hey guys welcome back to another video i'm mandy and this is lloyd and we're digital
nomads currently in bali indonesia today we're going to be reminiscing on our past six months
that we've spent traveling all around bali we're gonna share with you the places that you should
visit the ones that you maybe should avoid and everything that we've learned along the way if
you do enjoy the video don't forget to hit the like button and subscribe to our channel
so we came to bali in november of 2021 last year when we booked our tickets it was an eight day
quarantine which we're more than prepared to do but luckily it got reduced to five days and
then eventually it was actually a three-day quarantine by the time we got here which was
pretty easy although even spending two full days which it was in quarantine got pretty tough
i don't know if i could have done eight days yeah the people that did eight to ten like you're
amazing we landed in bali at about 8 p.m which was maybe 11 p.m our time back home and we actually
waited at the airport for two hours for our pcr results we didn't know what was going on the
whole time we basically just got whisked away by a driver who took us to our hotel they didn't tell
us if we were positive or negative but we assumed we were negative it then took about another hour
and a half just to check into the hotel so by the time we got to our quarantine we were very tired
and then we spent the whole next day in the quarantine hotel and although it wasn't too bad
after spending a whole day in a small room i know i feel really bad for people who have had to spend
like two weeks in quarantine because i don't think i could have done it no like you you need the sun
and you need fresh air and yeah we didn't have a balcony or anything in our room and there was
only one full day yeah and we were already so the people that had to do more than that like good on
you because we know even just how hard the the one full day yes we then that night we got woken up
at 3 a.m to do our second pcr test which they did so early in the morning so that you could get your
results and check out the next day so it's two full nights three days in quarantine we didn't
get our results until about 2 p.m the next day and we had a 5 p.m flight so we were stressing pretty
hard about getting to the airport on time because they told us we needed to arrive at the airport
three hours before our flight but we made it to the airport and we're running to our terminal
to get there on time however the plane was delayed by two hours anyway so it didn't matter
yeah and then we so we when we finally did go on the flight we didn't arrive until 11 pm uh to bali
so it'd been a very long day we'd been awake since 3 a.m in jakarta and didn't arrive to bali until
11 p.m and we were so exhausted yeah and i only had about i think a hundred thousand repair on
me to get food and i had to figure out how to get food delivered to our guest house because
nothing was open it was after midnight and we're really hungry and tired but we figured that out we
went to bed and then we just did some sightseeing and enjoyed changu for a week yeah when we first
arrived changu was pretty exciting for the first few days just because i had never been to asia
before super exciting just for the new like seeing new things being with new people new smells new
sights everything but changu was very very dead when we first got here there wasn't a whole lot
going on um a lot of businesses were shut down because of covid every restaurant was empty yeah
so there wasn't much of a vibe when we first got here and then we got dengue fever yeah so after
seven days we got dengue fever which we've spoken about a lot on the channel you're probably sick
of hearing it yeah so i won't go into too much detail but it did sour our experience a little
bit of chengu and bali in general honestly which we were trying really hard not to let it get to
us we just decided that we should go see something new and um pack up our things and head to ub wood
just a quick piece of advice for you guys if you are planning on traveling or coming to bali
we do recommend getting travel insurance we use safety wing which we have mentioned in multiple
of our videos it's great for digital nomads and it's super affordable it helped us when we had
dengue fever we highly recommend it we will leave the link in the description so we spent a total
of three weeks in changu two weeks of that was actually with dengue fever because it does last
about two weeks yeah it's pretty bad and we just wanted a fresh start so we went to ubud basically
to recover and just feel better again and just change up the experience because it wasn't the
greatest experience yeah we love do good yeah i'm really really happy that we made that decision
uh we did stay at some not so good airbnbs when we first got there but then we found a really good
co-working space which helped us be able to buckle down and build our online course uh called outpost
tennis center peniston is the area in ubud it's a really good co-working space it's sort of set up
almost like a hostel slash hotel i would say it's three and a half star yeah um really good and the
staff there were just so good to us they always went above and beyond to make sure that we were
comfortable and it was a reasonable price um and plenty of places to work get stuff done which is
what we did and we sort of just used it as our base and did quite a bit of sightseeing around
the area while we weren't working would take days off yeah we did mount batur we did the hike
the sunrise hike which was pretty cool yeah and saw tagalong rice terraces yep um
which if you don't know they're like the the main rice terraces that everyone goes to
it's really really beautiful and worth the trip visited a cat cafe which is pretty weird
yeah and i'm so allergic but it was still worth the experience going there it was really fun
highly recommend doing that ubud's just a really good place to sort of base yourself out of because
it's sort of in the middle you can kind of travel to everywhere from there yeah yeah it's pretty
close to everything we spent a lot of time at yoga barn doing yoga and just trying to feel healthy
again because we didn't feel too good after changing i went to some good night markets there
yeah yeah also there's plenty of uh like resorts and day clubs around ubud where you can just pay
an entry fee or sometimes it's even free and go hang out for the day and eat lunch and then
right in the middle of the jungle very peaceful really nice day trip just to relax and unwind
that's something i didn't know about ubud and it's probably one of the biggest selling points for me
yeah for sure so we stayed in newport for about a month while we were building our online course and
trying to get healthy again and then we decided we were really missing the beach that's the one
thing that uberwood lacks obviously because it's more inland there's no beach yeah so we went down
to sanur and spent about a week there which we were only going to spend a couple of days but we
ended up really liking it it was a really peaceful vibe the beach was really nice again it was really
quiet though yeah but we liked it in cinema yeah yeah really recommend it for family vacation a
more quiet laid-back vibe it's also super easy if you're staying there to jump up to any of the
other islands as well because a lot of the boats go out from there so if you're wanting to do that
island hopping it's a really good idea to stay in center as well we did a day trip from sanur to
nusadora which wasn't great no we did it the budget version but everything on the main street
in nusadua was completely shut every business was completely shut down right near the beach
so we didn't get a view of the big resorts which i think for new sedua is the pole for tourists
to go there but new sedu itself completely shut down nothing going on yeah and it didn't help
that it was raining the whole time yeah yeah yes but i'd say nu sadhu is probably picking up again
as tourism ramps back up and the beach itself looked really awesome yeah yeah we didn't get
to enjoy it because of the rain but it does look very beautiful from nusudua we ended up going to
ulawatu where i got to meet up with my best friend after not seeing her for three years and we stayed
in two different places we stayed on a resort in uluwatu beach which was pretty cool it was
pretty abandoned though like almost like a ghost town yeah you could tell that like the maintenance
hadn't been up kept and again just really quiet on that part but when we moved over to bingan area
there was a bit more of a vibe yeah there's a lot of young people it's a main surf spot there and
really cool airbnbs we got an awesome airbnb for one night you can actually stay right on the beach
there's warongs on the beach plenty of places to eat you don't really have to leave that area
the best bacon and egg roll that we've ever had was in bingham beach definitely recommend it after
we left uluwatu we headed to munduk for a couple nights which was one of our favorite experiences
that we had in bali yeah it's like a little quiet town right on the mountains there and there's a
bunch of valleys and um really cool airbnbs with amazing like views you can see the sunset and the
sunrise in the one day i definitely recommend going to munduk it was probably one of the best
experiences we had yeah the waterfalls we had all to ourselves at the moment because there isn't too
many people making their way up there which they should be you get a lot of experiences just to get
to yourself so mundo cui had a whole waterfall to ourselves which was really really cool
from there we drove to lavina and had some scooter problems on the way because we took a very steep
winding road to get there and our brakes started giving out yeah and with two of us on the scooter
plus our like backpacks and everything we had with us was just too heavy and it was very steep so
our brakes started giving way on the way down and we had to pull over for maybe 20 minutes just to
let them cool off which is a little bit scary when you're coming down a massive steep hill and your
brakes start giving out yeah yeah but we made it to levina which is best known for its black
sand beach and dolphin sightseeing personally for us lavina wasn't for us it was just really dead
and we didn't have the desire to do the dolphin sightseeing for a number of different reasons
so there wasn't much else there for us we found it difficult to find a good restaurant to eat at
as well and when we did everything was empty i think because usually levina does attract a lot
of tourists for dolphin sightseeing and being sort of still on the back end of covert and
very quiet we were sort of the only tourists there and it was hard to even walk around because it's
usually expected that people will come up to you and try and sell you something or a tour but it
was literally every person we walked past and they and there was never no for an answer it was like
constant like following us around and we were just like the only ones that they could approach which
was totally understandable but it just was a bit too much and got a little bit unkind uncomfortable
yeah i'd be interested in going back and seeing what it's like uh when it's a bit busier yeah
after lavina we headed to nusa penida which was really nice yeah so we ended up spending five days
i think in nusa penida it was pretty quiet but then i was surprised at how many tourists there
actually were we decided when we were there that the touristy destinations aren't really for us
we didn't like the crowds preferred to do things on our own so we just hired a scooter and went
around the island on our own which we do recommend was a really really good experience we also stayed
in the coolest a-frame cabin on the beach which was absolutely incredible if you haven't seen
the video we will link it above that was one of my favorite airbnbs that we have stayed at
yeah there was a couple of good restaurants that were open main restaurants in nusa penida that we
went to so the food was really good they have live music as well yeah we were just really surprised
that how many people were there compared to some of the other places we went to yeah we thought
there because of where it was would be a lot more dead but it was pretty happening i think the main
attraction there is the sightseeing tours they do so basically you pay a tour guide to drive around
to a bunch of different spots on the island it sort of took away from it a little bit because
when we went to one of the main beaches it was probably over 100 people just standing around
taking photos yeah and we just opted to do it ourselves which i think was a better option
after nusa penida we headed to nusa lombongan which unfortunately was very very dead even
in comparison to musa penida but it was still so beautiful i would love to go back to nusa
lembongan it's probably my number one place i'd like to go back to when we come back to
bali because the town itself and the island itself is really cool there's a another island
nusanigan which you go over the bridge to get to and has a lot of cool bars right on the water
but unfortunately they're all closed there was really nothing going on on the island while we
were there uh i was surprised at how dead it was we got pretty lucky in the the accommodation we
booked was a really nice uh villa resort and we're the only people there and it was a family-owned
resort and they looked after us really well yeah it was very nice we had been traveling for
a couple of weeks maybe three weeks by then and we sort of just took it as some down time to relax
we ate good food got lots of sun did a little bit of sightseeing and just chilled out i would
definitely recommend nusa lembongan yeah yeah we'll definitely be heading back when things are
happening a little bit more after new zealand we actually returned to chengdu
and sort of we were meant to be leaving for thailand at that time and the difference from
how busy changu was when we got back was huge so we came back to chengdu in february and because
some of the entry requirements were getting a bit easier and tourism was picking up a little bit
changu just had a whole different vibe it was a lot busier um most of the restaurants were
getting full a lot of people down the beach and it just felt like we wanted to stay and
experience this different side of changu because our first experience wasn't great yeah so we
wanted to rewrite history and have a more positive experience in chengu so we pushed back our flights
to thailand to basically now and we used that as our home base for the next few months we did a
couple of trips out of chengu um the first one was citamen cinnamon is a really peaceful place it was
sort of like an ubud mixed with munduk a little bit very quiet and peaceful vibe somewhere that
you would just go to relax we stayed at a really cool airbnb in the jungle a tiny home made of hay
or alangalong the airbnb itself was called the tiny hay house and after that we stayed at our
first luxury resort that we've ever stayed at and i cried yeah so this resort um where it's
actually situated there's really no um residential properties near the resort it's just all sectioned
off for resorts only which makes it very quiet um there's not much traffic at all there's not
really any noises so you can sit there and just be really peaceful yeah we've been on the hunt since
we've been in bali for somewhere to elope and i think that's the place that's come the closest
to making us make a decision but we'll see in the future we then did a trip out to madawi which is
a muslim community also a really easy surf wave which was a really unique and cool experience
that i'm really happy that we got to do we finally did some surfing in bali it's a really easy spot
if you're a beginner to go and try surfing it's very quiet as well it's a really long left-hand
wave and it's not really a secret spot but it's not as popular as places like uluwatu kuda
changu and also being a muslim community during ramadan was a very unique experience yeah yeah
really recommend it if you are here during ramadan um just to understand and realize what people go
through when they're doing ramadan so many people may not realize that indonesia is predominantly
a muslim country bali obviously most of the population are hindu but there are some areas
that have more of a muslim population and madawi is one of them so this brings us to where we
are today we are currently in chengu and we are leaving for thailand in 10 days for our last few
days we will be visiting seminyak and heading back to wood for a really relaxing retreat before we
head off out of everywhere we've visited in bali um if you're going to have a home base somewhere
we recommend changu because it's got a really good five it's got everything you need here the board's
really good too yeah that would be my top two the only thing that's missing is the beach i think
yeah but it would have great food so does changu you can find so many different properties rental
properties here um whatever budget you're on it's very friendly for westerners if you want to have a
base here so how we managed to stay here for six months was being on our business visas they're
valid for two months but you can you can extend them four times giving you a total of six months
which is now coming to an end so we're leaving to go to thailand and just do a little bit of
traveling around and then we're probably going to come back apply for a different visa to come back
yeah you can spend six months here there's actually some new visa regulations that have just
come out which i've just done a video on moving to bali for the past six months was one of the
best decisions we've ever made i feel like we've grown and learned a lot since we've been here
it's been a really great introduction for me to asia and understanding how other people live i'm
really glad we didn't just spend the whole time in one spot either originally we were just coming to
move to changu yeah but we decided to move around and we got to experience pretty much all of bali
there's a few places we still haven't been but we got to see most of it yeah so we do recommend
doing a little move around and seeing a bunch of different areas before you decide
exactly where you want to be or even just doing trips out because there is so much to offer in
each different area i'm really grateful that we got to experience all this the last six months
we hope you guys have found this video helpful if you have don't forget to hit the like button and
subscribe to our channel uh we have a new podcast that comes out every wednesday as well you can
find the in the link below and we hope you guys will follow us along to our travels in thailand
we will continue to make three videos a week so we will see you guys in the next one thank you bye
you