Where can you find quiet in Bali?

Bali receives millions of visitors a year and almost all of them stay in the same strip: Seminyak to Canggu, the Bukit, and Ubud. The island is 5,780 square kilometres. The rest of it is empty.

The quiet coasts

Amed and the northeast. Black sand coves, fishing boats, shore diving on the Liberty wreck, sunrise over Rinjani, and almost no one.

Pemuteran and the northwest. A quiet village, a house reef, Menjangan snorkelling, and the national park.

Lovina and the north. Calm water, cheap rooms, dolphin boats and a coast that tourism largely bypassed.

Medewi and Balian, the west. Long left-hand waves, black sand, surf camps and villages.

Tabanan's coast, Pasut, Kelating, Yeh Gangga: empty beaches within an hour of Canggu.

Candidasa and the east, faded, calm and inexpensive, with Tenganan village nearby.

The quiet interior

Sidemen. Rice terraces under Agung, a river valley, a handful of beautiful small hotels and nothing else.

Munduk and the lakes. Cool, misty, waterfalls, plantations, walking trails.

Jatiluwih and Batukaru. UNESCO terraces and a forest temple, with a fraction of Tegalalang's visitors.

Pupuan and the west highlands. Coffee and clove country, spectacular roads, no tourism.

Tegallalang's back roads, twenty minutes from the famous terraces and completely different.

Kintamani's far side, around Lake Batur's eastern shore and the villages of Trunyan and Songan.

Quiet islands

Nusa Ceningan, and the northern half of Nusa Penida, once the day boats leave at four.

Gili Meno, which is nearly silent.

Menjangan, which has no accommodation on it at all.

Quiet inside the busy areas

Even in the south, quiet exists at the right time and place:

• Any famous site before 8am.
• Nyang Nyang beach, which the staircase protects.
• The inland lanes at Tumbak Bayuh and Munggu, five minutes from Canggu's traffic.
• Sanur's beach path at 6am.
• The Campuhan ridge at sunrise.
• February, when the whole island empties.

What quiet costs you

Fewer restaurants, simpler accommodation, longer drives, limited medical facilities, unreliable ATMs, and nothing much to do after dark. That is the trade, and for a lot of people it is the better half of the deal.

It also costs less. Accommodation and food in the north, east and west are substantially cheaper than in the south for equivalent quality.

Building a trip around it

Three or four nights in the south for the arrival and the food, then a week moving between two or three of the quiet places, then a last night near the airport. That is the trip returning visitors design, and almost nobody does it first time round.

How to find quiet on your own

Drive twenty minutes further than the place everyone recommends. The beach past the famous one is usually empty.

Turn inland. Almost all of Bali's tourism is within three kilometres of the coast or inside Ubud. The rice-field lanes behind any busy area are silent.

Go at dawn. The same place at 6.30am and at 11am are different destinations.

Ask a driver where they take their own family on a day off. The answer is never on a list.

Stay somewhere with nothing around it for two nights of a longer trip. Sidemen, Amed, Munduk and Pemuteran all cost less than the south and offer the thing the south has lost.

A quiet week

Two nights Sidemen, two nights Amed, two nights Munduk, one night near the airport. Seven days, no crowds, minimal driving between them, and roughly half what the same week costs in Seminyak.