12 Fun Things To Do In Bali (& 1 To Avoid)

Shae and I recently spent 10 days in Bali to celebrate our 15th anniversary and had a wonderful time.

We didn’t originally have much planned, although I knew Shae had planned something for our anniversary and I’d arranged an activity for her birthday which was a few days after our anniversary.

We ended up spending a lot of time relaxing on our vacation, but we also took a few day trips to see more of the island. Nearly everything we did was a lot of fun, but there was one attraction we didn’t enjoy. In case you ever need help planning a trip to this Indonesian island, here are 12 fun things to do in Bali and 1 to avoid.

1) Elephant Mud Fun

Shae loves animal encounters, so on her birthday we went to Bali Zoo to take part in their Elephant Mud Fun experience. You get to feed them…

…bathe them in mud…

…and clean them off afterwards.

Check out this post about the entire Elephant Mud Fun experience. Before checking that out, here’s a video of Shae feeding Hattie.

Cost

IDR 1,395,000 (~$100) per person for the experience. That included the Elephant Mud Fun experience itself, a buffet dinner afterwards, a private car from and back to our hotel and entry to Bali Zoo. I therefore feel like that’s a reasonable price considering how fun the elephant experience was.

Just so that you’re aware though, you can take photos of the feeding and showering, but not the mud part of the experience which is the main part. There’s a photographer for that portion of the experience, but buying those photos costs $85-$120 – I know, ridiculously expensive!

2) Nungnung Waterfall

For our anniversary, Shae planned a day trip for us to go see some waterfalls as she knows I love that. Despite Bali not being an enormous island, most roads are 30-35mph and so it takes longer than you might expect to get places. We therefore only managed to see a couple of waterfalls that day, but they were both worth it.

My favorite one was Nungnung waterfall. There are 500 steps down (which, needless to say, are tiring on the way back up), but it’s definitely worth the effort. The waterfall was stunning, a massive cascade into a waist-deep pool below.

There was consistently 25+ people at the waterfall while we were there, but it still felt peaceful and not crowded. Everyone was respectful of each other’s space and despite all of us taking photos, it felt like everyone was there to enjoy themselves rather than just to chalk up another waterfall to put on Instagram (more on that later).

Seeing as we were celebrating our 15th anniversary that day, we brought some sparkling wine with us to celebrate. Unbeknownst to me, Shae had also brought along a whiskey glass and some Oban 14 year whiskey as an anniversary gift.

I took a video of the waterfall and its surroundings, but I don’t feel like it does justice to how amazing it was there. If you only have time to visit one waterfall in Bali, this should be it. You can also wade through the water up to the waterfall; it’s not easy though with the current pushing against you and the spray pounding your face!

Cost

IDR 20,000 (~$1.50) per person.

3) Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary

This is a popular tourist attraction in Ubud and it’s easy to see why. The sanctuary contains more than 1,000 monkeys and is spread over more than 30 acres.

Just before we left, I’d been taking photos of a group of baby monkeys when I heard Shae calling out to me urgently. At first I thought she was alerting me to a cute photo opportunity, but I turned around and saw this:

Shae had crouched down to get some photos of monkeys walking along a handrail when one suddenly hopped on her back.

A lot of other people at the Monkey Forest had been freaking out whenever monkeys got too close to them, but not Shae. As I mentioned earlier, she loves animal encounters, especially the unexpected kind like this.

Her urgent beckoning to me was therefore because she wanted me to capture the moment, not because she was worried about the monkey on her. In case her excitement isn’t quite evident enough in the photo above, check out the video below.

That wasn’t all though. The baby monkeys I’d been taking photos of beforehand started making their way across the bridge. One of them decided he/she wanted to be friends with Shae.

Unfortunately an adult monkey was less trusting of Shae and hurried the baby along:

Before that all went down, Shae managed to get an amazing photo of one of the baby monkeys, as well as an adult eating a coconut.

Cost

IDR 80,000 (~$5.75) per adult.

4) Hidden Canyon

True to its name, Hidden Canyon is indeed hidden and so we wouldn’t have known about it if it hadn’t been for our driver. We’re glad he suggested it as an activity as it was so much fun.

The experience lasts about 2-2.5 hours and you go hiking and wading through a canyon.

There’s some clambering over rocks involved, so it’s best to wear something on your feet (although our guide remained barefoot). You’ll also be wading waist-deep through water at times, so a pair of water shoes is your best option.

Similar to my video of Nungnung waterfall, I feel like none of the photos I took from our Hidden Canyon experience fully captured how amazing it was.

Our guide was excellent, it’s a beautiful setting and it’s challenging without being too hard. There’s also a section where you can jump off the rocks into the water below, although that’s optional. I’d chickened out of doing that at Warren Falls in Vermont a couple of months ago (although Shae did it), but this time I plucked up the courage to do it.

At the end of the experience, you walk back to the start through a pretty stretch of farmland.

Cost

IDR 200,000 (~$14) for one person, IDR 300,000 (~$21) for a couple.

5) Leke Leke Waterfall

Before visiting Nungnung waterfall on our anniversary, we’d visited a different waterfall – Leke Leke. Leke Leke waterfall had a bunch of steps leading down to it too, but that meant it felt a little more secluded.

It wasn’t quite as busy as Nungnung waterfall which was good as the area was much smaller. All the other visitors were respectful of each other though, not taking long to get photos.

The path down has a bunch of photo opportunities too, with lots of these types of seats set against a pretty backdrop.

Cost

IDR 50,000 (~$3.50) per person.

6) Baturiti Luwak Coffee

If you’ve never heard of Luwak coffee, it’s coffee that gets an assist from an animal called the luwak.

Despite not liking coffee, we stopped by Baturiti Luwak Coffee to give it a try. The coffee cherries start out like this…

…then they’re fed to the luwak. The luwak eat the coffee cherries, with them fermenting while they pass through the intestines. Once the beans are “processed” in this way, they’re gathered up…

…and – thankfully – cleaned.

We couldn’t come all this way, do a tour of the coffee plantation and not try luwak coffee. So we did. Shae’s face is covered in trepidation, but I think that was more due to it being coffee than the poop element.

We also tried a bunch of other teas and coffees, like mangosteen tea, ginseng coffee and more.

Most of them tasted better than we’d been expecting; I think this was assisted by the generous serving of sugar in each small cup.

Cost

To be honest, I’m not entirely sure as I didn’t keep the receipt. Checking my credit card statement won’t help either as we also bought a couple of packets of luwak coffee as gifts at the same time.

The standard tea and coffee tasting was one price though, with a tasting of luwak coffee itself costing extra.

7) Swing

Something I didn’t realize before visiting Bali is that swinging is big there. Not that kind of swinging though – I mean swinging as in sitting on an actual swing.

We saw these a number of times around Bali, including when we went to Leke Leke waterfall. Shae and I decided to give it a go and rode the swing at Baturiti Luwak Coffee while looking out at the coffee plantation and rice fields. What you don’t see in the photo below is that there’s a drop off beneath you, so there is a small thrill while riding this.

After riding the swing, our coffee plantation tour guide grabbed a fresh passion fruit off a tree and cut it open for us to try – so delicious!

Cost

The swing cost IDR 200,000 (~$14) per person, so it’s not particularly cheap for what it is. I’m glad we did it to experience it, but it’s not something I’d feel the need to do a second time.

8) Tukad Cepung Waterfall

This was a magical little waterfall we visited on our second day trip around the island. Once again, you have to take a large number of steps down (and back up at the end) to get there. You pass through a canyon, stepping through ankle-deep water at some points.

You’ll then arrive at what can only be described as a waterfall in a roofless cave. There were very few people there when we visited at 5:30pm, so that seems a good time of day to check it out if you’d like it to be fairly isolated.

Cost

Tickets were IDR 15,000 (~$1) per person.

9) Tour The Island

If you stick to Bali’s cities and resorts, you’ll be missing out on a lot of what the island has to offer. In addition to doing all these activities, we got to get a bit of a better idea of what life was like in the more rural areas.

Touring the island means you’ll get to see other stuff too, like rice fields, volcanoes and more.

A friend recommended a driver in Bali called Putu; he wasn’t available himself, so his colleague Nyoman drove us a couple of different days and he was wonderful – we couldn’t recommend him highly enough.

While driving back on our second day we asked Nyoman about how rice is harvested, so he stopped by a rice field to show us what it looks like. I don’t know why, but it had never occurred to me that rice grew in grass.

Check out this post for more about why it’s worth hiring a driver in Bali if you want to explore the island.

Cost

Hiring a private driver wasn’t expensive – a 10 hour day trip only cost $50, so $5 an hour. If you need the driver for longer, it’s only an additional $5 per hour. That’s for the entire vehicle rather than per person, so it’s great value. It obviously doesn’t include entry fees to any attractions you might visit though.

10) Eat Babi Guling

We’d arranged for our hotel to send a driver to pick us up from the airport when we arrived in Bali. On the way to the hotel, we asked him what traditional Balinese food we should try.

His suggestion was babi guling. Babi guling is a suckling pig (2-6 weeks old) that’s subsequently spit-roasted for many hours and is often eaten at celebrations.

On one of our day trips out with Nyoman, we asked him to take us for lunch at somewhere serving babi guling and he joined us for lunch. It was incredibly tasty, with pork being served something like 6 or 7 ways – pork belly, pork rinds, pork skin, pork satay, sliced pork, fried pork and I think there was some other kind. This was served with rice, spicy glass noodles, chili, some kind of green bean side and a spicy sauce on top.

It might not necessarily look amazing, but it was incredibly tasty and very filling. Even Shae who doesn’t normally like pork really enjoyed it.

Cost

Good question. I didn’t take a photo of the menu seeing as we weren’t reviewing the restaurant, but I think it was something like IDR 25,000 (~$1.75) per person. I might be misremembering though and it could’ve been double that; either way, $1.75 or $3.50 is still a decent price for a tasty, filling meal.

11) Bali Zoo

I mentioned at the beginning of this list that we did an Elephant Mud Fun experience. That’s done at Bali Zoo and our tickets included entry to the zoo as well as transportation to and from our hotel.

It was a nice zoo and, while there weren’t a huge number of animals there, they seemed to have decent-sized habitats. One of the nice features of the zoo is that apart from animals needing to be in their own enclosure for safety, the animals roam free with you.

The zoo offers several different kinds of animal experiences. One of those involves orangutans; we didn’t do that, but we did get to see one up close where he was sitting in an outdoor restaurant area.

You can pay a little extra to feed deer, elephants, tigers and more, while you also get to hold parrots for free.

Cost

As mentioned above, our tickets were included as part of our Elephant Mud Fun experience. Standalone tickets cost IDR 355,500 (~$25).

12) Batuan Temple

We managed to fit in quite a lot of activities on our second day with Nyoman, one of which was a visit to Batuan Temple.

Batuan Temple is a Hindu temple in Batuan village that’s spread out over quite a large area. There are numerous temple buildings with lots of ornate stonework, carvings and sculptures.

Cost

I think the entry fee was IDR 20,000 (~$1.50) per person.

~

We loved our time in Bali and had a great time exploring the island and experiencing all these places and activities. There was one place we visited though which wasn’t at all enjoyable, so we’d suggest avoiding it (maybe).

Kanto Lampo Waterfall

As you’ll have seen earlier, I love waterfalls. And Kanto Lampo is a beautiful waterfall:

So why would I suggest you avoid it? Because it’s far too busy and it spoils the experience. To be honest though, it wasn’t the busyness as such that was the issue, it was how inconsiderate all the other visitors were there.

When we visited the other three waterfalls listed above, everyone was respectful of each other’s space, didn’t take long getting their photos, etc. Kanto Lampo waterfall was the opposite though – it seems to be Mecca for Instagrammers who want to get a million pretentious poses.

When we arrived, there was a couple standing in the middle of the waterfall getting photos. Lotus pose. Standing on one leg pose. Hands in the air pose. Kissing pose. Hands out wide pose. Praying pose. Kneeling pose. Hugging pose. Meditating pose. Cross legged pose. Looking wistfully at the waterfall pose. And on and on and on. That couple stood there for a good 5-10 minutes getting photos which meant no one else could get theirs.

Eventually they moved so that the next couple could get some photos. Only that couple went and did the same thing – spent 5-10 minutes up there getting every pose imaginable under the sun.

With a long line of other couples waiting to get their million hashtaggable photos, we grabbed a quick selfie and left.

The saddest part of it all is that I don’t think anyone was actually taking in the experience. It was all about getting a photo that would get the most likes rather than enjoying their travel. If Shae and I ever seem like we’re going that route, please please please call us out on it!

Now that my rant is over, I’m not sure I can definitely say Kanto Lampo is something you should never visit. After all, it’s a beautiful waterfall and we might’ve just happened to get unlucky visiting at the same time as a busload of tourists on an Instagram Bali tour. If you do visit Kanto Lampo waterfall, just go in with the expectation that you’ll see everyone spending ages doing a bunch of inane poses.

Cost

IDR 20,000 (~$1.50) per person.

Bali Trip Report

You can check out all our posts from our 15th anniversary trip to Bali below:

• We’re Going To Bali For 10 Nights For (Almost) Free – Here’s How
• Flight Antics On The Way To Bali – Here’s What Happened
• Flight Review: Cathay Pacific Economy – Washington Dulles (IAD) To Hong Kong (HKG)
• Review: Cathay Pacific The Pier Business Class Lounge, Hong Kong Airport
• 12 Fun Things To Do In Bali (& 1 To Avoid)
• Hotel Review: Hyatt Regency Bali
• Hiring A Driver In Bali – Is It Worth It?
• Having Elephant Mud Fun At The Bali Zoo
• Flight Review: Garuda Indonesia Economy – Denpasar (DPS) To Tokyo Narita (NRT)
• Flight Review: Delta Economy – Tokyo Narita (NRT) To Atlanta (ATL)