49 Fun Facts About Bali

Bali, far smaller than neighbouring Java, is the westernmost of which island group?

The Lesser Sunda Islands run east from Bali towards Timor, yet Bali is the odd one out: west of the deep Lombok Strait, its wildlife matches Java's, not its neighbours'.

What is the capital of Bali province?

Denpasar took over only after independence: the Dutch had governed Bali from Singaraja, a port on the opposite, northern coast.

Unlike mostly Hindu Bali, nearly nine in ten Indonesians follow which religion?

Islam is the faith of about 87% of Indonesians; Bali differs because Hindu nobles and priests took refuge there when Java's courts converted in the 16th century.

Beans for Bali's kopi luwak coffee pass through which animal?

A civet eats the coffee cherries and the beans are collected from its droppings; a 2016 study of 16 Bali plantations found the wild-caught civets kept in poor cages.

Bali's tallest statue, unveiled in 2018, shows the god Vishnu riding which mythical bird?

Garuda carries Vishnu in the 121-metre monument, which took 28 years to finish as money ran short and building stopped and started.

Which Bali temple stands on the edge of a high sea cliff near the island's southern tip?

Uluwatu's macaques snatch sunglasses and phones, then trade them back for food; researchers found the trick is learned and handed down within the temple's troops.

What are canang sari, which Balinese Hindus set out on shrines and pavements every day?

Palm-leaf offering trays are folded fresh each day and filled with flowers, rice and small change to thank the gods, then set down on footpaths and outside shops as well as in shrines.

Bali's most important temple, Pura Besakih, sits high on the slopes of which mountain?

Mount Agung's 1963 lava flows narrowly missed Pura Besakih, and many Balinese took the escape as a sign from the gods.

The 1963 eruption of Bali's highest volcano had what consequence for many Balinese?

Moved to other Indonesian islands under the state's transmigration scheme: the eruption had killed more than a thousand people, laid waste to farmland and left tens of thousands homeless.

Which river, the longest on Bali, is famous for its white-water rafting?

The Ayung's rapids rate a mild class II to III, so first-timers can ride it; it runs from Bali's northern mountains down to the sea at Sanur.

Beaches on Bali's south coast tend to be white; those in the north and west are typically what colour?

Black sand is ground-down volcanic rock, which is why Bali's quiet northern and western beaches look nothing like the pale southern strands on the postcards.

The Lombok Strait, east of Bali, marks which famous biogeographical boundary?

The Wallace Line follows a channel so deep that it stayed open water when ice-age seas fell, so Asian animals could walk as far as Bali but never on to Lombok.

Which critically endangered white bird, poached for the cage-bird trade, lives wild only on Bali?

The Bali myna was trapped until, by a 2020 estimate, fewer than 50 adults were left in the wild; captive-bred birds are now released to keep the population going.

Tigers once lived on Bali and two other Indonesian islands, but which is the only one where they survive?

Sumatra is their last confirmed refuge: Bali's last known tiger was shot in 1937, and Java's had vanished by the 1980s, so Indonesia's only tigers now are critically endangered.

Bali sits inside which marine region, home to about three-quarters of the world's coral species?

The Coral Triangle also shelters six of the world's seven sea-turtle species, which is why reefs around Bali draw divers from across the globe.

Which Javanese empire founded a colony on Bali in 1343?

Majapahit's prime minister Gajah Mada led the conquest, defeating Bali's king at Bedulu. The court culture he planted outlasted the empire, which fell within two centuries.

What is a 'puputan', as carried out by the royal court of Badung when Dutch troops reached its palace in 1906?

Ritual mass suicide: rather than surrender, the raja led his court out of the palace and into the Dutch guns. A central square in Bali's capital is now named for the puputan.

Which blood sport, banned as gambling in Indonesia, survives at Balinese temple festivals as an offering to evil spirits?

Cockfighting survives as tabuh rah, 'pouring blood': the losing bird's blood is the offering that drives off the spirits. Matches staged purely for the betting are the ones the law forbids.

Which newly married anthropologists spent the late 1930s photographing and filming village life on Bali?

Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson married on the way out in 1936, then used still and cine cameras on a scale no fieldworker had tried, a method that became visual anthropology.

Why did Japan seize Bali in 1942, though it was not an original target?

Bad weather kept grounding its bombers on newly won airfields elsewhere, so Japan grabbed Bali's drier airstrip, which put the Allied naval base at Surabaya within range.

Bali's international airport is named after which Balinese national hero?

I Gusti Ngurah Rai led Bali's armed resistance to the returning Dutch and was killed with his men in a last stand at Marga in 1946; Indonesia later made him a National Hero.

Which Indonesian president, son of a Balinese mother, built a palace above the Tirta Empul springs?

Sukarno, son of a Javanese schoolteacher and his Balinese wife, spoke Balinese, spent much time on the island and made his hilltop palace a stop for visiting state guests.

An estimated 80,000 Balinese, about one in twenty, died in a 1965–66 purge of suspected what?

Communists, real and suspected, were hunted down after a failed coup in Jakarta was blamed on their party. The purge swept the army's General Suharto into power, where he stayed for three decades.

What is subak, the Balinese tradition listed by UNESCO in 2012?

A rice-irrigation cooperative, run from water temples since the 9th century; UNESCO credits its shared, egalitarian water rules with making the Balinese the most prolific rice growers in the archipelago.

What is Nyepi?

Bali's Hindu new year day of silence shuts the whole island for 24 hours: no work, travel, fire or lights, tourists included, and even the international airport closes.

Who are the only people allowed on the streets during Nyepi?

Pecalang, traditional security men in chequered sarongs, patrol to keep lights off and streets clear; the only others let through are ambulances and women in labour.

Large colourful monster sculptures paraded on the eve of Nyepi are called what?

Ogoh-ogoh look ancient but became a staple of the parade only in the 1980s; village youths spend weeks building the demons, carry them through the streets, then burn them to drive off evil.

Which Balinese festival, when ancestral spirits are said to visit their old homes, celebrates the victory of dharma over adharma?

Galungan comes round every 210 days and lasts ten, until the spirits go home; families greet them with tall, curved bamboo poles hung with offerings along every street.

Balinese children are traditionally named according to what?

Birth order: a first child is typically Wayan, then Made, Nyoman and Ketut, for boys and girls alike, and a fifth starts the cycle again, often as 'Wayan Balik', or Wayan again.

The Kecak dance, performed by a circle of chanting men, is based on which epic?

The Ramayana supplies the plot, but the show is no age-old rite: German painter Walter Spies helped turn a village trance chorus into a staged drama in the 1930s.

The chanting men of Bali's kecak play an army of which animals?

Monkeys: the bare-chested chorus chatters 'chak-chak-chak' as the monkey army of the god Hanuman, and its voices are the only music, with no instruments at all.

What is Balinese percussion orchestra music called?

Gamelan, an orchestra of gongs and tuned metal bars struck with mallets, so gripped the Canadian composer Colin McPhee on a record that he moved to Bali in the 1930s to study it.

Which meat, unusual in the rest of Indonesia, is common in Balinese dishes such as babi guling?

Pork is the point of babi guling: a whole piglet stuffed with spices and turned over a fire until the skin crackles. Once kept for ceremonies, it is now sold at stalls across Bali.

Which town in Bali's central foothills is regarded as the island's cultural centre and arts hub?

Ubud's royal family invited foreign painters to settle there from the late 1920s, and much of the town still seems to consist of artists' workshops and galleries.

Which 2006 memoir, filmed in 2010 with Julia Roberts, sends its divorced author to Italy, India and finally Bali?

Eat, Pray, Love gives each country a verb: Elizabeth Gilbert ate her way round Italy, prayed in an Indian ashram, and on Bali fell for the Brazilian businessman she later married.

Which Bali sea temple stands on an offshore rock that visitors can walk to only at low tide?

The sea that isolates Tanah Lot also eats it: the crumbling base had to be rebuilt with Japanese help, so part of the rock in every photo is artificial.

Which Bali beach resort's nightclub strip was bombed in October 2002, killing 202 people?

Kuta's dead came from more than 20 countries: a bomb inside one packed bar and a van bomb outside another went off seconds apart, and a carved memorial now stands on the site of one.

Why are a Balinese teenager's upper teeth filed level in a traditional coming-of-age ceremony?

To tame vices such as anger and jealousy: pointed canines are seen as animal-like, so six upper teeth are filed flat, after which the teenager counts as an adult.

The 2022 G20 summit in Bali was held in which resort area?

Nusa Dua was purpose-built from the 1970s as an enclave of five-star resorts, and everyone entering passes a manned security gate, which is handy when the guests are world leaders.

Which country sent the most foreign tourists to Bali in 2025, almost one in every four?

Australia sent 1.63 million of Bali's 6.95 million foreign visitors that year, nearly three times second-placed India's total; Japan, the runner-up until 2011, had slipped to tenth.

Which project, opened in 1966 with Japanese war-reparation money, launched Bali's mass tourism?

The Bali Beach Hotel in Sanur rose ten storeys, and the backlash was swift: a 1971 rule capped later buildings on the island at 15 metres, about the height of a coconut palm.

Who are the Bali Aga, the people of secluded villages such as Tenganan?

The island's original inhabitants kept their own customs when Java's Hindu court culture swept Bali; in Tenganan, anyone who marries outside the village has to leave.

A Balinese temple's tall shrine to the supreme god, held to be beyond all thought, is crowned with what?

An empty throne tops the shrine: Sanghyang Widhi Wasa is seen as unknowable, so worshippers face a vacant stone seat, while gods such as Vishnu and Shiva count as his manifestations.

Bali lies within sight of Java, so how do vehicles cross between the two islands?

A car ferry is still the only link: a bridge over the narrow strait has been proposed for decades but never built, partly because Balinese leaders fear it would dilute the island's culture.

Bali drew about six million foreign tourists in 2019, but how many came in the first ten months of 2021?

45 is the figure Bali's tourism office gave, the lowest it had ever recorded: the airport was shut to international flights, and nearly all of the few who came arrived by private yacht.

Which active Bali volcano rises from a vast caldera beside a crater lake?

Mount Batur's 1926 eruption overran the lake goddess's temple down in the crater with lava, so it was rebuilt high on the caldera rim, where it still stands.

Arabica coffee from which Bali highland area, known for its volcano views, won Indonesia's first geographical indication in 2008?

Kintamani's growers won the label in 2008, giving their beans the kind of legal name protection that champagne enjoys; the coffee is wet-processed by small farmers' cooperatives.

Which island off south-east Bali, by far the largest of a trio, is famed for manta-ray dives?

Nusa Penida doubles as a grooming stop: from July to October giant ocean sunfish visit its reefs so that smaller fish can clean off their parasites.

Which town on Bali's north coast, near Singaraja, is known for dolphin sightings?

Lovina's boatmen head out at dawn each morning to find the pods, on a north coast whose calm waters are a world away from the crashing surf of Bali's south.