Our 17-Day Bali Trip: Canggu, Ubud, Sanur & Uluwatu — Staying Connected with Holafly (Code THEDUFRESNES, Up to 30% Off)

By Chris & Shayna (The Dufresnes) · 14+ minute read · Contains affiliate links (disclosure at the end)

Last Updated: August 2026

Watch the full Bali series — every area, villa tour, and the food — on our YouTube channel.

We spent 17 days in Bali in June 2026 — a visa run from Vietnam that turned into one of the best trips we've taken as a family. We split it across four completely different areas: Canggu, Ubud, Sanur, and Uluwatu, with our younger son Lakai along for the ride (Jayden sat this one out). We'd heard all the "Bali is overrated now" and "it's too expensive" talk before we went. This is what it was actually like, area by area — and how we stayed online the entire time on our Holafly eSIMs.

Short version on connectivity, since people always ask: Shayna and I ran the whole trip on Holafly Plans, and Lakai had the Asia regional eSIM on his own phone. We were connected the second we landed — no SIM cards, no airport kiosks — and we used it for Grab, Maps, Translate, and uploading footage every single day. Our code THEDUFRESNES takes 5% off destination and regional eSIMs, 10% off monthly Plans, and up to 30% off annual Plans. More on all of that at the bottom, and in our complete Holafly review and discount guide if you want the full breakdown.

Discount code THEDUFRESNES 5% off eSIMs · 10% off monthly Plans · up to 20% off quarterly · up to 30% off annual (20% from Holafly + 10% with THEDUFRESNES) Get Holafly

Getting there & the first hours

We flew out of Da Nang, where we were based at the time. What was booked as a direct flight got rerouted through Kuala Lumpur, so it turned into a long travel day — close to 16 hours door to door with Lakai in tow. One thing that made it painless: we were online the moment the wheels touched down. We stepped off in Kuala Lumpur and both phones connected instantly on Holafly, and it was the same again landing in Bali near midnight.

That mattered more than it sounds. Bali's airport has a proper Grab lounge, and because we already had data, we could book the car, drop in the villa address, and watch the route the whole way — no scrambling for airport WiFi or a SIM booth after a full travel day. From that first Grab onward, our phones just worked, everywhere we went.

A quick heads-up if you're a Canadian (or anywhere with visa-on-arrival): sort your e-visa, the tourist levy, and the arrival card ahead of time. The visa came through for us within minutes, and the arrival card has to be done within three days of your flight. Doing it in advance saved us standing in the on-arrival line after that flight.

Canggu: the busy, buzzy one (5 nights)

Canggu was our first stop, and it's the Bali most people picture from Instagram — surf, smoothie bowls, co-working, and a crowd that skews mid-20s to mid-30s. What surprised us is that it isn't one place. It has layers, and where you stay changes the whole feel.

Berawa, Batu Bolong & Pererenan

We based ourselves near Berawa, which is where a lot of longer-term foreigners live — quieter side lanes, but still walking distance to everything you need: warungs, a Coco Mart with an ATM, laundry, cafes, gyms. Batu Bolong is the original main strip (Love Anchor, Old Man's, the sunset beach) and the busiest. Pererenan is the up-and-coming, calmer, surfier corner — construction everywhere, but leafy, and honestly it reminded us of the Nosara area in Costa Rica, where we lived for years. If you want chill and big waves, that's the one.

We also walked the famous Canggu Shortcut, which locals and long-timers remember as rice fields on both sides. It's now paved and packed with brand-new shops and some of the heaviest scooter traffic we saw. Things change fast here.

The food, the beach, and a $100 day

Canggu's beach (Batu Bolong / Canggu Beach) is dark volcanic sand and serious surf — not really a swimming beach, but a fantastic one to sit above at sunset with a cold Bintang. We found a spot up on the bluff and basically claimed it every evening. Down on the sand there's a genuine choice: big beach clubs on one end, or little family-run bamboo warungs where the beer is just as cold and half the price.

We ran our usual "$100 day" challenge here — a full day of eating, a beach bar, a pedicure, souvenir markets — and landed around $122 for the two of us. Not the sub-$100 win, but for a full day out that's still one nice dinner back home. Bali's gone up like everywhere, but it's far from expensive. Highlights: local warung lunch (pick-your-plate, incredible corn fritters and caramelized tempe), boozy slushies at Love Anchor, and cheeseburger tacos at a Mexican spot called La Calita that Lakai demolished three of.

Connectivity note: Canggu is where Grab earns its keep — it's cheap (roughly $16 all the way to Ubud) and constant, and it only works if you're online. Between Grab, Maps for the side lanes, and uploading clips at the end of each day, unlimited data on Holafly Plans is what kept the whole rhythm going.

Ubud: the one we'd move to (and the one we didn't want to leave)

An hour and a half from Canggu the road climbs, the crowds thin, and the rice fields take over. Ubud was the surprise of the trip — the area we said out loud we could live in for six months, and we're beach people.

Our villa sat about 10 km out of town in a local area surrounded by rice fields, two bedrooms, private pool, just over $50 a night — and the family at the laundry place down the lane wanted to sit us down for coffee. That hospitality was the whole trip in a nutshell. In town, the Ubud Palace sits right on the main corner (the royal family still lives behind the gates), with the art market across the street for souvenirs.

The big one is the Tegallalang rice terraces, about a 25-minute Grab out. Everyone piles into the viral spots; we sat at the quieter Rice Terrace Cafe with a cold drink and a front-row view, then paid a few dollars to walk down through the terraces themselves. Far more relaxing than fighting for a photo at the famous ones.

Right in the middle of town is the Sacred Monkey Forest — over a thousand long-tailed macaques, three temples dating to around 1350, and monkeys running the place. Entry is a few dollars (we paid cash). The rules are real: no food or drink, no dangling jewelry or loose sunglasses, and don't smile with your teeth — they read it as aggression. A woman told us one had snapped her glasses in half like a rebellious teenager. Worth every rupiah of the ticket.

We didn't have a single bad meal in Ubud — breakfast at Milk & Madu, and a rooftop dinner at Cantina with a temple lit up in the distance. Ubud is "peaceful busy": lots of movement, but everyone's calm and in a good mood, locals and visitors blended together. It's the one we're already planning to go back to.

Sanur: the calm one nobody talks about (3 nights)

Sanur was the wildcard. When you research Bali you see Canggu, Ubud, Uluwatu — and almost nothing about Sanur. It runs at a completely different speed: quiet, unbothered, an older crowd of retirees and families, people who aren't here to be seen. It's an east-facing coast, so it's a sunrise beach rather than sunset, and it feels like the Bali people describe from before the boom. Fittingly, this is actually where it all began — Bali's first hotels went up here in the 1950s.

The signature quirk is a mall right on the beach — a genuinely modern one with a grocery store, a movie theater, and international brands — opening straight onto a long boardwalk that runs the length of the sand. That boardwalk is the best of Sanur: separated walking and bike paths, resorts and locally owned warungs side by side, colorful traditional outrigger boats pulled up on the sand, and day beds you can rent for a few dollars.

We'll be honest about the beach itself: brown natural sand, shallow and calm, lovely in stretches — and one section near the warungs where we sat had a line of plastic washed up that hadn't been cleaned. (It was noticeably clearer the next day; likely tied to swell from recent offshore earthquakes.) We'd planned to ferry over to Nusa Penida from here, but with tsunami warnings around at the time we decided against the water crossing.

Our villa was a few minutes from the beach at $60 a night, with the classic open-air Bali bathroom. Verdict: we loved Sanur for what it is — the "old Bali" feel, the warungs on the sand, the easy pace — but it's probably a once-is-enough for us, unless we're overnighting before an island ferry. Great for retirees, families, and anyone who wants Bali without the Canggu energy.

Uluwatu: the cliffs (5 nights)

Uluwatu sits on the Bukit Peninsula at the southern tip of the island, and the first thing that caught us off guard was the terrain — away from the water it's genuinely hilly, rising and falling in ways the postcards never show. But the cliffs are why you come, and the views are staggering.

We spent an evening at Single Fin, the clifftop bar that grew out of an old surfers' hangout — bar stools right on the edge, surfers working the break below, a frozen spicy-mango margarita, and a DJ as the sun dropped. That's the Uluwatu experience in one spot.

The catch: most beaches here demand a serious walk down and a steeper climb back up. At Nyang Nyang, Lakai and I ended up paying a scooter taxi to haul us back to the top. Shayna's foot was still healing, so the stair-and-cliff beaches were out for her — worth knowing if anyone in your group has mobility limits. The one that worked for everyone was Dreamland: easy access, a small entry fee, and finally the white-sand-and-clear-water beach Bali is famous for. It was our favorite of the trip.

The town splits into the up-and-coming main Uluwatu strip and the Padang Padang area, which mercifully has actual sidewalks. Food again was excellent everywhere — Suka Espresso, another Milk & Madu, and Lola's Cantina Mexicana (order the buffalo cauliflower if you like real heat). One warning that's very real: the monkeys near the Uluwatu cliffs will steal anything loose — we watched one make off with a tourist's phone. Keep your gear zipped away.

Uluwatu felt like Canggu's replacement — more crowds, more construction, a place being built into the next big thing right in front of you. It's spread out and hilly, and we missed the ancient stone architecture that made Ubud and even Sanur feel rooted. It wasn't our favorite area overall, but for surfers and sunset-chasers it's hard to beat.

How we stayed connected the whole trip

We get asked about this constantly, so here's exactly how it worked. Across all four areas — plus the Kuala Lumpur layover on the way in — we never once bought a local SIM, hunted for airport WiFi, or lost service crossing between regions. Everything ran on Holafly, which we've traveled on for four years.

Our setup: Shayna and I were on Holafly Plans, which covers 160+ destinations on a single eSIM — including Vietnam where we were based, Malaysia where we transited, and Indonesia. Lakai had his own phone running the Asia regional eSIM, so he was connected the moment we landed too. If you're only going to Bali, a single Indonesia destination eSIM does the job; if you're threading through Southeast Asia, the Asia regional eSIM covers the whole route on one purchase; and if you live abroad or travel continuously like us, Plans is the better fit (it comes in a 25 GB tier or a fully unlimited tier, and it carries over as you move between destinations).

What we actually used it for: Grab, constantly — it doesn't work without data, and it's how we got everywhere cheaply. Google Maps, which was essential in Uluwatu where the roads down to the beaches look flat on the map and absolutely are not. Google Translate here and there (most people in Bali speak great English, but it's handy). And sharing — Instagram, TikTok, YouTube — without watching a data meter. At one villa the WiFi was too weak to be useful, so I leaned on the Holafly data to upload our footage to the cloud instead. We had a strong, stable 4G/5G signal at every stop across the island.

This matches what we hear from other long-term travelers online too: the recurring theme is that a reliable travel eSIM removes the single most stressful part of arriving somewhere new, and that not having to think about connectivity is worth more than shaving a few dollars off the cheapest possible plan.

The safety net: Holafly's Always On gives you 1 GB of free backup data every 30 days in 150 destinations, included with every eSIM, for as long as you keep the profile installed. If your flight gets delayed a day past your plan — exactly the kind of thing that happens on a long-layover return like ours — you're still covered for Maps, WhatsApp, and a Grab. It's personal-device only (no hotspot on the backup data), but as a just-in-case it's genuinely reassuring.

If you want the full plan-by-plan breakdown — destination vs. regional vs. Plans, what each costs, and which one fits your trip — we keep that current in our guide to every Holafly plan type, and the complete review lives in our main Holafly discount and review page.

The discount: our code THEDUFRESNES saves 5% on destination and regional eSIMs (that's the one Lakai used), 10% on monthly Plans, up to 20% on quarterly Plans, and up to 30% on annual Plans — that's Holafly's own 20% annual promotion stacked with our 10% code. It has unlimited uses and applies to every purchase.

Discount code THEDUFRESNES 5% off eSIMs · 10% off monthly · up to 20% off quarterly · up to 30% off annual Plans Get Holafly

So, is Bali worth it in 2026?

We went in hearing it was overrated, ruined, and too expensive. It's none of those. Yes, it's busier and pricier than it was a decade ago — like everywhere — but the thing that makes Bali is the people, and the Balinese were the most genuinely warm, patient, welcoming hosts we've come across anywhere, despite the sheer volume of tourism. We didn't have a single bad meal in nearly three weeks, and each of the four areas gave us something completely different.

If we had to rank them for our own taste: Ubud stole it (nature, culture, the mix of ancient and modern), Dreamland in Uluwatu was the best beach, Canggu is the easy all-rounder, and Sanur is the calm escape. Next time we'd explore north Bali and get over to Nusa Penida — and sort the right visa in advance so we can bring the drone and the big camera.

Wherever you land, the one bit of prep we'd never skip is connectivity. Get your eSIM sorted before you fly, walk off the plane already online, and spend your energy on Bali instead of a SIM booth.

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