That’s a quote about traffic in Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, in this Economist article about the Indonesian government trying to slow down the pace.

Indonesia’s economy is booming and it’s hitting the whole income spectrum. Of the 250 million people in this country, 150 million should be firmly in the middle class the year after next. Middle class is defined here as earning at least $3,000 per year, but still, people are earning enough to make a car payment. As you’ve seen all over the place if you travel much, having a car is as much a status symbol as a way to get to work. When you own a car, you’ve arrived.

The problem comes when, as that title quote says, the roads are not there to support all these new vehicles. Until this problem is solved, which will take decades and a strong will to invest in more roads and public transit infrastructure, you should probably give Jakarta a pass and head out as soon as possible if you have to fly into here.

Bali has long been a fixture on the Southeast Asia backpacker tour, but it has gotten exponentially more popular since I first landed on the island in the mid-1990s—and prices have risen with the crowds. To give us the scoop on what current prices are like for travelers, I turned to a guy who actually lives there and is is tapped into the scene: Stuart McDonald of the top Southeast Asia travel resource site, Travelfish.org. Take it away Stuart!

It’s a common lament that a holiday to Bali costs far more than it used to. Hell, with luxurious digs going for thousands of dollars a night, it can be downright expensive. But unless you’re set on a private pool villa with clifftop views, Bali needn’t be a complete budget bust. Here’s a rundown on what things cost and how to save. At current rates, one U.S. dollar equals around 9,000 rupiah.

Bali Transport

Unlike other popular destinations in Southeast Asia, Bali doesn’t have an overly tourist-friendly public transport system. Sure, there are bemos and local buses, but while their pricing is often rock bottom, the routes, timings, and connections are dictated by local needs rather than those of tourists. Want to travel from the airport to Ubud by non-chartered bemo? That will be around four connections and at least as many hours. You may have to suck it up and find someone to share a taxi with.

Yes, Perama run a pretty good (and affordable) bus and boat service to some of the more popular spots but if you want to get off the beaten track, the best method is either hired motorbike (20,000 to 40,000 rupiah per day) or car (200,000 to 450,000 rupiah per day) — both prices vary somewhat on type of bike/car and period of hire.

Note you will need an international license to drive or ride legally in Indonesia. If you’re picked up without one, 50,000 rupiah on the spot is a pretty standard, umm, gratuity.

For onwards transport to Nusa Lembongan, Nusa Penida, Lombok, or the Gili Islands, remember ALL boat fares quoted by travel agents are negotiable.

Accommodation

Outside of the main tourist areas, a simple room in a homestay should be able to be found for around 50,000 to 70,000 per night (under US/Canadian/Australian $10). For that expect a very basic room with a fan and a (perhaps shared) cold water bathroom.

For a more comfortable standard, say air-con, hot water and a larger room, add about 100,000 rupiah to the above. Want a swimming pool? Add another 100,000.

In popular areas like Ubud, Kuta and Seminyak, expect to pay roughly double each of the above for something commensurite in standard and location.

Bear in mind that guesthouses in Bali often have a tremendous range of options available, often not clearly tied to a change in standard. For example the place we normally stay at in central Ubud which has a lovely swimming pool with paddy views has fan-cooled rooms for 300,000 and air-con for 600,000 rupiah — but the fan rooms are actually better appointed than (and almost the same size as) the air-con ones.

Food in Bali

Local restaurants and streetside cafes in Indonesia are called warungs and the food is both good and cheap. A simple noodle soup can go for as little as 5,000 rupiah, a simple rice and meat dish say 12,000 to 20,000 rupiah and a more solid, multi-dish meal 20,000 to 30,000 rupiah. This is even the case in tourist hotspots, while you can expect to pay five to ten times these costs in the tourist-orientated restaurant 50 metres down the road.

Where we currently live in Seminyak, I can get a simple noodle soup in the local warung for 5,000 rupiah. In the “tourist warung” 100 metres away it is 15,000 and in the tourist restaurant, 30,000 rupiah. Yes, six times the price for essentially the same meal (though the tourist restaurant dish will come with a carved tomato on the side).

Indonesian (and Balinese) food is very accessible and easy to order and it is often displayed in display cases so even without a word of the local language it is simple to point and pick — you may even discover something new.

Drink

If you’re on a budget, don’t drink alcohol! A small Bintang will cost anything from 12,000 to 30,000 rupiah, a large one 24,000 to 40,000. While these costs may still seem affordable compared to grabbing a swift beer in your home country, they’re disproportionally expensive compared to the cost of food and accommodation. Have a large Bintang with that rendang and you’ll more than double the cost of dinner.

Wine and imported spirits are extremely heavily taxed and, for those on a budget, best avoided. Expect a mixed drink or cocktail to cost 50,000 to 120,000 rupiah and a glass of imported wine slightly more. Local wine isn’t all that good (the Hatten rose if you must is alright) and the local spirit (arak) can be of very, very variable quality.

Western-style cafes are common and popular, offering everything from a latte to a decaf, double shot, vanilla soy milk flat white with a twist on ice. Prices vary tremendously, but our local in Seminyak kicks off at around 25,000 rupiah for a standard latte. Local coffee (Bali kopi) while admittedly an acquired taste, is a fraction of the cost: in a local warung, perhaps 3,000 to 5,000 rupiah. When you’re drinking three coffees a day, the savings accummulate quickly.

Bali Activities

A wealth of activities can be tackled on Bali. Climb a volcano, go white-water rafting, bungy jump, learn to surf, go bird-watching or ricefield bike riding, snorkel or dive the waters, and visit cultural villages and temples. All of these are expensive compared to the day to day cost of travelling in Bali, so those on a tight budget should research to find the sometimes cheaper alternatives.

Learning to surf for example can be done through a proper school (costing up to $100 for three hours of one-on-one tuition) or approach one of the life savers lounging around (they’re almost all also surfers) and they’ll probably give you just as good a lesson for a few hours for 100,000 rupiah or so.

While some of the ricefield bike tours are an excellent experience, it’s often just as easy to hire a bicycle through your guesthouse or homestay and go exploring — and save yourself $40 in the process.

Some options, such as climbing a volcano, rafting or diving, are more set in their fees due to the need for guides and equipment, but there is a wide range of operators who can charge different prices for more or less the same trip: a day of rafting for example ranges from around $40 to $100+ for the same trip, on the same river, in the same type of boat. Most importantly, when you’re going from streetside travel agent to agent, bear in mind that ALL fees are negotiable and the agent will have a commission that they can discount off.

Destinations

This is the easiest way to save money.

Surfers should skip Kuta and Legian and instead head to Balangan, Padang Padang, Bingin or Uluwatu (all on the Bukit) or Balian or Medewi in West Bali. Accommodation and food are cheaper — and the surf is far better for those who already know how to surf.

Those looking for mountain scenery and rice paddy views should leave Ubud to the traffic and yoga-mat wielding Eat Pray Lovers and instead head to Sidemen in East Bali or Munduk to the west.

Divers and snorkellers should pack their bags and head out to Candi Dasa, Amed or Pemuteran rather than basing themselves in Sanur or Nusa Dua.

Even by practicing all of the above, you’ll still be spending more than you would on neighbouring Java or Lombok, but you needn’t be spending so much that you’ll be cutting your time short. 

Bali is a very special place and the more effort you put into it — without getting your wallet out — the better.

Further reading
Travelfish on Bali
Bali Discovery

Guest post written by Stuart McDonald, who is a resident of Bali. For more information, see their Bali blog or download their Bali app for iPhone.

[Top Flickr photo by YXO, second by CaptainCinema.]

It’s not even Spring yet, but you have to set your clock forward an hour on Sunday if you live in most of the USA. This early start (and late finish in Autumn) is a remnant from the G.W. Bush era. It was pushed as an energy saver (hasn’t worked), but was almost surely lobbied through by the golf and tourism industries. To the detriment of parents with school-aged kids everywhere…

But this post is not a rant. Just a collection of useful and entertaining stuff to read over the weekend in case it’s not warm enough to be outside enjoying life where you live.

If you want to get somewhere else on the cheap, Budget Travel has a great rundown on the six best budget bus lines in the United States. These serve a defined area of population centers, so think New York to Boston, not Kansas City to Boise.

Here’s another reason to be annoyed with cruise ships: not one of the lines thought of as American companies pays a cent in U.S. corporate taxes.

I’ve written before about the dangers of being cheap to the point of ridiculous when traveling and BootsnAll generated a hot debate on the subject with this article on cheap vs. budget travel. I like the elegant follow-up on the Vagabonding blog though, from a long-term traveler who gets by on $10 a day by going slower and integrating more with the locals.

Barbara at Hole in the Doughnut has a good rundown on Cusco, Peru at different budget levels, including a $10 a night hotel and two vegetarian restaurants. More importantly, there’s current information on Machu Picchu and Peru Rail that’s probably more reliable than what most guidebooks have in them right now. There have been some changes at both in how/why you get advance tickets.

Want to know what it’s like to climb a volcano in Sumatra, Indonesia? You can see the story and photos on the Vagabonding Life blog by following that link. I actually did this hike many years ago and it’s not a very hard one—so a good place to do your first one to see if you like the experience.

Here’s an article I did for ExpertFlyer on places where the dollar exchange rate is constant.

Should a cough drop be lecturing you to suck it up and quit your whining just because you’re sick? Halls apparently thinks so with the motivational text on their wrappers.

[Photo from the Vagabonding Life blog]

I wrote recently about how hard it is to stop the march of progress in a previously sedate traveler’s haunt—and the fact that you have to see it through the locals’ eyes. Our spoiled paradise is often their land of burgeoning opportunities.

Take this natural path of evolution down the road a decade or two and you end up with Bali, the #1 draw by a wide margin in Indonesia.

I’ll play the wistful backpacker character and start with, “When I visited Bali the first time, back in ’94…” and say that this used to be a very mellow, bargain-priced, slow-paced place to travel. When I returned a few years later, there were already signs that the island was being strained: more traffic, more resulting pollution, more ugly construction that didn’t fit the aesthetics of what came before.

I hadn’t seen nuthin’ apparently.

Tourism keeps climbing in Indonesia and in this article the Jakarta Post says some 40% of those visitors are going to Bali. That island alone got 2.5 million visitors last year and the numbers keep going up by 7-10% each year. To put that in perspective, 2.5 million visitors is in the ballpark of how many people travel to the whole country in Costa Rica, Jamaica, New Zealand, or Kenya.

All these people are crammed into tourist zones on one island, not to mention all the new workers coming in from elsewhere to build the new buildings and serve the new tourists. All of them have to get from point A to point B somehow and many of them do it in cars or motorbikes—on roads built for dramatically less traffic. The infrastructure to deal with all the varieties of increased waste is inadequate to put it mildly.

It’s still a good value if you pick the right spot, but the days when cheap travelers had the place mostly to themselves ended a long time ago. By my unscientific estimate there are at least 20 resorts charging $500+ per night. Bali just got featured in Departures magazine, probably the most high-end travel publication in the U.S. unless you count Robb Report. (You have to have an Amex Platinum or Centurion card to even receive it—it’s not on newsstands.)

Even Departures got a quote in about the good/bad changes. One restaurant manager says, “When we opened the cafe Warun Bonita here seven years ago, we were surrounded by rice fields and cow pastures. Now the street is packed with new hotels, restaurants, spas, and fancy shops.”

So, would I still go there? Probably, for a few days, but then I’d high-tail it out for less crowded parts of the country. Most of the rest of Indonesia is still blissfully cheap because there are probably more luxury hotels in Bali than in the whole rest of the country combined. Apart from business travelers, there just aren’t a lot of big spenders elsewhere except for a few diving spots and tour magnet places on Sulawesi. So you’ll find far more $10-a-night places on most other islands than even $100+ ones.

Meanwhile, if you want to find out more about the ups and downs of tourism growth on Bali, here are some outside articles to check out.

Is Bali Still Worth Visiting?

Bali’s Highs and Lows

Paradise or Paradise Lost?

Budget Travel in the Beach Resorts of Bali

 

Here’s a round-up of posts from people traveling in The World’s Cheapest Destinations, with current price examples. Compare these to what you’re spending on fun at home…

This Travelfish.org story on hiking around villages in Tana Toraja, on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, brought back memories. Prices for a guide, including village stays and meals, start at around $35 a day.

Andy of Hobotraveler.com is back in Lake Atitlan, Guatemala, and notes that the whole concept of “assistant living” gets turned on its head when local wages are $150 to $300 per month.

Southern India is still a great value and more laid back than the tourist-hustling north. Here’s a round-up from a family kicking back in a hill station town. They’re renting bikes for 50 cents an hour, riding horses for $2 to $9, and hiring a guy to row them around the lake for $1.85—for an hour. Family fun in Kodaikanal

Recession be damned, flashpackers with “pockets full of pounds” are taking over most of the old cheapo backpacker haunts in Thailand and driving up prices. Exhibit A: Ko Tao, a report from Vagabonding Life.

Travelojos quoted a comment of mine in this post and as he points out, whether you think Mexico City is cheap or not depends entirely on how you travel. But with 25 cent metro rides, awesome lunches for $3 or $4, and taxis for a few bucks, I’ll take it over similarly exciting capitals around the world any day.

Finally some good news on the currency front: you can get more for your dollars than a year ago if you head to Vietnam or Turkey.

And, this is not destination related, but is important for travelers. The much-hated U.S. banks are trying to join congress and legacy airlines with an approval rating close to zero. If you use one of the big banks who has made a lot of screw-ups the past few years, be prepared to get gouged even more on fees. My own bank, soon to be former bank, is about to become one of the worst. That’s Regions and they suck wind badly. I’m moving to one literally next door that is healthier and gives far better service—without all the gotcha fees.