Moving to Bali

From leozaza's photostream, Flickr Creative Commons

From leozaza's photostream, Flickr Creative Commons

When most people (outside of Australia) think of Bali, they tend to think of a tropical island paradise, dense with brightly-colored birds and laughing brown faces.  Maybe they think of Elizabeth Gilbert’s ubiquitous Eat, Pray, Love or Susan Golden Gelman’s Tales of a Female Nomad or a destination wedding.

In Australia, many people pop over to Bali for a weekend since there are a variety of activities to do and there are many cheap hotels in Bali available.  It’s where teenagers go on spring break, and college students go to get trashy tattoos and full body massages (so, also spring break).  Everyone’s been to Bali, and they all have an opinion: it’s overrun with drunken Australians, it’s super-duper touristy, it’s boring, it’s beautiful, it’s completely modernized, they don’t even have flush toilets.  Whatever it is, Bali has probably changed an awful lot over the years, and the idealized view we often see through the lens of the guidebooks isn’t exactly the same but it is still a popular location to visit.

Enter The Escape Artist, and a useful article on moving to Bali, including some relatively solid facts on what to expect when you get there. Internet service? Yes, theoretically. Electricity…well, if you want to pay for it, and pay a lot. An associated article by the same author, called So You Want To Retire in Paradise, discusses cyclone season on a tropical island, whether or not you can get your internet connection to work (somewhat necessary for those of us with remote jobs that we proudly can do “anywhere”), and moving to Pakistan.

The rest of the Escape Artist website also has loads of interesting articles about living the expat life in other oceanic paradises (the Cook Islands, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, etc.) and some excellent hard information. Remember: things can look so good on paper, and so potentially bad when you get there.

Posted by | Comments (2)  | April 6, 2010
Category: General


2 Responses to “Moving to Bali”

  1. Rebecca Says:

    Great article. Sometimes people think relocating to another spot in the world is easy. That is until they get down to the “nitty gritty” of actually moving. Paradise may not be paradise after all or it may cost more than expected. Do your homework before you move so you know what you’re getting yourself into before you pack your bags.