Bali Guide › Good to Know
Bali has no trains and no metro, and outside the southern toll road there are no highways - just a web of narrow roads shared by cars, scooters, trucks, and the occasional ceremony procession. How you choose to get around shapes your whole trip, so it's worth deciding early. Here are the real options, with their honest pros and cons.
Your Options, Compared
Private driver / car charter. The standard way visitors see the island, and for good reason: one fixed price per car, air-conditioning, somewhere to leave your bags, and a local behind the wheel who knows which roads are jammed and where to stop for lunch. A charter runs by the half day or full day with no fixed route; a day tour adds a planned route and a guide. Best for: sightseeing days, temple runs, anything beyond your own town.
Pre-booked airport transfer. Fixed price agreed before you land, driver waiting in arrivals with your name, no negotiating at the kerb after a long flight. If your hotel doesn't include one, book it ahead - arrival is the worst moment to start comparing prices.
Ride-hailing apps (Gojek / Grab). Cheap and reliable for short hops in the south - Kuta, Seminyak, Canggu, the airport corridor. The catch: some villages and tourist areas restrict app pick-ups to protect local drivers, so a ride in doesn't guarantee a ride out. Fine as a backup; frustrating as a plan.
Metered taxis. Bluebird (the blue ones with a bird logo) is the established metered company, mostly in the south. Elsewhere, "taxi" usually means a private driver quoting a flat price - agree on it before you get in.
Scooter rental. Cheap, everywhere, and genuinely risky if you're not already a confident rider. Traffic is dense, road rules are loose, and surfaces can be slick. Legally you need a motorcycle licence plus an International Driving Permit - without them, travel insurance usually won't cover an accident, and police checks on tourist-heavy roads are common. If you wouldn't ride a scooter through busy traffic at home, Bali is not the place to learn.
Rough Travel Times from Ubud
Distances in Bali are short; journeys are not. These are honest ballpark figures with normal traffic - add more in the late-afternoon rush or the December-January and July-August peaks:
- Airport (Ngurah Rai) - roughly 1 to 1.5 hours
- Seminyak / Canggu - roughly 1 to 1.5 hours
- Tanah Lot - roughly 1 to 1.5 hours
- Kintamani & Mount Batur - roughly 1 to 1.5 hours
- Uluwatu & the Bukit - roughly 1.5 to 2 hours
- East Bali (Lempuyang, Tirta Gangga) - roughly 2 hours or more
- Lovina & the north coast - roughly 2.5 to 3 hours
The practical rule: plan one region per day, not three. A day that chains the far east to the far north spends more hours in the car than out of it - it's exactly why our day tours are grouped by region.
Why the Map Lies
Google Maps sees 40 kilometres and thinks "40 minutes". Bali disagrees. Most roads are single-lane each way, they wind through villages where everything slows to walking pace, and traffic stacks up around the south and Ubud from late afternoon. Ceremonies can close a road entirely - and with hundreds of temple anniversaries a year, this is normal life, not bad luck. Locals build slack into every plan; you should too.
The upside of going slowly: Bali is at its best through a car window at village speed. The penjor poles, the offerings on the pavement, the rice terraces between towns - much of what people come for happens between the destinations.
How Hiring a Driver Works Here
If you have never used a driver abroad: in Bali it is the normal, unremarkable way to travel, not a luxury. Prices are quoted per car, not per person - typically for up to 5 passengers - so a full car costs the same as a solo traveller. The driver waits while you visit each stop, petrol and parking are part of the price, and the day ends back at your hotel. With us, a 10% deposit on WhatsApp confirms the booking and the balance is settled at the end of the day in cash or by transfer.
Two things make a driver day go well. First, share your priorities the day before - "waterfall first, lunch with a view, back by five" is enough for a good driver to build a route around. Second, ask questions in the car: a local driver is a running commentary on everything you pass, from why the offerings are on the pavement to which warung actually deserves the queue.
Your Arrival Day, Step by Step
Ngurah Rai airport is compact: immigration, baggage, customs, then one exit into the arrivals crowd. Get cash from an ATM attached to a bank inside the terminal (skip the money changers in the arrivals scrum), grab a SIM card if you did not bring an eSIM, and look for your driver's sign. With a pre-booked transfer, that whole sequence takes twenty minutes; without one, expect a gauntlet of price-quoting. If you land at night, nothing changes - pick-ups run around the clock.
One realistic warning for the first evening: the airport sits in the island's most congested corner, so the first hour of driving is the least scenic hour of your whole trip. It gets better - much better - once the road climbs out of the south.
What Combines Well in a Day
Since the car is the constraint, the trick is grouping stops that share a road. Kintamani, Tirta Empul, and the Tegalalang terraces sit on one northern loop - that is the logic of our Kintamani day. Lempuyang, Tirta Gangga, and Taman Ujung line up along the eastern route; the twin lakes and the northern waterfalls stack the same way for the north; and the Bukit beaches, Uluwatu, and Jimbaran make a natural south-coast evening. What does not combine well: anything east with anything north, or a morning in Lovina with an afternoon in Uluwatu. If you are planning several days, the itinerary builder shows the prices as you spread regions across your trip.
Good to Know
- No trains; one toll road in the south - everything else is village roads
- Plan one region per day and add buffer time
- Apps work in the south; restricted in some villages
- Scooters legally need a motorcycle licence + IDP - insurance depends on it
- Pre-book your airport pick-up; arrival haggling is a bad start
- Worst traffic: late afternoons, and the south in peak season