I almost didn’t go. The whole place felt overrun with influencer content and I figured I’d seen enough of it on my feed. But a cheap flight and a long weekend pushed me into it — and I came back genuinely grateful I didn’t let the algorithm talk me out of it.
Sidemen was the call
Forget Ubud. Sidemen valley is everything Ubud wants to be — rice terraces, zero selfie sticks, local warungs charging actual prices. I paid $14 a night for a room with a rice paddy view and woke up to roosters and temple bells. It felt like a completely different country to the Canggu I’d been scrolling past for years.
The food in Amed
I don’t have strong feelings about fish normally. But I ate grilled fish on the beach in Amed that made me reconsider my whole stance on it. Caught that morning, cooked over coconut husks, eaten at a plastic table with sand between my toes. Total cost: about four bucks. I went back three nights running.
What I got wrong
I booked too many things in advance. Half of what I planned I skipped because I found better stuff just wandering around. Bali rewards not having a plan. Book the flight, get there, figure it out on the ground. That’s where the good stuff is.