Bali or Thailand? How to choose your holiday destination

In the past year we’ve had the amazing opportunity to holiday in both Bali, the island paradise in Indonesia, and various parts of northern, central and southern Thailand including Krabi, Ao Nang, Bangkok, Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai. So it’s probably very timely that we weigh into the debate about which is the best travel destination, Bali or Thailand.

But to be fair, I have to start out by saying they are not directly comparable destinations. Comparing Bali to Thailand is like comparing a cat to an elephant. They are both very different creatures, yet they have so much in common. The fairest comparison I could make is between Bali and the southern beaches of Thailand (Krabi, Phuket, Ko Samui and Pattaya). Bali has nothing to compare with Bangkok, or even with the laid back history and culture of Chiang Mai.

I first experienced Bali almost 30 years ago as a young, single man looking for fun and romance. Even then, Bali had a bit of a stigma about it – everyone I knew had either been to Bali, or was planning to go to Bali, because it’s just so close to Australia. In those days I was living in Darwin, the capital of Australia’s tropical north, so Bali was just a two hour flight away and extremely cheap. Although I travelled alone, I quickly made a friend and together we soon had a couple of Australian girls in tow, renting motorcycles and travelling all over the island as young Aussies do (with no helmets). We watched stupid, drunken tourists trying to ride their motorbikes after a bowl of magic mushroom soup! We wore sarongs and singlets and little more, drank loads of cheap Bintang and ate heaps of satays.

I visited Bali again four years later with my new bride, and we had a really good time. Again we rented a motorcycle and travelled all around the island, way up into the mountains and all over the east coast. We spent time in small villages where the school children liked to bail up foreigners and practice their limited classroom English. We stopped by the side of backwoods rural roads where the girls thought our sunscreen would make their skin white. We lounged around on gorgeous beaches and got oil massages for 30c each. We bought too many paintings, chess sets and sarongs from lovable beach rascals who wore us down day by day until we surrendered. We fell in love with Bali, but for one reason or another we never went back!

Until now.

This year, for our 25th wedding anniversary, we returned to our honeymoon roots. We retraced our steps back to beautiful Sanur Beach to see just how much has changed, and what (if anything) has stayed the same. In the intervening 25 years, we’ve been fortunate to travel most of Asia, exploring destinations like Malaysia, China, Vietnam, Singapore, Java in Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Thailand, especially Thailand which has captured our hearts in so many ways. So how would Bali stack up after all this time?

While we were totally unable to rediscover the Bali we experienced in 1985, we did discover the modern Bali which has a lot to offer the modern traveller. The Bali we experienced in 1985 is long gone, swallowed up by decades of rampant tourism development. Sanur Beach, which was a backwater beach resort with lots of bungalows and a handful of major hotels, is now wall to wall resorts, grand villas and boutique guest houses.  But along the way it has developed a character all its own, with fantastic little bars and restaurants, live music almost every night, and the most amazing beach path that now runs more than five kilometres from around the Mercure Hotel in the south-west to way up past the Grand Bali Beach hotel and golf course in the north-east. Sanur is still a gorgeous long beach, but these days you don’t have to put up with nearly as many people trying to sell things.

We also revisited Kuta Beach, which in the 1980s was full of sunburnt, drunken Australians wobbling around on rented motorbikes trying to pick up girls. Nothing much has changed there! I’m pretty sure the same guys are still there trying to pick up the same girls, using the few brain cells left to them. The beach itself is still one of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen outside of Australia (you have to remember I live an hour from the Gold Coast) and much prettier than I remember it with a nice beach path and palm trees, flagged swimming areas and lots of small drink stalls. But it is suffering from rampant foreshore development and much of it looks more like a construction site than a beach. Back away from the seafront there are still lots and lots of markets, bars, cafes, hotels and other places to soak up your holiday budget.

To get a more complete picture of Bali, we rented a motorbike and rode up to the mountain resort town of Ubud, which we’d also visited so long ago. Ubud has transformed from a two street rural village which some off-beat art galleries, to become a massive long main street full of guest houses, cafes, restaurants and hotels, with a few off-beat art galleries scattered amongst them. We had a nice lunch in Ubud, but we weren’t really tempted to do much more because of the horrendous traffic on the single main street.

We also ventured up towards the east coast as far as Candidasa Beach (otherwise known as Samuh Bugbug), where it seems like someone is madly trying to reconstruct the Sanur of 25 years ago.  Candidasa is a small fishing village almost as far east as you can go in Bali before you turn north. Once upon a time it was a favourite day-trip destination for expats living in Sanur, but now it has been discovered by the tourists too and its laid back, tropical, village lifestyle is winning many hearts and minds.

So how does Bali compare with Thailand?

Well, as I mentioned earlier, it’s hard to make direct comparisons as Bali is just a small island, while Thailand is a medium-size country. Perhaps the real comparison to make is between Bali and, say, Phuket in Thailand, as they both try to attract similar kinds of tourists.

Cost-wise, I’d have to say that Phuket is still winning because although the accommodation prices are very similar (bottom of the market is about US$40 a night), the food and drink prices in Phuket are still a fair bit cheaper than in Bali. You can buy a meal in Bali for as little as US$3, but it’s going to be much more basic than your US$3 meal in Phuket. The small bottle of beer you drink in Phuket for US$1 or less will cost you at least US$1.50 in Bali, maybe up to US$3 depending on where you order it – and it won’t be as good. I have nothing against Bintang beer, but it’s not in the same league as Singha and you don’t have the choice of Tiger or Heinekin either. The only really good beer I found in Bali was locally-brewed Storm Pale Ale, and it’s at least US$3 for a small bottle.

If you’re into wines and steak dinners, you might find Bali has better offerings than Phuket, but only just. The easy availability of good Australian wines in Bali does make a big difference at the medium and high end of the restaurant market. Also, many of the restaurants in Bali are run by Australians, Americans and Europeans who are bringing their own style and service standards, along with the higher prices needed to support they lifestyles.

Although I think Kuta Beach is really gorgeous, it’s hard to compare the brown shell-based sands of Kuta with the white crystal sands and azure waters of Patong and it certainly doesn’t offer the beauty of the limestone karst islands scattered around the seas off Phuket. Kuta certainly offers a much better experience for surfers, but that’s about all.

There are really two big things that Bali has which make it attractive in my opinion.

One is the very friendly people … while I think the Thai people are awesome, you get a much more welcoming vibe from the Balinese who will smile, wave and chat even when they have absolutely nothing to gain from it. They just can’t help themselves. When you walk along the beach in the early morning or late evening, dozens of people will just pop up from what ever they’re doing (cleaning fishing boats, sweeping the beaches, getting stores ready, tidying up cafes) and say hello. It really has a warm, welcoming feel that’s hard to beat.

Second is the vibrant expat community … as an Australian, I was able to connect into this community very quickly and it added an extra dimension to our holiday that we’ve never experienced in Thailand. We were welcomed into all sorts of expat activities and events and experienced many things we never expected to find in Bali.

So what does Thailand have to offer in comparison?

One is the very friendly people … but you have to go north to really find them. Although we discovered some lovely people in Krabi and Ao Nang, we found them more and more than further we went north. People who would bend over backwards to make sure travellers have a great time and to make any apparent problems just disappear.

Two is the superb shopping … there’s just nothing to compare to the markets of Bangkok when it comes to getting bargains. The competition is so fierce and there is so much variety in the products that it’s very hard not to go home without twice as much as when you arrived.

Three is the adventure … this is particularly true if you are travelling with children. Bali just has nothing that even remotely compares with the elephant training camps, tiger parks and other tourist attractions of Thailand.

Four is the food … while I like Indonesian food I have to admit there is little or no Balinese cuisine as such. The food you eat in Bali is adapted from other parts of Indonesia or Asia. The Balinese just don’t have a food culture like the Thai. They are more like to snack than to eat a meal.

Conclusion

I would happily go back to Bali as a businessman. As someone who has visions of running a guest house and bar somewhere in Asia, Bali has a lot to offer me. There are more business opportunities per square metre in Bali than any place I’ve ever been.

But as a traveller, I think I’d prefer to keep exploring Thailand and venturing into Cambodia, Laos and Burma!