Bali & Lembongan 🏝️ 2-Island Itinerary & Budget
There is a travel-based conceit that Bali is the panacea for all of life’s minor irritations. The kind of place where yoga mats sprout from the asphalt and every meal comes with a side of spiritual awakening. Everyone and their aunt has a Balinese Epiphany story, usually involving a scooter accident or an unexpectedly philosophical monkey.
But the truth of the matter is, if you’r after that perfect stretch of sand, the sort that doesn’t feel like a commuter belt for scooters and a marketplace for everything under the sun, you have to put in a bit of effort.
If you’re yearning for genuine azure waters and unpopulated shores, you must look beyond the main island. This is where Nusa Lembongan strolls in, the slightly less heralded, but infinitely more charming, younger sibling to the south. Combining Bali’s cultural heft with Lembongan’s serenity? Now, that felt like a proper holiday plan, a two-part harmony of hustle and hammock-time.
Highlights
- 🗺️ Our Eighteen-Day Expedition
- Ubud Unveiled 🧘 in 4 Days
- Lembongan 🌊 8 Nights of Bliss
- The Ledger Lowdown 💷 & Budget
- All Hotel Options in Lembongan
- Ferries from Bali to Lembongan
- Lembongan Island Transfers
- Bali & Lembongan 🏝️ 2-Isle Itinerary
- Lembongan Guesthouses
Bali’s Unique Flavour 🌴 An Island Apart
You see, unlike the sprawling tapestry that is the rest of Indonesia, Bali manages to feel like a separate entity entirely. It’s got that distinct, heady scent of frangipani and incense, a tangible difference that wraps itself around you the moment you step off the aeroplane.
We found ourselves amidst a predominantly Hindu population, and their culture—intricate, colourful, and utterly pervasive—creates an atmosphere unlike the largely Muslim cities and towns we’d previously visited in Central Java.
This particular sojourn was a trip down memory lane. Our last experience with Bali had been some thirty years ago.
Thirty years!
That’s enough time for an entire landscape to change, for pristine rice paddies to become bustling shopping strips, and for innocence to be replaced by souvenir stalls. The anthropologist in me was itching to see the transformation; the cynic in me was bracing for the worst.
We gave ourselves a relatively short fortnight, a mere whisper of time, including our foray to Lembongan. But, flying Cathay Pacific from London, we also managed to bolt on a couple of metropolitan amuse-bouches: a stop in Hong Kong and a frantic dash through London.
Bali and Nusa Lembongan 2-island itinerary
🗺️ Our Eighteen-Day Expedition
Our total trip, clocking in at a substantial 18 days, was structured with the precision of a Swiss timepiece, albeit one that relies heavily on Indonesian ferry schedules.
Cathay Pacific, currently sitting rather prettily at No. 3 in the World’s Top 100 Airlines, offered us a ticket for a reasonable €490 a head, stopovers included. You can’t sneer at that.
The initial blueprint looked a bit like this:
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The Launch: Flight from our home base to London Luton.
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The Staging Post: An overnight near London Gatwick, because who doesn’t love an airport hotel transit?
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The Asian Interlude: London Gatwick to Hong Kong, with two nights of organised street-food mayhem in Kowloon.
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The Main Event: Hong Kong to Bali. Finally.
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The Ubud Immersion: Four nights in Bali, split between two guesthouses.
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The Wet & Wild Bit: Bus and ferry to Nusa Lembongan. An eight-night tenure, again, two guesthouses. More, after all, is more.
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The Retreat: Ferry and bus back to Denpasar, Bali.
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The Final Pit-Stop: A single night in Denpasar, strategically near the airport for our imminent exit.
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The Return Leg: Bali to London Gatwick.
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The Capital Sprint: A punishing, six-hour, speed-tour of London. We are not tourists; we are time-trial athletes.
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The End: Onward flight from London Luton back to our home base.
Was it a lot of travelling for a short period? Undeniably. But surely the promise of secluded turquoise waters justified the audacity of the plan…
Ferries from Bali to Lembongan
Hong Kong Highlights 🏙️ A Whistle-Stop of Wok Hei
The obligatory overnight near London was precisely as riveting as you are imagining, but Hong Kong was worth the preceding mild endurance test.
We’d procured ourselves a minuscule room smack-bang in the middle of Kowloon, the sort of accommodation where you couldn’t swing a cat. For two nights, it was our tiny, temporary base of operations.
Our mission brief was twofold: ascend Victoria Peak for the obligatory, sprawling view and, far more importantly, getting our mouths around some serious street food.
The city moves at a dizzying pace, a symphony of neon and noise. You find yourself utterly swept up in it.
Read our Articles on Hong Kong
Bustling streets of Hong Kong
Ubud Unveiled 🧘 in Four Days
Our first proper Balinese destination was Ubud, the self-proclaimed spiritual heart of the island. We had four nights here, divided between two separate establishments.
This was partly for variety, but mostly because we can’t resist the thrill of packing and unpacking four times in a fortnight.
One of our chosen havens boasted a swimming pool—an essential feature, as you’re a good 13 kilometres inland here.
The sea, you realise quite quickly, is over there.
We also had a shortlist of promising restaurants, the culinary scaffolding around which the whole trip was built. There’s only so much spiritual contemplation you can manage without a decent plate of Babi Guling, after all.
We walked, we perspired, and we saw more carvings of Hindu deities than you could shake a stick at.
Ubud Royal Palace, Bali
Lembongan Landing 🌊 Eight Nights of Bliss
This was the main event, the raison d’être for the entire mad dash across the globe.
Lembongan, a lush, sizeable island sitting cosily off Bali’s southern flank.
We committed to eight nights, again, with the two-guesthouse strategy: one in the north, one in the south.
The plan here was uncomplicated, verging on the lazy: Relax. Beach. Water sports (if the mood struck).
The island possesses that genuine sleepy quality that Bali, in its busier parts, has long since misplaced. You find yourself moving at a slower, more considered pace. Or, to be entirely honest, you simply stop moving altogether for extended periods.
Read our Articles on Lembongan
View from Lembongan to Bali
Denpasar Detour 🛍️ The Final Dash
Given our return flight was departing from Denpasar, the preceding night was spent in the city, strategically close to the airport.
This was our final opportunity, our very last chance, to procure some essential shopping items.
Think emergency supplies of cheap spices and dubious souvenir t-shirts.
Our Bali Itinerary
London Lightning Lap 💂 in just 6 Hours
The Cathay Pacific return flight deposited us at London Gatwick in the wee small hours of the morning.
This was not a moment for contemplation; this was for action. Six hours. That was all the time we had for a high-speed, dizzying tour of the capital before our onward flight from Luton that evening.
Did we see the sights? Technically, yes. Did we absorb them? Absolutely not.
We were there, and then we were gone. A brief, blurry interlude of British pageantry and overpriced beer.
The pageantry of London
The Ledger Lowdown 💷 Budgeting for Bedlam
So, the crucial part: the cost.
Did we manage to pull off this multi-continent ballet within our planned budget?
Our return flights, including that two-day Hong Kong stopover, were a commendable €490 per person.
Accommodation, all pre-booked—came to a total of €278 per person for sixteen nights (based on us two sharing, naturally). The most painful outlays, as you might expect, were London and Hong Kong. Asia, once again, proves the economic saviour.
Then came the daily expenditure. We budgeted for:
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London & Hong Kong: €38 per person per day. Gotta factor in the extortionate pints and street snacks.
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Bali & Lembongan: A rather stingy €13 per person per day. It’s cheap, but it’s not that cheap.
This brought our total daily spending budget for the full 18 days to €321 per person.
The sum total for the entire, elaborate, two-and-a-half week tropical adventure? A highly respectable €1,089 per person.
Factor in the €97 each to get to and from London from our base in Malta, and the final tally sits neatly below the €1,200 mark.
Coming in at just over €65 per person per day, all-inclusive, you might be thinking this is an optimistic figure for a trip spanning the globe.
… and this is not really budget standards – We were flying with a top-tier airline and staying in decent guesthouses, verging on luxury in a few places. It wasn’t some backpacker’s trudge; it was strategic, mid-range indulgence.
You can follow our detailed experiences in the related articles, where we spill the beans on the places to actually stop, the establishments to politely ignore, and how a €13 per day budget holds up under the relentless pursuit of ice-cold beer.
You wouldn’t want to miss that, would you?
If you enjoyed our Bali and Nusa Lembongan 2-island itinerary, check out our other Tropical Travel Plans. You may also like:
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