Apartments rentals in Bali? It may run counter to your notion of Bali, Indonesia, if you have never been here, or visited recently. Well, although it is a major Asian tourist destination, Bali is a place with an enormous variety in accommodations for the visitor. Naturally there are great hotels, and the Bali villa is a dream that everyone should experience at least once, hopefully without having to mortgage their house back home!
There is a third lodging option in Bali too, that of apartment rentals. I haven’t seen it as a Bali travel tip before, but I have personal experience with it that was so favorable that my wife and I ended up buying an apartment in Bali!
The busy southern end of the island, near the airport, is quite densely populated by locals and tourists, so the buildings have been getting taller in the last decade or so. (Balinese building regulations state that no building can be taller than a palm tree, but this seems to have been forgotten along the way. Possibly there’s a special palm tree somewhere, extra tall, used to approve these new buildings!) Condos/apartments up to five or six stories are now fairly common in Bali. Many of the owners of these units are absentee owners who have their property managed while they are in Jakarta or elsewhere in Asia or Australia, etc., a for most of the year.
Apartment rentals work best for visitors who are willing to trade some of the pampering they will received at a hotel, as well as the retail price they will pay for the experience, for accommodations that are geared a little more towards “living”, than feeling like a hotel “guest”. If you are willing to forgo the latter you will be rewarded with more of what you might actually have come for anyway: time. There is a huge difference between coming for a week or ten days and staying for a whole month, or even more.
A little-known Bali tip is the fact that for the price of that hotel room for a week or 10 day Bali visit you might actually be able to rent larger and more comfortable accommodations for an entire month.
When we book a holiday in a place like Bali most of us think in terms of booking a room in a hotel. It is understandable. It is just the way we have done it in the past, and advertising helps to shape our notion of what our vacation is supposed to be. But taking a more frugal route with apartment rental will still have its comfort and even luxury, and also most likely be much more conveniently located than a villa in the rice paddies.
The next time you are dreaming up a visit to somewhere exotic, with an indigenous culture that is still very much alive, give serious consideration to Bali.