Lombok is Bali’s size with a tenth of the visitors, and its hotels are scattered accordingly: a surf town in the south, a 1990s resort strip in the west, hidden coves in the south-east, rice-terrace lodges under the volcano and the Gilis off the north-west tip....
The Gilis are three small islands off Lombok with no cars, no scooters and no hotel bigger than a village — which should make them boutique heaven. In practice the big names on Gili Trawangan run to 150 rooms, and the genuinely small places are easy to miss among the...
Seminyak is where Bali learned to be chic: the beach clubs, the restaurant street, the boutiques, the villa hotels behind high walls. It is also ten kilometres from the airport and, at rush hour, an hour and a half away. Choosing the right pocket of it is the...
Uluwatu is not a town. It is a loop of hamlets strung along the limestone cliffs of the Bukit peninsula — Bingin, Padang Padang, Balangan, Suluban, Ungasan — each with its own beach, its own surf break and its own idea of what a hotel should be. That geography is why...
Nusa Penida is twenty-five times the size of Lembongan, has no fast roads, and rewards anyone who stays the night: the day-trippers who queue at Kelingking from 9 am are all gone by five, and the sunrise at Diamond Beach belongs to the few hundred people sleeping on...
