Travel Expenses in Bali, Indonesia

Traveling is a lot of fun but can be expensive as well. To find out exactly how much we spent during our round the world trip we painstakingly keep track of all of our travel expenses and analyse them for you. In this post: our travel expenses in Bali, Indonesia.

Indonesia would be the last leg of the Southeast Asian part of our trip and we decided to spend nearly a month on just 1 of its many islands: the popular Bali. We really wanted to learn how to surf and do some more diving, so Bali was perfect for that. You could see a lot more in 1 month but we’re traveling slowly as we also have to work in the meantime.

28 days on this beautiful island cost us $2,361.48 (€2,219.79) in total or an average of $42.17 (€39.64) per person per day. Let’s take a look at those numbers in detail:

Average Spending Per Person Per Day

At $14.30 per person per night accommodation was a bit more expensive than what we’re used to in Southeast Asia. Keep in mind though that we visited Bali over New Year, which is high season and comes with increased prices. Apart from that we also splurged on a hotel room in Ubud to celebrate the New Year in comfort (a lovely gift from our parents!).

With both surfing and diving on our todo list the $6.16 a day for activities is not unexpected. We actually budgetted almost double, but Birthe had to spend an entire week sick in bed. Not the most pleasant of weeks, but it did keep the expenses down. Unless you plan on getting sick as well, you should probably take this in account when making your own budget.

As always, most of the money was consumed in the form of food & drinks though, so let’s see where that went:

Average Spending PPPD for Food & Drinks

Compared to other Southeast Asian countries there were a lot less food carts to be found on the Balinese streets, which meant that almost all of our meals were eaten in some sort of restaurant. Luckily there are plenty of cheap eats to be found in Kuta, Ubud and Amed.

We did have a few splurges in Ubud, as you’ll see in our breakdown by location:

Average Spending PPPD by Location

As mentioned before we spent 3 nights in a beautiful hotel over New Year, which is why the accommodation cost in Ubud is significantly higher. It’s definitely possible to bring this down to the same average as Kuta and Amed.

We also splurged on food in Ubud with a New Year’s Eve dinner at that same hotel and a fantastic 7 course lunch at Locavore. Both quite expensive but definitely worth it. The cost of food seems a lot cheaper in Amed, but this can partly be attributed to Birthe not being able to eat for nearly a week.

As for activities: surfing in Kuta is quite cheap but diving wasn’t too expensive either. We would have loved to do more of both. Finally, with cheap motorbike rental and gas, transportation is but a small drop in the expense bucket.

One annoyance in Bali is getting cash. The maximum amount we could withdraw from an ATM was Rp3,000,000 with a hefty Rp100,000 fee. Most won’t even allow more than Rp1,500,000. Because of this we paid about $40 in ATM fees only. And this doesn’t include what our own bank charges for those transactions.

Overall, it’s not that hard to keep your expenses in Bali in check. Even when splurging on fancy restaurants and accommodation, you’ll find that your money goes a long way in Indonesia.