Bali for Repeat Visitors: 2 Day Plan
Two days for a repeat visit means skipping Ubud’s rice-terrace queues for the Sidemen valley and Amed’s black sand coast on Day 1, then driving back through the highlands past the UNESCO listed Jatiluwih terraces on Day 2. Nothing here repeats the Uluwatu Ubud circuit most first trips already cover.
For more time, the 3-day plan nests this exact route into a longer loop; the full week adds Nusa Penida and the north coast on top of it.
Book these before you go
- An Amed and east Bali day tour on GetYourGuide if you’d rather read on the way than drive it yourself
- A room in Amed on Booking.com , since the black sand coast has far fewer beds than the south and the decent ones go first
- A Jatiluwih and highlands day tour on Viator for Day 2, worth it if you want a driver who already knows the back roads around the terraces
| Day | Focus | Rough daily budget (IDR, excl. lodging) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sidemen valley, Tirta Gangga water palace, Amed coast | 300,000-500,000 |
| 2 | Jatiluwih Subak terraces, Pura Taman Ayun, drive south | 250,000-450,000 |
If your last trip predates 2024, two things changed. Entry is still a paid Visa on Arrival, applied for through the official evisa.imigrasi.go.id portal , roughly IDR 500,000 for 30 days and extendable once for the same fee again, never visa-free for most passports. And there is now a separate one-time Bali tourist levy of IDR 150,000, paid through the official Love Bali portal before or on arrival, by card, bank transfer, or Indonesia’s QRIS code, not cash-only. It has nothing to do with the visa fee; you pay both.
Day 1: Sidemen valley to the Amed coast
Leave the south or Ubud early and drive into the Sidemen valley, a rice-terrace corridor east of Ubud with a fraction of Tegallalang’s crowds and no tour buses idling at the viewpoint. Sidemen is also one of the few places left where you can watch arak actually get distilled, over wood fire, from fermented palm sap. That matters beyond novelty: Indonesia’s methanol poisoning deaths trace almost entirely to counterfeit bottled spirits sold cheap in tourist bars, not to arak you watched come off a still, so a taste here is the safer version of a drink that has killed people elsewhere on the island.
Continue on to Tirta Gangga, the water palace built in the 1940s by the last king of Karangasem, where stone stepping paths cross ponds full of koi. It’s a garden to wander for half an hour, not a temple, so no sarong is needed here. From there it’s a run down to the coast at Amed, a strip of black volcanic sand villages that never went the Kuta route. Snorkel or dive the USAT Liberty wreck at nearby Tulamben, a WWII cargo ship sitting in shallow water since a 1963 eruption pushed it off the beach, then watch the sunset from the sand with grilled fish for dinner. Stray dogs are common on this stretch of coast; keep your distance and get checked immediately if one bites or scratches, since rabies is present in Bali and not something to wait out.
Hire a car and driver for both days rather than a scooter. UK FCDO’s Indonesia safety advice is blunt about the scooter accident rate among tourists, and the mountain roads on Day 2 are worse than anything in the south; renting a bike without a valid motorcycle-endorsed International Driving Permit is also illegal here and voids most travel insurance if something goes wrong.
Day 2: Jatiluwih’s rice terraces, then south
From Amed, budget a genuinely long drive, well over two hours, across to Jatiluwih in the central highlands. It earns the detour: this is the actual UNESCO-listed component of the Cultural Landscape of Bali Province, the Subak System, inscribed in 2012 for the temple-run cooperative irrigation that has shaped these terraces for centuries. Tegallalang, which most first-timers already photographed on an earlier trip, is not part of that listing. Walk one of the marked paths through the paddies, get lunch at a warung overlooking the terraces, and take the UNESCO status as the reason this valley still looks the way it does rather than a footnote.
On the way back toward the south, stop at Pura Taman Ayun near Mengwi, the royal water temple that forms another piece of the same Subak inscription. A sarong and sash are required past the outer courtyard; both are usually available to borrow at the entrance. From there it’s a more direct run back to the south coast or the airport, closing the loop without retracing a single stop from a standard first Bali trip.
Do repeat visitors still owe the Bali tourist levy?
Yes. The IDR 150,000 levy applies per foreign visitor per visit, not per lifetime, so a second or third trip pays it again the same way a first one does. It’s paid once online via Love Bali and covers the entire stay, separate from the visa fee covered above.
Is Jatiluwih really the UNESCO site, not Tegallalang?
Yes. Jatiluwih is one of the named component areas inside the Cultural Landscape of Bali Province inscription; Tegallalang uses the same subak irrigation tradition but was never part of the World Heritage listing itself, whatever a caption online might imply.
When should this loop happen, and what about Nyepi?
Dry season, roughly April to October, makes the highland roads and the coast at Amed easier going; wet season, November to March, brings shorter but harder downpours and thinner crowds. If any part of a March trip lands near the 19th, check the date against Nyepi 2026: the whole island, airport included, shuts down for 24 hours and nothing moves, so don’t plan a flight or a drive around it.
Book the driver for both days as one job rather than two separate half-days; on a route this long, the savings and the flexibility to leave Jatiluwih ten minutes later than planned both come from having the same car waiting at Amed in the morning.