The Island-Interior Issue

Bali is not one holiday but several, and booking the wrong base for the trip you actually want is the classic mistake. June opens the dry season — the reliable months of sun run through to about October — and this issue is really one long argument for choosing a side of the island and committing to it.

Inland is Ubud: terraced rice fields, river gorges, temples and yoga, the green and cultural heart of the island, cooler and calmer than the coast and completely without a beach. The south is where the water is — the surf and dramatic limestone cliffs of the Bukit peninsula around Uluwatu, and, up the west coast, the café-and-beach-club sprawl of Canggu and Seminyak, younger and busier. They are genuinely different trips.

The one thing everyone underestimates is the traffic. The distances look small and the roads are not — a 'quick' hop between Ubud and the south can eat half a day of stop-start scooters and vans. Doing all of Bali from one hotel means spending the holiday in a car; far better to choose well and stay put, or split the stay on purpose, a few nights inland and a few by the sea.

Eat both ways while you are at it. The family warungs serve the real, cheap, excellent food of the island; save one night for the cliff-edge restaurants of the south, which sell the sunset over the Indian Ocean as much as the plate. And when Ubud itself starts to feel busy, the Sidemen valley to the east offers the same terraced green with a fraction of the crowd, under the volcano.

— Vivienne Hartwell, Editor-in-Chief