I Moved to Bali. Why Bali?

The second biggest question I get after “Why leave the USA?” is “Why Bali?” The truth is it is very hard to decide where to live since everywhere one visits as a traveler/tourist is different from your full-time gig.

I gave Thailand some thought (visited twice), Vietnam (once), as well as Southern Europe (a few visits: highlight was one month in Italy). Also gave thought to Panama (one visit) and Costa Rica (never made it).

I spent one month in Bali in February of 2017 and fell in love. Besides the lovely Balinese people, the feeling one gets about Bali is that it’s a destination for people from all over the planet. And while Italy, for example, is also a world-class destination, when visitors come to Italy they will primarily (read: entirely) eat Italian food. Try as you might it is difficult to find anything to eat outside of Italian fare.

It is a bit easier in Vietnam and Thailand but most restaurants are run by natives and obviously they want to show off their expertise.

In Bali there are many restaurants and businesses run by ex-pats and designed for visitors. There’s everything from a Jewish deli to a banana flour bakery to Mexican food, or tapas or Korean bbq or Turkish kebabs. This is in addition of course to amazing Balinese and Indonesian cuisine.

(Oka’s Bakery and Café: a tourist-friendly look with everything one might expect in a San Francisco or Sidney cafe as well as a few classic Indonesian dishes. Also in the photo is another wonderful benefit of living here: my partner and her scooter)

I will limit this post to the benefits of having a variety of food options here in Bali. As far as costs go, even the tourist-oriented food destinations are way cheaper than first-world countries. If the spread between local warung food and tourist food becomes too extreme the tourists will stick with Indonesian food.

So in a way you get the best of both worlds: local Balinese and Indonesian food at very reasonable (read: cheap) prices and a smorgasbord of international cuisine that’s affordable.

(One of a zillion warungs)