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

Jalan Sulawesi in Bali’s capital Denpasar is a stretch of road full of getting-dilapidated shophouses packed with all kinds of imaginable fabrics — as well as things like, um, cupboards, carved wooden chairs, plastic buckets and jewellery boxes.

Kopi Bali House is a bit of an institution in Sanur, even though its location on Ngurah Rai bypass puts it out of the way of normal tourist foot traffic. The double-storey cafe, which has a completely separate section for smokers (rare!) serves excellent coffee, and has an array of coffee machines and paraphernalia (expensive!) … read the full post

Early bird tickets are now on sale for Bali’s Ubud Writers and Readers Festival 2011. Click here, then scroll to the bottom of the page and click on “Go buy”, which will let you download the booking form. If you want to know before you download: it’s 290AUD for a four-day pass for international attendees, … read the full post

After we did our initial post regarding taxis fares from Bali airport, we’ve had many more inquiries about fares for specific routes. So, keeping that in mind, here are some of the more popular requests for taxi prices in Bali. Note these are eitherfrom the airport board (and so covered in the previous post as … read the full post

Wedged midway between Bali’s numero uno tourist pit Kuta and fashionista hub Seminyak, Legian beach occupies a somewhat comfortable middle ground — slippery and sleazy one moment, old school beautiful the next.

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

Preparations for this year’s Ubud Writers and Readers Festival are bearing excellent fruit with a raft of prominent international writers confirmed to be attending the October 5 to 9 event. The full programme is set to be announced in a few weeks, with discounted early bird tickets set to be available within that time frame … 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

Bali’s Green School is a spectacular campus set just outside Ubud. Nestled in a river valley among rice fields the school is surrounded by village paths and backroads, which, as it turns out, make excellent fodder for a bit of cycling around Bali. With that in mind, some of the more pedal-minded parents have put … read the full post