all right guys, good morning and welcome back to bali!
it's a beautiful day here, it finally stopped raining, it's rainy season here
so it's literally been just raining non-stop here for the past couple days
but before we start the video i want to say a quick thank you guys,
finally hit 1000 subscribers on youtube!
and it only took me two years, so really happy to finally pass that mark.
and yeah let's go ahead and start this video.
now it's been nearly a month now since i flew back to bali
and from the last video, if you guys haven't seen it, you can click up here
you guys been asking how i flew back here because the borders are actually closed
and what was the actual process like coming back to indonesia, how did i find my place,
what's the best place to stay, and how has bali changed since the pandemic began back in march
so i'm here to answer all those questions for you guys
as i'm walking down this beautiful little rice field road here
now i actually was very skeptical about flying back to bali
because i heard a lot of stories about how visa agents were basically taking the money
from foreigners
trying to get back in and basically not getting a visa to them
so finding a visa agent was a difficult decision
because i was very skeptical at first and very suspicious
but i did find a very reputable one here in bali that had a lot of reviews
they had a lot of first-hand experiences and i
contacted several of the people that actually flew back to bali
before i got the visa with them
so if you guys are interested to know what visa agent i use, you guys can message me on instagram
i'll put my handle right down there,
just message me directly and i will give you their whatsapp number
so that i'm not giving out people's personal information,
just message me directly and i'll do that for you guys
but what was the process actually like? so my visa process actually began back in october
i sent the money to my busy visa agent on october 14th
and exactly 14 days later i got my e-visa via email to fly to bali
and at that point i was actually in mexico at the time
so i was getting ready to fly to istanbul turkey which is where i would be flying to indonesia from
so i spent about 5-6 days in istanbul turkey,
definitely not enough time i did an amazing food tour
if you guys want to watch you can click up here
definitely got to come back to istanbul for sure it was absolutely beautiful country
and the food was oh my god, the food was amazing!
so from when my trip ended in istanbul i
booked a ticket from istanbul on turkish airlines to jakarta indonesia
you cannot fly directly to bali, even though there are flights directly to bali, you can't fly here
so when you guys do end up booking your flight make sure you guys fly into jakarta
because you will not be able to fly into bali because your flight is going to get canceled
which i found that out the hard way, basically.
so from istanbul you can book a direct flight on turkish airlines to jakarta
now when getting into istanbul airport guys,
so you have to get a negative pcr test within 72 hours of landing in indonesia
you can get that at istanbul airport. It's very simple, i made a video about it, click here.
it took me about three hours to get my results within getting the test, it was super quick.
and very affordable it cost 250 turkish lira (TRY) which is about USD 29
now from then, honestly the flight was very straightforward
before boarding the flight they just checked my visa and my negative PCR test
just to make sure that i was able to get into the country
once landing in indonesia though, you are required to go through a health check
which is very straightforward they just basically take your temperature
and take your blood pressure and really that's about it
and from that point you just go straight to customs where they check your visa, your passport
and you go straight to baggage claim after that
one of the things you guys should know is when you're landing in indonesia
they will check your pcr test quite often,
the airport police checked it about three times after i got my bags
so make sure you guys have that out in hand and print it out as well
now the big question of course on everybody's mind is
what is different about bali? is it still the same?
and quite frankly it's not the same but there are parts where it's still quite normal here
one of the big new changes obviously is going to be the masks
they're doing a huge marketing campaign, i mean there's banners everywhere,
there's signs everywhere that says "mask up" i'm not masking because i'm just literally by myself
but you can get fined IDR 200,000 if you're not masked up in public
and that also goes as well on the motorbike
so if you're not wearing a mask on your motorbike you can get fined, stop by the police as well
i'm surprised actually i haven't seen as many police enforcement here as i normally do
usually i would get probably stopped by the police once a month when i lived here
now there's literally absolutely no checkpoints
another big change is going to be washing stations basically at every single building here in bali
when you go to the supermarkets, when you go to bars, restaurants, cafes
they have a washing station now in front of basically every building
if they don't have one they do have a hand sanitizing station
and basically you just clean your hands, wash your hands before you go in and stay masked
and they actually check your temperature as well
now there are some bars like mexicola and old mans that i've already visited
from first-hand experience they will actually put a sticker on your camera on your phone
because they actually don't want that publicity, bad social media presence on instagram
and whatever other platform you're using
so they actually put a sticker literally straight over your camera they ask for your phone
and they put a sticker over top of the camera so that you can't take any selfies, videos
basically while you're at the bars
and another big change: prices in indonesia and prices overall in bali even that
a lot of hotels are doing big promotion deals
like the one you saw when we went to the blue lagoon in nusa ceningan
you can watch the video up here, we got a huge deal for a 3 days 2 nights stay in nusa ceningan
with ferry price included for 2 million and floating breakfast every morning
it was a great deal! it literally cost maybe like USD 40/night, i think, for two people
so we got two ferry tickets for free included in that price, great deal!
restaurants are doing big promo deals every single day of the week
literally there's a restaurant doing the big promo deal
one of the big ones we tried out was 1k tacos, so 1k is basically like USD 0.07, very cheap
and that also includes your accommodation as well
i found my place, if you haven't seen the video, i mean you might have
but i did a tour of my new place here in bali it's called the "wave house"
i paid IDR 5,000,000/month which includes my drinking water and my electricity
it's a very good deal! you can find literally villas, private villas for nearly IDR 7,000,000
it's very affordable to live here right now and you can find great deals
what i recommend you to do to find a great accommodation here in bali is
just join the bali housing facebook groups there's literally like 3-4 of them
all the villa owners just post their villas for rent, real estate agents are in there as well
and it's very easy and quick to find the villa
now the bike here that you see that i'm on i got that for IDR 1,000,000 (per month)
it's an Nmax, when i had it last year i paid IDR 1,400,000 for an Nmax
you can probably get a monthly scooter rental maybe for even IDR 400,000, pretty cheap right now
if there's anything else i can think of maybe massages
i mean i used to get massages here in bali quite often as well
and i used to pay like IDR250,000/one hour session
now it's great now you can get it for IDR 75,000 which is roughly like USD 5-6 for an hour massage
now i'm about to head and exchange my money because i have to pay rent for next month
i'm gonna show you another thing that i picked up on here in bali
i'm not sure if this was happening last year as well or if this is new during the pandemic
but i'm gonna show you guys a trick when exchanging money here in bali
so i have stopped off to get my money changed for the month
and right behind me is the exchange place, the current rate at like 12 o'clock is IDR 13,775
this morning at nine o'clock when i checked it it was IDR 13,600 i think
so between 12 o'clock and like three o'clock is when the highest exchange rate is going to be
anytime before or after three o'clock it's gonna be below market value basically
so just a suggestion if you guys plan on exchanging money here in bali do it between 12-3pm
now i'm not sure if this is like a recent thing that's happened
or if this was also happening when i was living here a year ago
i just picked up on this like literally this month so just to help you guys out
now if you guys found today's video helpful, please give it a like
comment down below any questions you guys have and please subscribe to the channel
it really helps out and i'll see you guys in next week's video!
peace!