In the summer of 2012, the Michael W Travels family visited Bali as part of a trip to Southeast Asia. Our time on Bali counts as our visit to Indonesia towards my 100 countries visited.
Lonely Planet mentions that, “when it comes to visiting Indonesia, travelers tend to favor Bali.”
While we didn’t find the beaches on Bali to be great, we loved visiting temples around the islands, seeing mask carvers at work and enjoyed some pretty tasty food.
With Bali being so popular, the country is now looking to create 10 new Balis to increase tourism to other parts of the country.
Indonesia has 18,307 islands (thanks LP for that stat), so I’d expect the country will have a lot of options to choose from for this ambitious project.
The 10 New Balis plan “includes upgrading provincial airports, the construction of new amenities and improving access to the chosen destinations.”
Here are the destinations selected:
- Lombok Mandalika, Nusa Tenggara
- Labuan Bajo, Nusa Tenggara
- Borobudur Temple, Java
- Bromo Tengger Semeru, Java
- Tanjung Lesung Beach, Java
- Lake Toba, North Sumatra
- Thousand Islands, Jakarta
- Tanjung Kelayang Beach, Banten
- Wakatobi, North Maluku
- Morotai Island, North Maluku
During our trip to Bali I had hoped to also visit Lombok and Java but it didn’t work out. With these new initiatives, it should be easier to do so in the future. If not, I wouldn’t mind spending time on Bali again!
Find out more from Lonely Planet here.
Christian- I guess time will tell if Indonesia’s plan works. We wanted to visit Lombok but didn’t have time.
Jacob- I guess we’ll see!
Dream on Indonesia, not going to happen. I am very familiar with the country. The reason the other places will not be another Bali is because they do not have what Bali has: very warm friendly hospitable people and an amazing culture that the other places don’t have. The other places have nice scenery, but so do many other places in the world. Nice scenery by itself is not enough.
Interesting. The biggest problem that I can see is that Bali is pretty unique, so trying to duplicate it would require Hindu islands, and I believe Bali is the only one. My wife and I have visited Lombok a few times, and the experience was very different than Bali, and that’s an island that’s right next door and was previously controlled by Bali.
It seems like the Indonesian government is going with a shotgun approach when they should try to push hard on a lot fewer places, at least for now.