Bali - which has more than half the hotels in all of Indonesia - offers the best and widest range of accommodation of any region of Indonesia catering to the international tourist. They are ranging from international five-star hotels with extravagant suites costing US$600 per day to simple, homey, family-run inns with a thin mattress for a bed and a single hanging light bulb for less than five dollars per night.

All these hotels have convention facilities, swimming pools, sports grounds and a selection of restaurants, bars, nightclubs, or discotheques and beachfronts. There are also smaller cottage style hotels with modern amenities. Most unique is the long established. Above hotels and those with two stars have air conditioning, attached baths, telephones and TV.

Elsewhere in Indonesia, someone is always inviting you home to meet his or her family. But this is not the case on Bali where accommodations are so cheap and plentiful. Families are not permitted to put you up as long as there’s a hotel or home-stay in the same village. At the low end of the price scale, Bali offers some of the best value accommodations in all of Asia.

There is a full range of accommodations to fit every budget-from lowly ‘losmen’ to five-star hotels. Hotel associations are cracking down on the heretofore-loose use of the term, and now won’t let just anyone call himself or herself a “hotel” without meeting certain standards. If the front desk clerk speaks English to you, and the tariff as well as all the prices in the hotel gift shop are given in dollars, you’re probably in a hotel. They’ll take either ‘rupiah’ or dollars at a bad rate.

In general, in the smaller, family-run home-stays of 10-15 rooms you come into more contact with the Balinese way of life than in the large, efficient yet impersonal hotel properties with their huge wings and tower blocks of rooms, run more like luxurious high-rise apartment buildings.

Among the 4,000 hotels on the island you’ll find Japanese hotels, Aussie hotels, five-star properties, bamboo and thatch hippie hotels, surfing hotels, dive ‘losmen’, hotels that cater to families, hotels that cater only to package tourists, hotels that cater to honeymooners and singles, hotels specifically designed for long-term stays.

You can even stay in a colonial-era hotel, the newly remodeled and modernized Natour Bali Hotel of Denpasar, which retains much of its distinct glamour and charm. Another historical art-deco relic, dating from the Sukarno era, is the grand old Bali Beach Hotel of Sanur.

Many hotels are using their money to build new units rather than repair the old, and Bali is so furiously building hotels in towns and villages all over the island now that at times it feels like you’re vacationing on a construction site. Building freezes are periodically announced, yet for unexplained reasons, they’re only partially enforced.

Arriving
At Denpasar airport there are accommodations service desks in both the domestic and international arrival lounges. These dispense excellent information and the staff will even call a hotel of your choice and order transportation, which is usually free, though you could end up paying for it. To the Four Seasons, it can cost Rp 40,000. Find out who pays before you commit.

As you emerge from either the domestic and international terminals at Bali’s airport, drivers or their assistants will be waiting there to escort guests to the hotel of their choice. They’ll be holding up hotel signs; if you have already decided to stay at a certain hotel, take advantage of the free ride.

Hotel touts are another excellent source of recommendations. When arriving at the airport, you’ll be approached by locals with offers of a room. These could be quite good, newly opened, and eager to please. If you’re approached by hotel reps, all competing for your patronage, this is an excellent time to ask for a discount. Many home-stay owners (like Pande in Peliatan) even meet overland travelers at Denpasar’s Kereneng Bus Station, though most (around 25) wait for travelers to arrive at Batubulan station.

Baggage Storage
Virtually any hotel, no matter what the class, will offer to store your luggage in special storage rooms while you’re traveling around Bali or to other islands of Indonesia. In lower-priced home-stays, the owner will even store your gear in the family quarters with the tacit understanding that you’ll stay there again upon your return