You’ve got the fancy invitation and you just can’t say no to this relative: you’ve got to head to Nusa Dua, Bali for the wedding even though you can barely afford the airfare. You won’t find any budget rooms in Nusa Dua proper — the sterile, manicured enclave specifically created for five-star resorts. But just … read the full post

After examining what makes a good bathroom in Southeast Asia, for the second and final piece in this series I’m looking at, well, the rest of the shebang. And while the bathroom is especially easy to get totally wrong, crappy hoteliers are no slouches when it comes to the rest of the joint. Let’s start … read the full post

In the last almost seven years of running Travelfish.org I’ve personally reviewed more than 2,500 places to stay in Southeast Asia. Sure some have been flasher joints, but the vast majority have been at the budget end of the scale — the sort of place you’d most likely get some change from a crisp $20 … read the full post

With its god-awful footpaths, sorta-upscale boutiques, trendy restaurants and sophisticated beachside bars, Seminyak may not be the sort of place you’d think of as being terribly family-friendly. And well, on those fronts, perhaps it’s not. But there’s a great little hotel tucked behind Jalan Laksmana/Oberoi/Eat Street that actually makes this corner of Seminyak very accessible … read the full post

So what do you do when you’ve got two friends and their two under-threes visiting Bali for a couple of weeks? Well, one option is to put your own two under-fives in the car and meet up with them to share a beachfront house for a few days. And so that’s how we found ourselves … read the full post

The area commonly referred to as Amed is actually a series of villages and bays running along the northeast coast of Bali. Known for black sand beaches, calm waters, fine snorkelling and impressive scenery, Amed forms a low-key counterpoint to the bustling yellow sand surf beaches of southern Bali. With over a half dozen beaches … read the full post

We arrive in Ubud after dark with a sleeping Mr 2 and overtired Ms 4 in tow, and the long walk down a narrow footpath between mossy high walls doesn’t inspire confidence in the place we have booked to stay at for the weekend. As we enter Ubud Lestari, Mr Travelfish, who poked his head … read the full post