Bali Trivia
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49 free Bali trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
This Bali trivia quiz covers Indonesia's Hindu island from the Blanjong pillar of 914 CE to the overtourism debates of the 2020s. The early questions deal with geography and nature: where Bali sits among the Lesser Sunda Islands, the strait that marks the Wallace Line, Mount Agung and its 1963 eruption, the black-sand and white-sand coasts, the extinct Bali tiger and the endemic Bali myna, and the coral reefs of the Coral Triangle. The middle section covers history and culture: the Majapahit colony, the Portuguese and Dutch, the puputan mass suicides of 1906, the Western artists and anthropologists of the 1930s, the Japanese occupation, the hero I Gusti Ngurah Rai, and the province's creation in 1958. It then turns to religion and custom: Balinese Hinduism, the subak water temples that UNESCO listed in 2012, Nyepi's day of silence and its Ogoh-ogoh monsters, Galungan, the birth-order names Wayan, Made, Nyoman and Ketut, the Kecak monkey chant, gamelan and babi guling. The last questions cover the modern island: Denpasar and Ubud, Kuta and the 2002 bombings, Ngurah Rai airport, Eat Pray Love, the G20 summit at Nusa Dua and the visitor numbers. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on Bali and its landmarks, festivals and history.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Bali, far smaller than neighbouring Java, is the westernmost of which island group?
The Lesser Sunda Islands
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'.
Q 02What is the capital of Bali province?
Denpasar
Denpasar took over only after independence: the Dutch had governed Bali from Singaraja, a port on the opposite, northern coast.
Q 03Unlike mostly Hindu Bali, nearly nine in ten Indonesians follow which religion?
Islam
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.
Q 04Beans for Bali's kopi luwak coffee pass through which animal?
Civet
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.
Q 05Bali's tallest statue, unveiled in 2018, shows the god Vishnu riding which mythical bird?
Garuda
Garuda carries Vishnu in the 121-metre monument, which took 28 years to finish as money ran short and building stopped and started.
Q 06Which Bali temple stands on the edge of a high sea cliff near the island's southern tip?
Uluwatu
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.
Q 07What are canang sari, which Balinese Hindus set out on shrines and pavements every day?
Palm-leaf offering trays
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.
Q 08Bali's most important temple, Pura Besakih, sits high on the slopes of which mountain?
Mount Agung
Mount Agung's 1963 lava flows narrowly missed Pura Besakih, and many Balinese took the escape as a sign from the gods.
Q 09The 1963 eruption of Bali's highest volcano had what consequence for many Balinese?
Moved to other Indonesian islands
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.
Q 10Which river, the longest on Bali, is famous for its white-water rafting?
Ayung
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.
Q 11Beaches on Bali's south coast tend to be white; those in the north and west are typically what colour?
Black
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.
Q 12The Lombok Strait, east of Bali, marks which famous biogeographical boundary?
The Wallace Line
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.
Q 13Which critically endangered white bird, poached for the cage-bird trade, lives wild only on Bali?
The Bali myna
Q 21Bali's international airport is named after which Balinese national hero?
I Gusti Ngurah Rai
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.
Q 22Which Indonesian president, son of a Balinese mother, built a palace above the Tirta Empul springs?
Sukarno
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.
Q 23An estimated 80,000 Balinese, about one in twenty, died in a 1965–66 purge of suspected what?
Communists
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.
Q 14Tigers once lived on Bali and two other Indonesian islands, but which is the only one where they survive?
Sumatra
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.
Q 15Bali sits inside which marine region, home to about three-quarters of the world's coral species?
Coral Triangle
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.
Q 16Which Javanese empire founded a colony on Bali in 1343?
Majapahit
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.
Q 17What is a 'puputan', as carried out by the royal court of Badung when Dutch troops reached its palace in 1906?
Ritual mass suicide
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.
Q 18Which blood sport, banned as gambling in Indonesia, survives at Balinese temple festivals as an offering to evil spirits?
Cockfighting
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.
Q 19Which newly married anthropologists spent the late 1930s photographing and filming village life on Bali?
Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson
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.
Q 20Why did Japan seize Bali in 1942, though it was not an original target?
Bad weather kept grounding its bombers
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.
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.
Q 24What is subak, the Balinese tradition listed by UNESCO in 2012?
A rice-irrigation cooperative
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.
Q 25What is Nyepi?
Bali's Hindu new year day of silence
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.
Q 26Who are the only people allowed on the streets during Nyepi?
Pecalang, traditional security men
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.
Q 27Large colourful monster sculptures paraded on the eve of Nyepi are called what?
Ogoh-ogoh
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.
Q 28Which Balinese festival, when ancestral spirits are said to visit their old homes, celebrates the victory of dharma over adharma?
Galungan
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.
Q 29Balinese children are traditionally named according to what?
Birth order
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.
Q 30The Kecak dance, performed by a circle of chanting men, is based on which epic?
The Ramayana
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.