Similarly to Amed and Sideman, northern Bali is only visited by a handful of the millions of tourists who visit Bali each year. This makes it quieter and often cheaper than the southern resorts and towns. It is also much cooler in the north so grab a break from the heat, grab a taxi driver and head to the beautiful landscapes around Munduk. Below is our 48 hour itinerary for a trip to north Bali with the kids.
Day 1
Munduk was our destination after 5 weeks in Ubud, so after packing up all our stuff for the first time in a while, we travelled the 3 hours north with a private driver (600k RP / £30). Once you get out of Ubud the traffic in the north is A LOT quieter – but the roads are also A LOT windier. We put our car-sick 5 year old in the front which worked well and prevented what would have been the inevitable.
Climbing north takes you up into the mountains and often the mist surrounded us. You will enjoy amazing views over rainforests and lakes (more on this later) and pass many of the tourist buses on the day trips from the south. They generally stop about half way to Munduk leaving the roads in the very north very empty. The roads are also lined with wild monkeys which make great entertainment as you are getting the inevitable ‘are we nearly there yet’?!
We arrived in Munduk around 4pm and were staying on the outskirts in a lovely small guesthouse, Swar Bali Lodge. The guest house had the most incredible pool overlooking the hills and rainforests, and is open until 8pm so you can enjoy the sunsetting over Lovina in the distance. It is an infinity pool so watch the kids on the edge, but it has a shallow play area at one end and then a decent length for some proper swimming. Even Alicia was in awe with the view though. Worth noting that because you are in the mountains, the mozzies are a bit more prevalent here so use repellent. Bedrooms and bathrooms are large and clean and very comfortable, and breakfast is included.
The guesthouse does have a restaurant but we ate over the road in Warung Adit Tabog which had delicious good value food (local dishes 25k/£1.25, western dishes 60k/£2.70), cold beers and breath-taking view over the valley.
DAY 2
Northern Bali is much harder to get around as they don’t use Grab/there are no Grab drivers and public transport is non-existent! You will never have an issue finding a local driver however and our hotel arranged for for the day that same morning. For 8 hours (11am-7pm) we paid 800k/£40 and we chose where we wanted to go and how long for. Whenever you book a driver make sure you have somewhere lined up for food and make it clear that is where you want to go, otherwise you will get taken to somewhere that pays the driver commission!
We started our tour at the Banjar Hot Springs where entrance is 50k/£2.50 each. Unfortunately between the car park and the springs entrance is one long road full of market stalls so you will get pestered into ‘shopping’ and this was more forceful than other parts of Bali we had been to. A guide price for bargaining is to start at a 1/3rd of the original price and aim to get it for just under 50%. Alicia tested her skills here and got herself a dress for 70k/£3.25 rather than 170k they started at.
The spring themselves are lovely for around an hour and very child friendly. There are basic changing rooms, a small shop/cafe, lockers and then 3 pools to enjoy. 2 of them are shallow enough for children to stand throughout, but the largest does reach a depths of over 2m so be careful with weaker swimmers. The water is around 36-38 celcius which in the heat of Bali is maybe too hot, but it does relieve any aches and pains and feels like a bit of a spa treat. Lockers and toilets are charged at 5k (25p) so make sure you have some small notes available.
After the hot springs, we drove 15 minutes to a beautiful Hindu temple Brahmavihara-Arama, where entrance was again 50k each. There are sarongs to borrow (included in the entrance fee) if you have forgotten to cover yourself up. You could easily spend an hour here exploring the gardens, the temples and enjoying the awesome views. The main temple is a small replica of Borobudur temple in Java (which we visited in 2019) and then there are lots of areas for sitting and silent contemplation – there is a silent retreat next door too!
We then directed our driver to a restaurant we had found for lunch, Buda Bakery – it was more expensive than other restaurants (100k/£5 for a main) but was delicious, great vegetarian options and very relaxing for a leisurely late lunch and a few beers.
After lunch we had 2 more places we wanted to visit, the first was to have a look at Lovina beach. The main attraction in Lovina is actually dolphin watching, but after a bit of reading we questioned how ethical it was for hundreds of boats to head out each morning and ‘delicately hound’ (?) the dolphins so we chose to skip that. The beach itself isn’t the most beautiful beach in Bali and there is rubbish around, but we had a wander along before the rain came and then decided to head to Funtastic land which we had eyed up for the kids at the end of the day.
In all honesty, this was a little more expensive than we expected. It cost us 600k/£30 for 2 adults entrance, 2 kids entrance, and 1 ride on everything for the kids – around 10 rides each. There is also the option to pay for each ride separately so we went on the big wheel with the kids as it was quite high. The other rides were perfect for our kids ages (5 and 8) and they went on the dodgems, rollercoaster, sky rail, boats, rockets and a carousel all by themselves. There was hardly anyone there so they just ran from one ride to the next. It doesn’t open until 4pm and there is a small light trail to enjoy which I would imagine would be a lot better in the dark, but dusk was enough for us to enjoy it. Funtastic land is part of a complex with a huge shopping centre (clothes) and also a water park which looked like it would have been good and so you could have stayed the whole day there and done the funpark afterwards. There is even a real plane as you enter that you can go and sit in the cockpit of.
Day 3
We left Munduk after breakfast and started our long drive to the far south of Bali, but had negotiated the trip with our driver the day before to stop off at some sites in the north on the way. The total journey was 7 hours including all our stops, and we literally travelled from the most northern to almost the most southern point for 1.2million RP (£60).
Our first stop was at Tamblingan Lake and Temple, just outside of Munduk. This is such a peaceful area with one of the oldest temples in Bali overlooking a huge lake. As we arrived there were a lot of locals packing up their camping gear after a night away on these tranquil shores. The temple itself isn’t open to explore inside but we took the chance to explore the lake on a boat. We negotiated 30 minutes rather than the standard hour, but were quite shocked when a little old lady with very limited English came with us on the boat to row – we obviously couldn’t be trusted to sail ourselves!! On the lake it was so peaceful and we established with various hand gestures that the lake was very deep and there were a lot of fish within!
After Tamblingan temple we were taken to a view point over two lakes but it was very much pay for some instagram-ready platforms and baskets so we declined and carried on to Hendara gates – these are the famous gates you will see when googling Bali! This is another spot that has very much become insta-ready but we wanted to stop off. The entrance fee is 50k/£2 each, but if you want to actually stand between the gates it is more. The gates themselves are actually now the entrance to a golf course so not quite the images you see edited on social media. We were just going to wait for 5 minutes take some photos and move on – we had no interested in waiting the 90 minutes for a photo between the gates – there is a man sat under a brolly with a ticketing system for this. It’s very bizarre. I imagine if you were on a tour bus you would have to wait for those who did want the photo and there isn’t much to do nearby. However, we fell lucky and found a ‘ticket’ on the flow for no. 31 and I spotted the ticket system said 29 – someone either dropped it, or had got fed up of waiting, so we had some good fortune, waited 5 minutes, charged to the ticket man when 31 was called and got out photos between the gates. Felt like a very fortuitous moment!
After Hendara gates and just down the road is Ulua Danan Beratan Temple which is the current Lonely Planet Guide cover photo. This is an enormous site which has the famous and very beautiful temple on the shores of the lake, and then has expanded to generate more income from tourists. From boat rides, to more insta-backdrops and posing platforms, to a park, ice cream, restaurants it took us an hour to explore but it was very busy. Given it was Sunday it was nice to see all the locals still using this temple for their worshipping all dressed in their traditional clothing. The entrance fee was around 200k/£10 for the 4 of us. Very much recommend visiting this place but just go with the open mind that it has become more touristy than sacred shine. Again, I don’t think I would enjoy it as part of a day tour trip, get yourself a private driver so you can dictate how long you spend here.
We very much enjoyed our 48 hours in the north of Bali and saw a lot of the sites we set out to do. A few days extra and we would have explored waterfalls, done strawberry picking and visited a few more places in Munduk such as the various farm, coffee plantations and eco lodges.
