Guides to Sidemen

Sidemen or Ubud

It is the question people ask before their first trip east, and the honest answer is that it is not really a choice. Here is how the two actually differ, and how to decide if you genuinely only have time for one.

Three days in Sidemen

Everybody who has been here says three nights minimum, and nobody says what fills them. This is the shape three days takes once people stop trying to fit the rest of the island into them.

Things to do in Sidemen

Sidemen has very little to do and that is why people come. Here is all of it, sorted by how far you have to go, including the honest list of what the valley does not have.

The best time to visit Sidemen

Every page says April to October, which is the answer for the whole island and does not describe this valley. What changes here month to month is smaller than you would think, and the terraces ignore the calendar completely.

Getting around Sidemen

Getting to the valley is a solved problem. Getting around once you are here is the part nobody plans, and it is the most common way a trip to Sidemen goes slightly wrong.

The weaving in Sidemen

Plenty of places in Bali have rice terraces. Almost nowhere still has this. What endek and songket actually are, how to visit a family workshop without turning it into a performance, and how to tell the real cloth from the printed kind.

Bali airport (DPS) to Sidemen

Seventy kilometres east, and anywhere from two hours to three depending entirely on what time you land. Why the evening is the worst moment to leave the airport, what a car costs, and how to have one waiting when you walk out.

Ubud to Sidemen

Thirty-five kilometres that drive like eighty, dropping into and climbing back out of four or five river valleys in a row. One of the better roads in Bali, what a car costs, and the stops worth making on the way.

Sidemen to Amed

An hour and a half round the shoulder of Agung and through Amlapura, to black sand and the best diving on this side of the island. What the road is like, what a car costs, and why there is nothing scheduled to put you on instead.

Sidemen to Padang Bai

An hour down to the ferry port, and the one leg where the timing matters more than the driving. How early to be there for a fast boat or the public ferry, what a car costs, and what the port is actually like.