I’m not gonna sugarcoat it, flying to Bali from the US is quite the journey. Don’t worry, it will totally be worth it! But, if you’re coming all this way, we’d recommend making it worthwhile by spending a couple weeks exploring someplace nearby. There are a lot of great options.

We’’ve got a little bit of experience in this department over the past couple years, so with no further ado, here are our recommendations:

There’s a lot more to Indonesia than just Bali, as a matter of fact it’s made up of 17,508 islands. So there are many other places to explore here while you’re in the neighborhood. Here’s a few of our recommendations:

Bali is a big island, with several different places to check out and you could easily spend a couple weeks just checking out different parts of the island.

Ubud- our favorite place in Bali. It’s the cultural center of the island and located inland in the jungle (about a 2 hour drive from the Bali airport). Great food scene, many beautiful temples and beautiful Balinese architecture to walk around and explore. Also recommend a day trip to Tirta Empul water temple for a refreshing way to clear your mind after a long trip.

Seminyak, Sanur and Canggu are beach towns that are basically just extensions of Denpasar (where the airport is) and have some nice resorts to spend a couple days in paradise.

East Bali- ( Sidemen, Karangasem and Amed).East Bali is much more chill with less tourists than southern Bali, if you’re looking to get away from the crowds. You can also find excellent scuba diving over there (specifically in Amed) if you want to check out beautiful scenery underwater or some WW2 sunken ships. If you like more cold weather with terasering view, would recommend to stay couple days in Sidemen area.

This is our favorite destination in Indonesia. Lombok is the island directly to the east of Bali and is very similar in terms of the beautiful beaches and nature without the overcrowding of tourists that have taken over Bali. You can take a ferry to Lombok from Bali or a short flight. Fair warning on the ferry, it’s always late and not a great idea if you are claustrophobic or prone to sea sickness. Also, make sure to do a little research on the ferry provider before booking, some of them are better than others.

Kuta, Lombok is a great little surf town with some amazing beaches and very kind people. The city is pretty small with several great restaurants all located along the main strip. Nearby you can find several great beaches- Selong Belanak, Mawun, Seger, Tanjung Aan. Heads up there are some locals who try to sell tickets to the “pink beach”, don’t go there. The coral that used to make it pink died off and now it’s just a normal sand colored beach that they use altered photos to sell to tourists and then tell them the lighting isn’t right to see the pink color 😂

Gili Islands- (Gili Air, Gili Meno and Gili Trawangan) Additionally on the west coast of Lombok, you can take a 20 minute fast boat to the Gili islands. The Gili’s are a magical little paradise, there are no motorized vehicles on the islands, only bicycles and horse carts and you can easily bike around them in a couple hours. Great snorkeling, scuba diving, and restaurants with lots of options for renting private pool villas at a very reasonable price.

A nature lovers paradise, here you can find beautiful beaches, spend a day checking out Komodo National Park, the only place you can see komodo dragons in their natural habitat. If you’re lucky you can also swim with whale sharks here or enjoy some of the best scuba diving in the world. There’s also beautiful pink beach here you can check out (a real one, not like the one in Lombok)

Sumba is like going to Bali 100 years ago. There are very few tourists there and it maintains a very rich culture. It’s famous for the ability to see wild horses running along the beach in the mornings.

Stopping over in Tokyo for a few days is a great way to break up the long flight to Indonesia. Japan is both Helena and I’s favorite country we’ve ever traveled to (and it’s coincidentally where met? Actually maybe that’s not a coincidence 😂).

You can find incredible food, some of the most beautifully manicured parks, incredible culture and history and extremely efficient public transportation there.

Additionally, if you want to stretch your Japan adventure to more than a couple days, you can take the bullet train to Kyoto to check out the cultural center of Japan, with gorgeous temples and nature. I’d also recommend Osaka while you’re in the area if you want to check out the best food scene Japan has to offer. From Japan you’re looking at an 8 hour flight left on to Bali.

Helena and I spent the month of August in Da Nang and Hoi An. 3 days into our stay in Da Nang we decided to move to there. Impulsive? Sure, do you even know me? But even for us, that’s saying a lot about how amazing of a city Da Nang is. Incredible food and insanely low prices, right on one of the most beautiful beaches on earth, with a great coffee shop and bar scene to go with it.

About 45 minutes south of Da Nang is Hoi An, with it’s ancient town area that’s filled with chinese lanterns at nights and a great place to wander around. Hoi An is also famous for their tailor shops. If you need an outfit for the wedding, they can custom tailor anything for you in 24 hours at a fraction of the cost that you would pay anywhere else in the world.

There’s lots of different options in Vietnam as well, from bustling Hanoi up north which is a short trip from the limestone karsts of Ha Long Bay and Ninh Binh as well as the gorgeous rice terraces of Sapa.

Singapore is a world class city that will put you only about a 2 hour flight away from Bali and is an excellent place to spend a couple days. Top notch food scene, beautiful architecture and one of the cleanest cities on earth. Also pretty much everyone speaks English there, which is always helpful. Fair warning, it’s not a cheap place though, it’s by far the most expensive place you can go in Southeast Asia.

Another option with this itinerary would be split time between Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. You can see a lot of KL in just a couple days, highly recommend checking out the Petronas towers and Batu Caves.

Flying through Sydney is another way you could break up the trip up, although it will add some additional hours to your itinerary. It’s about 7 hours from Bali. Sydney is the place Helena first met my parents and we spent a week exploring various cool neighborhoods around the city and seeing all the sights. Highly recommend checking out Bondi Beach and Manley beach, the rocks, Marrickville, and Surrey Hills.

If you’re up for a road trip, the drive up to Brisbane is also beautiful, with cool little towns to stop off at every couple hours (Byron Bay was our favorite).