Arriving & Departing Denpasar, Bali

Saturday, 5 April 2025

I thought I’d added Bali to my ‘not going there again’ list, along with Israel and Saudi Arabia. I’m putting Bali on that list because the traffic is so absurdly intolerable and despite tourist money flooding in for decades the Indonesians have done nothing about it. Presumably all that Bali income has swished straight out of Bali on its way to the capital Jakarta. So there’s no mass-transit system to whisk you from Denpasar Airport past the beach strip (Kuta, Legian, Seminyak, Canggu) then through the capital Denpasar and up to the arty retreat of Ubud. Instead airport to Ubud can be a horrible two-hour nose-to-tail traffic jam.

Despite which I was back in Bali – Ubud and Seminyak – for 10 days in March, thanks to Singapore publisher and bookshop owner Eric Oey organising a birthday retreat which featured a round up of old Bali publishing hands.

▲ Here we are, me, then Bill Newlin (just retired CEO of Avalon Publishing which includes Moon Publications and Rick Steves Guides), Eric Oey (Periplus Publishing, 60-odd Periplus Bookshops in Indonesia and Japan specialists Tuttle Publishing), Bill Dalton (founder of Moon Publications and author of the iconic Indonesia Handbook), Chris Burt (Compass American Guides) and Hans Hofer (founder of Insight Guides, creator of Guide to Bali). I’ll post more on my Bali visit soon.

I spoke at the gathering about my numerous visits to Bali over the years, starting with Maureen and I arriving in Bali in 1972 when we travelled along the ‘hippie trail’ which took us from London to Sydney including a stop in Bali. Two years later we were back in Bali, this time travelling from Melbourne to Darwin by motorcycle and then island hopping to Bali via Portuguese and Indonesian Timor, Flores, Komodo, Sumbawa and Lombok, a trip which eventually led to the first edition of South-East Asia on a Shoestring.

In subsequent years there have been many return trips including one multi-stop journey which appeared in a magazine supplement to the 28 February 2025 issue of Australian Financial Review, sorry it’s behind a paywall.

▲ On that trip Yogyakarta-Denpasar was the 17th flight on my London-Melbourne odyssey and I boarded this Lion Air 737 for that flight.

▲ I’d deliberately flown with Lion Air because on one occasion a Lion Air 737 landing at Denpasar didn’t quite make it to the runway. Amazingly there were no fatalities and passengers were able to abandon their swamped aircraft and wade ashore directly to Kuta Beach.

▲ Visiting the wonderful Agung Rai Museum of Art in Ubud during my Bali visit I found this superb ‘Young Artist’ style depiction of that historic Lion Air landing by artist I Ketut Sadia.

▲ At the end of my stay Virgin Australia flew me back to Melbourne and soon after departing Denpasar the westward view across the Indian Ocean was terrific. I think I should send it to the Cloud Appreciation Society.