Sanur was the original tourist destination in Bali! As other areas have grown and got busier, Sanur has managed to retain a chilled vibe and is so family friendly. We stayed here for 3 days back in 2019, and have just spent our first week in Bali here, and we love how geared up for kids this beach town is. Here’s a write up on what we’ve been up to and what we would recommend if you are visiting Sanur with the kids in tow. It’s definitely one of the best places to travel with children in Bali.
Accommodation
Sanur has so many different accommodation types and budget to choose, from larger hotels, to guesthouses to homestays. We stayed in Nyaman Guesthouse just off the main tourist road that runs parallel to the beach, and you reach the golden sand within 5 minutes walk. The Guesthouse has been perfect for us: large double bedrooms, a small square pool perfect for the kids, excellent breakfast of eggs or pancakes and fruit each morning, excellent aircon and friendly staff. We did have to get two rooms as they don’t have family rooms, but even doing that the cost was c. £35 a night (for both rooms with breakfast). Location wise it was also fantastic with plenty of restaurants and supermarkets within a few minutes walk, easy to get taxis and yet quiet enough at night and the noise from the road doesn’t bother you at all. There’s even laundry next door! By complete coincidence this place is over the road from where we stayed in 2019, namely Sari Villa, which I would also recommend and is another guesthouse with a pool and great breakfast.
Activities
Sanur is a beach town, so activity number one if definitely to hit the beach. After the stress and mania of the last 2 weeks – packing up our UK lives and then hitting Athens and Singapore, we spent a lot more time than usual just on the beach or in the pool. We were all also jetlagged so weren’t having breakfast until 11ish, and then heading out for the day around noon so we didn’t venture outside of Sanur this week.
On the beach, some areas of it are cleaner than others, and the sand is golden rather than white, but the sea is calm and shallow for kids, and the entire 3km beach stretch is backed with restaurants, bars and shops (more on food later). The sea does move out very quickly, with high tide offering wave jumping and low tide being so shallow the water will barely pass your knees and the rocky reef below becomes visible. At high tide you can see the reef break with large waves on the horizon, but the sea directly by the beach is so calm it’s like a mill pond at times.
On Friday we spent the day on the beach at the end near Byrd House, and as late afternoon approach, the area filled up with local families coming together for a swim, food, and to fly kites. It was a really lovely setting and vibe to be part of, although it did make the pale-skinned gingers amongst us stand out even more! It’s like ‘Where’s Wally’ spotting us on the first photo….
You can rent sunbeds on the beach for 100k (£5) for 2 with a parasol, and staff will be on hand to bring you drinks. I also had a massage one day which was £5 for 30 minutes, and some places offer use of their pool. Memories in Sanur offers free sunbeds and use of the pool with a minimum £5 per person spend in the cafe (their daiquiris are amazing and cost £3), and Gazebo Beach Hotel offers use of their pool for £2.50 per person (much larger pool) and food here is £1 per main course lunch dish.
We also hired bikes here to enjoy the path that extends the entire stretch of Sanur. We hired 4 bikes for 3 hours and paid £16 without any negotiation! The bikes were well maintained with working brakes, we were given a lock and they even had one small enough for Nyle: gone are the days he would have accepted riding on the back of ours. The path is flat and smooth and the only obstacle is dodging staff as they carry trays of drinks and food from the bar to the beach! It took us just under and hour to ride one way, we stopped for lunch and then rode back and we all said how much we had enjoyed the afternoon. There are bike rental ‘stalls’ (i.e. usually an old man on a stool with a selection of bikes) every 50m so you don’t have to walk far to find one. Worth noting there are no helmets. A selection of these men seem to also rent paddleboards, surfboards and jet skis if you fancy water sports. Full video of our bike adventures can be found here.
On our first afternoon in Sanur we decided to visit the Turtle Sanctuary, Sea Turtle Village, which is located and part-funded by the Hyatt and Andaz hotels – get a taxi to either, walk to the beach and then head left from the Andaz and right from the Hyatt. There are 4-5 different pools with turtles and the staff there will happily explain anything you would like to know. We fell lucky and caught the end of feeding time (around 3pm), and then hit the jackpot when they said they were due to do their monthly release of 10 at 4pm. Evidently, guests at the hotel pay a fair £££ to actually release one into the sea, but we were happy watching and wished them luck as we saw them swim off into the deeper ocean. These 10 were all a few months old to increase their survival chances. The kids enjoyed seeing them, learning about them – homeschool class no. 1 – and then seeing their release.
The final activity worth sharing from our week in Sanur was a bit of nail pampering. There are spas everywhere and Alicia and Stef disappeared for 2 hours coming home after a manicure, pedicure and shellac nails, blowing 1/3 of our daily £100 budget in the process. But they both seemed to enjoy themselves.
There are other trips to be done from Sanur which are worth exploring. Sanur actually has a port for the speedboats over to Nusa Lembongan which we visited in 2019 and it was one of our best destinations of our trip. If you have time we would recommend staying a couple of nights on Lembongan and explore the island. The speed boat is around 30-40 minutes and costs c £20 per person. There are also trips and boats to Nusa Penida (we haven’t been) and various snorkelling trips, including to the Manta Rays however we know the currents here are really strong do avoided those, and Penida has steep cliffs and the trips are 9-11 hours long so we just weren’t in the right mindset for that.
RESTAURANTS
Bali, and Sanur, is so geared up for tourists and has a lot of western food available. This time we even noticed how much plant-based and vegan food is available on menus. There is a night market in Sanur but we took the opportunity to dine in restaurants and had some wonderful food. Here is our pick of them:
Genius Cafe – situated on the southern end of Sanur, about a 10 minute taxi from our guest house, Genuis Cafe has nailed it. They have beanbags and lights on the beach, an extensive menu, the food is delicious and there is a really nice family friendly feel about this place. We had drinks including chocolate milkshakes, quesadillas, a noodle dish, kids pasta and a carbonara and a mexican bowl and the total cost was around £30 – 100% recommended. We went around 5pm and you get a bit of sunset colour as you look out to sea.
Three Monkeys – this is a restaurant near our guesthouse which would probably be described as more upmarket. However, they are very friendly towards children, have a children’s menu and the food is delicious, a mixture of western and indonesian cuisine with outdoor and indoor (aircon) seating. This was probably our most expensive meal in Sanur at £40 but we had starters, mains and (alcoholic) drinks.
Oh My Thai – if you like Thai food this place is a must visit, and so cheap. It cost us £20 for a main course and drink for 4 of us. The cashew tofu wok dish, and the pineapple rice (according to Alicia) were amazing. It’s a chilled, simple setting, with indoor and outdoor seating, on the main road.
Wicked Parrot – I only went here when I was flying solo with the kids and we were all tired and it’s over the road from where we were staying, but I mention it in case anyone is craving UK food. It’s an Irish bar, with live music several times a week (with 1 Irish member of the band, and the rest Indonesian rockers playing irish jigs!). There’s pie and mash, quiche and chips and Nyle loved his proper irish sausages! I was also reliably informed that these were the best chocolate milkshakes of the week and cost for 3 of us to have 2 courses each and drinks was £25.
The beach – don’t dismiss the smaller local beach restaurants where food is even cheaper and we stumbled across one which served chicken satay on a small bbq. You can imagine how much fun the kids thought this was and they guzzled 20 of them, washed down with 2 milkshakes, spring roles for Stef and I, and a couple of soft drinks for less than £15.
Byrd House – this was a treat. We had discovered this place as a potential day pool pass destination but decided a free day on the beach was fine and we would just go in for food. I would say the pool did look amazing so if you wanted a lazy, plush pool day then the day pass here may be a good shout – ther’e’s even a kids club. We opted for lunch and were not disappointed, and for under £40 we had 3 blended juices, a coffee, 2 kids meals of burger and hot dogs, pasta main and a falafel wrap all served with fries, and 4 amazing cakes. Alicia’s eyes nearly popped out her head at the cake cabinet! There is indoor and outdoor seating as well as a lounge area on the beach. The pizzas also looked epic!
Social Shotgun – we only went here for happy hour £2.50 cocktails after the beach one day, but we stayed so long the kids ended up needing feeding. The menu here looked incredible with 18inch pizzas, curries, burgers, fish etc etc. The 2 sliders the kids had were gone in minutes and the cocktails and mocktails were good. The real draw to this place for families is the large treehouse play area with cargo nets to entertain the kids. There is also a large open space for general running around and we witnessed several games of tig and gymnastics displays in the couple of hours we were there. Great place for kids to socialise and make friends.
Kidz Cafe Sanur – I’d come across this place on Insta and wasn’t sure what to expect but it is fabulous. Entry is free from 6pm (otherwise there is a small entrance fee) and half the area is a restaurant and the other half is a play area with monkey bars, climbing frames, swings, as well as toys and bikes to ride, and games to play. Nyle was in his element, and Alicia was probably at the older end of the age limit / it being of interest to her. They both made friends however so were very happy to be there a couple of hours, and I was very pleased to enjoy pizza and a beer, both kids ate and drank and we were there 2 hours for the cost of £18. They do activities during the day including bartender class, cooking class, learn Indonesian, phonics and karaoke – it name just a few, Whoever came up with this place as a concept is a genuis!
Getting around and logistics
The roads in Sanur can be busy and there are mopeds everywhere – streets get full of them parked, and they seem to appear out of nowhere. There will also be people offering you taxis as soon as you leave your accommodation so we always just ordered a GRAB (uber equivalent) before leaving our room. Everywhere we went in Sanur was just over £1 per trip for on average 10 minutes of driving – it was definitely not worth walking in the heat for that price. If you want to do shopping, we would advise walking along the beach path and entering shops from there, rather than walking along the main road as pavements get narrow and the road is busy.
There are supermarkets, ATMs and chemists every 5 minutes walk along the road. Here’s some rough prices from the supermarket as a guide.
Can of coke / sprite – 30p
Large bag crisps – £1
Small beer – 90p
Pot noodle – 50p
Chocolate milk carton – 20p
Yogurt pouch – 50p
Cornetto / feast ice cream – 50p-80p
In summary, we had a great chilled week in Sanur. It felt like we were on holiday, but was perfect for that point of time of our trip. We are heading to Ubud next where there will be no beach, but the same great family friendly vibe!
