleep early. Legian and Kuta sit just south - cheap and close to the airport, but most people don't linger.
The manicured resort end of the south - Nusa Dua out on the Bukit peninsula, Jimbaran on the bay just north of it. The Bali Mandara toll road runs across the Gulf of Benoa linking Ngurah Rai airport, Denpasar, South Kuta and Nusa Dua, so transfers are short and predictable. Wide flat paths, calm reef-protected swimming, everything inside the gates. It is engineered and a bit soulless, and you will pay resort rates for a coconut - but if you're bringing grandparents on a long-haul flight, that predictability is worth a lot.
Balinese spit-roasted suckling pig, served as a plate with rice, lawar, sausage and a shard of crackling. Bali is Hindu rather than Muslim-majority, which is why pork sits at the centre of the local menu here in a way it doesn't across most of Indonesia. The warungs around Ubud and along the Gianyar road are its traditional home. Obviously not one for Muslim travellers in the family - most warungs also do chicken versions of everything.
The actual everyday meal: a mound of rice with whatever the kitchen made that morning arranged around it. You point at the display case and they build the plate. Every neighbourhood has warungs doing this, and they are consistently better value than the cafes on the main strips. Go at lunch when the turnover is high and the food hasn't been sitting.
Minced fish or chicken mixed with grated coconut, lime leaf and lemongrass, moulded onto a stick of lemongrass and grilled - a Balinese thing, quite different from Javanese peanut satay. Jimbaran Bay is the classic setting, where the beachfront grills cook whatever came off the boats that afternoon and you eat it on the sand at sunset.
Where locals actually eat. Pasar Malam Gianyar, southeast of Ubud, is the big one - a covered street of stalls doing babi guling, martabak and grilled corn. Sanur's Sindhu market runs a food section in the evening, and Pasar Badung in Denpasar is the island's main traditional produce market, busiest early in the morning. Bring cash in small notes - nobody takes cards.
Land at Ngurah Rai (DPS) and go no further than your base. If you've come from Toronto you've been travelling roughly a full day and you're eleven or twelve hours out of sync. Sanur's beachfront path or a hotel pool is the entire plan. Fighting the jet lag on day one is how people lose day two as well.
Hire a car and driver for the evening and head out to the Bukit peninsula. Uluwatu Temple sits on the edge of a cliff about seventy metres above the sea, and a Kecak dance based on the Ramayana is performed daily on the clifftop with the sunset behind it - book seats ahead, it fills. Watch your sunglasses, phone and flip-flops: the long-tailed macaques there are practised, well-organised thieves. Afterwards drop down to Jimbaran Bay for grilled seafood; the same driver waits and takes you home.
Fast boat from Sanur harbour to Nusa Lembongan - a crossing of roughly half an hour, running at regular intervals in daylight. Smaller and gentler than Penida: a yellow suspension bridge over to Nusa Ceningan, a big area of mangroves along the northeast side you can take a boat through, and reef snorkelling offshore. (Crystal Bay, which you'll see on every tour board, is actually on Nusa Penida - it's a boat trip from Lembongan, not a walk.) Get the boat times both ways before you leave; the last returns are earlier than you'd expect and crossings get cancelled in rough weather.
Drive up to Ubud - reckon on an hour and a half from the south, more in traffic, whatever the map says. Start with the Campuhan Ridge Walk while it's still cool: a paved spine of path between two river valleys, flat and genuinely lovely at seven in the morning and unbearable by ten. Then Ubud Palace and the art market in the middle of town.
Same driver, loop north: the Tegalalang rice terraces (be warned, seeing them properly means steep steps down into the valley and back up), then Tirta Empul at Tampaksiring, the spring-fed Hindu water temple where you can queue through the purification bathing pools, and Goa Gajah's carved cave mouth on the way back down. Sarongs are required at Balinese temples - most lend one at the gate.
Either a cooking class in a village outside Ubud, which is the best-value half day on the island and finally explains what's in the food, or push east to Sidemen for rice-terrace valleys with a fraction of the crowds. Skip the Monkey Forest if you have young kids - the macaques there approach in groups, go into bags and pockets, and have been known to bite, and rabies is present in Indonesia.
The dramatic one - Kelingking's dinosaur-shaped headland, Angel's Billabong, Broken Beach, Crystal Bay. Fast boat from Sanur harbour, under an hour depending on the operator and the sea. Go in clear-eyed: the island's roads are narrow and rough, the drive between viewpoints eats the day, and the famous descent at Kelingking is a steep scramble on a cliff face rather than a staircase. Book the boat in advance, take the earliest crossing out and don't cut the return fine.
North of Ubud, where the land drops away into an enormous volcanic caldera with a lake and a black lava field at the bottom. The rim road at Kintamani gives you the whole view from a coffee stop, no hiking required, and it is noticeably cooler up there. Sunrise treks up Batur itself start in the small hours with a guide - fine if you're fit, miserable if you're not. A standard driver day out of Ubud.
The quiet side. Sidemen is the rice-terrace valley Ubud used to be; Tirta Gangga is a water palace with stepping stones across carp pools that children love. Lempuyang's 'Gates of Heaven' is the split-gate photo everyone has seen - what nobody mentions is the long climb and a queue that can run for hours for a staged shot. Do the first two and treat the third as optional.
Bali is a slow, hot, car-dependent island, and it rewards you for admitting that early. There is no train, and public transport is not a realistic tool for visitors - the Trans Metro Dewata bus network was suspended at the end of 2024 and restarted in April 2025 with reduced frequency, and in any case it won't take you where you're going. Everything is a car on congested two-lane roads, where thirty kilometres can genuinely take ninety minutes. The standard, sane solution is to hire a car with a driver for the day. Split between four people it is the single best decision you'll make, and it means Grandma isn't hunting for a taxi in the heat. On the ground, be realistic about surfaces. Footpaths in Canggu, Kuta and central Ubud are broken, missing, or laid over open storm drains with sudden steps - a wheelchair or a stroller is hard work and sometimes impossible. The exceptions matter: Sanur's beachfront promenade is long, flat and paved, and Nusa Dua's resort paths are level throughout. If you're bringing a parent with limited mobility, base yourself in one of those two and day-trip out by car. Don't base in Ubud and expect to stroll. The sights themselves involve more climbing than the photos suggest. Uluwatu is a clifftop with steps, Tegalalang means descending into a valley and back out, Lempuyang is a serious climb, and Kelingking on Nusa Penida is a near-vertical scramble. Temples require a sarong and often a flight of stone steps. Plenty is still doable - Tirta Empul, Tirta Gangga, the Kintamani rim viewpoints, beach days, a cooking class - but build the day around one hard thing, not three. Bali sits about eight degrees south of the equator, so there is no cool season, only wetter and drier. Plan mornings, come back to the pool in the middle of the day, go out again in the late afternoon. The wet season runs roughly November to March with heavy afternoon downpours. Two health points worth briefing everyone on. Rabies is present in Indonesia, carried by dogs and by wildlife including bats - keep children away from the roaming dogs and away from the Monkey Forest macaques, which go into bags and do bite. And the Government of Canada is blunt that motorcycle and scooter accidents are a leading cause of death and serious injury among foreigners in Indonesia, Bali included. Whatever you see the influencers doing, do not put your family on scooters. Serious medical care means the private hospitals in the Denpasar and Kuta area, and evacuation from Bali is a long way from home. One last thing for the flight: Toronto to Denpasar is one or two stops and effectively a full day door to door. Give elderly travellers two genuinely easy days at the start and don't schedule a boat trip for the morning after you land.
Indonesian rupiah. Cards work fine in hotels, malls, resorts and larger restaurants, but warungs, markets, temple donations, parking attendants and drivers are all cash - carry more small notes than feels necessary. The Government of Canada warns of a very high rate of credit and debit card fraud in Indonesia, so use ATMs inside or attached to a bank branch in public during the day, watch for irregular-looking card readers, cover the keypad, and pay attention any time someone else is handling your card.
Not a traditional obligation and nobody will chase you. Mid-range and upmarket restaurants usually add a service charge plus tax to the bill, so look before you add anything on top. Rounding up for a driver who's had you in the car all day, for porters, and for spa and massage staff is normal and genuinely appreciated. Small notes, handed over directly.
230 volts, 50 hertz, plug types C and F - the round two-pin European style, a legacy of Dutch rule. Canadian flat two-pin plugs do not fit, so bring an adapter. Most phone and laptop chargers are dual-voltage and fine, but Indonesia's mains is roughly double Canada's: never plug in a 120-volt-only hair dryer, curling iron or travel kettle. Power cuts happen; a battery pack is useful.
Not safe to drink, anywhere on the island, including in good hotels. Bottled or filtered only - many hotels now have refill stations, which saves a mountain of plastic. The official line is boil it, cook it, peel it or leave it. Established restaurants use commercially made ice and it's generally fine; be more careful with roadside drinks and anything raw that's been rinsed.
Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia) is the national language and Balinese is what many people speak at home. English is widely understood across the tourist south, Ubud and anywhere with a hotel, and thins out quickly in villages and on the back roads. Indonesian is one of the easier languages to make a start in - 'terima kasih' for thank you will visibly change how you're treated.
Two real ones. First, methanol poisoning: the Government of Canada warns that counterfeits of well-known alcohol brands sold in tourist areas including Bali and Lombok often contain dangerous amounts of methanol, and that poisonings have happened at hotels, bars and shops. Stick to sealed bottles of brands you recognise, avoid unfamiliar labels, and be suspicious of free-pour spirits and all-you-can-drink deals. Second, every international visitor must pay the Love Bali tourist levy, set out in Bali Provincial Regulation No. 2 of 2025, which amends Regional Regulation No. 6 of 2023. Pay it on the official Love Bali provincial government website or app before you fly, keep the QR code voucher that arrives by email, and ignore anyone offering to 'sort it out' for you at the airport.
The dry season (roughly April–October) is best. The wet season is cheaper and greener but expect afternoon downpours.
Compare the ways to get there, then build a day-by-day plan.
Fly into Denpasar (DPS) from Toronto with one or two stops. On the ground, book buses, shuttles and ferries — including the Gili Islands — through 12Go.
There are no trains. Most people use a private driver for day trips, a scooter for short hops, or the Grab/Gojek apps. Roads are slow, so plan generous travel times.
The dry season (roughly April–October) is best. The wet season is cheaper and greener but expect afternoon downpours.