Beyond Ubud: Sidemen Valley, Munduk Waterfalls, Tegalalang Rice Terraces and the South Coast

The road climbs out of Ubud through a wall of bamboo and, a few minutes later, opens onto a sea of green where the only sounds are water sliding through irrigation channels and a rooster catching the morning sun on its back. This is where the real Bali starts — past the yoga studios and the coffee scrolls, in valleys where rice farmers still nod at strangers and the volcanoes pretend not to be watching.

We spent five August days in 2019 as a family of four with an Ubud villa in Penestanan as our base, and we used it the way you'd use a low chair on a porch — a place to come back to. From there, we did five day-trips: Sidemen Valley to the east, Munduk's waterfalls up north, Tanah Lot and Uluwatu on the south coast, and a closer loop through Tegalalang and Tirta Empul. The kids were small enough to nap in the car between stops, big enough to climb temple steps without complaining (much). We rotated between a hired driver with a comfortable car and a couple of scooters when distances were short. It worked, and a few things we'd do differently next time.

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How We Did Day-Trips From Ubud

Two transport modes carried our week, and the right call depended on distance.

For anything over an hour from Ubud — Sidemen, Munduk, the south coast — we hired a driver with an air-conditioned car. The going rate in 2019 was around 600,000–900,000 IDR per day (roughly $50–60 USD), with the driver waiting at each stop and dropping us back at the villa in the evening. For a family of four with a folded stroller, snacks, and one kid prone to motion sickness, this was money well spent. Our villa host arranged it, but every café and warung in Penestanan has a cousin who drives.

Where to base for the Bali day-trip belt: Ubud (and especially Penestanan) sits roughly in the middle of the loop: 90 minutes to Tanah Lot west, 90 minutes to Sidemen east, 2 hours up to Munduk, 2 hours down to Uluwatu. If you'd rather not commute, a Sidemen night or a Munduk night cuts those drives in half. Map covers all four day-trip hubs.

For short hops — Tegalalang, Tirta Empul, into central Ubud for dinner — we rented scooters at 70,000–100,000 IDR per day (about $5–7). One adult, one child, full helmets, slow speeds, and only on quieter back roads. We never put two kids on one scooter and never let the family pile onto a single bike, which is the local way but absolutely not the visitor way.

If we redid this trip tomorrow, we'd start every long day at 6:30 AM and protect a slow afternoon back at the pool. The heat at midday is real, and small humans wilt fast.

Sidemen Valley — Quiet East of Ubud

Sidemen sits about ninety minutes east of Ubud, and the drive is worth slowing down for: narrow roads, walled villages, kids waving from scooter footrests. When the road finally drops into the valley, the view stops being landscape and becomes amphitheatre — rice terraces falling away in green steps with the silhouette of Mt Agung doing the heavy lifting on the horizon.

We parked near a small warung above the village and walked a loop through the paddies. There's a path that follows the irrigation channels down to the river and back up the other side; it's marked just enough that you can't really get lost, and farmers will sometimes wave you through their fields. The kids found a bronze statue of a wild boar at one of the turns and refused to leave until they'd posed with it from every angle.

Pack water and snacks — there's not much in the way of shops along the loop — and aim for late morning rather than midday. We were back in the car by 1 PM, sweaty and pleased, and the kids slept the whole way home.

Munduk Waterfalls and Highland Cool

Munduk is the antidote to coastal Bali. The drive north climbs steadily for two and a half hours through clove and coffee plantations until you're suddenly at 800 metres of elevation, the air cools by ten degrees, and the rice fields tilt at angles that look almost theatrical.

We went straight to Banyumala Twin Waterfalls. The walk down from the parking area takes about fifteen minutes on stone steps that are slippery in the wet season but were fine in August. The reward is a pair of cascades dropping into a pool wide enough to swim in, surrounded by ferns and mossy rock. We didn't swim — the youngest wasn't keen on the cold — but we sat on a flat rock for half an hour and listened.

Later, from a ridge above the village, the rice terraces caught a light that begged for an aerial view.

Munduk is a long day-trip from Ubud — leave at 7 AM, plan to be back by 6 PM — but the temperature drop alone makes it worth it. Bring layers. We didn't, and shivered at the waterfall.

If you'd rather not drive yourself up to Munduk and find the trailheads in the rain (we did, and the signposting in English stops about 30 km out of Ubud), the Munduk Waterfalls + Twin Lakes + temple guided trek is the option we'd pick now — driver included, trail guide who actually knows which fork at Banyumala goes to the swimmable pool, and a stop at Ulun Danu Tamblingan on the way back which most DIY days skip.

Tanah Lot — Worth the Detour, Briefly

Tanah Lot is on every Bali postcard for a reason: a sea temple perched on a rock that becomes an island at high tide. It is also, by mid-morning, a wall of tour buses, selfie sticks, and a queue for the holy-water blessing that snakes past three stalls of branded sarongs.

The trick is to arrive early. We got there just after 7 AM, when the light was still soft and the temple grounds were occupied mainly by sweepers and a few photographers. By 9 AM the gates had filled, the parking lot had quadrupled, and we were already on our way to the next stop.

Forty-five minutes is enough. Walk the rim path, take the photo, watch one wave hit the rock, then go. Tanah Lot is a stop, not a destination.

For Tanah Lot specifically, the Tanah Lot Sunset + Kecak Fire Dance show ticket is the cleanest way to do it — temple entry and dance-floor seating are bundled (the Kecak stadium fills 90 minutes before sunset in dry season), so you don't end up choosing between a good photo angle and an actual seat for the show.

Uluwatu Temple at Sunset

Uluwatu, two hours south of Ubud on the Bukit Peninsula, is the opposite of a brief detour. The temple sits on a 70-metre limestone cliff above the Indian Ocean, and the Kecak fire dance in the amphitheatre below begins at 6 PM and ends just as the sun drops into the sea.

We bought tickets at the entrance an hour before the show and walked the cliff path first. The light at that time of day turns the limestone gold and the ocean a colour that doesn't really have a name. Then the warning: the monkeys at Uluwatu are notorious thieves. Sunglasses, phones, water bottles, hair ties — anything dangling will be off your person and up a tree in under three seconds. We watched a man lose his glasses, negotiate with a temple staffer who carries a bag of fruit for exactly this purpose, and get them back five minutes later. The kids found the whole thing both terrifying and delightful and held our hands without being asked, which was a first.

The Kecak performance — a chorus of seventy men chanting "cak-cak-cak" under torchlight, with a danced retelling of the Ramayana — is loud, theatrical and genuinely moving. Arrive 45 minutes early to get a seat with a sea view rather than the wall. Sarongs are provided at the entrance for free.

For Uluwatu, the Skip-the-line Uluwatu Temple + Kecak Fire Dance ticket is the version we'd book over the south-coast 9-hour bundle — same temple, same Kecak performance, but you skip the rushed Jimbaran-seafood leg that most combo tours tack on (dinner is fine, the rush isn't).

Tegalalang Rice Terraces and the Bali Swing

Tegalalang is the rice terrace everyone Instagrams, twenty minutes north of Ubud, and you have to make peace with that before you go. We arrived at 8 AM, paid the entry donation, and had the upper terraces almost to ourselves for the first half hour.

The terraces here use the subak system, a thousand-year-old cooperative water management that UNESCO recognised in 2012. From the air, the geometry is hypnotic.

A short walk uphill leads to the Bali Swing complex — a cluster of wooden platforms over a jungle ravine where, for around 35 USD per adult, you can be strapped into a swing and pushed out over the valley. The kids were too small for the highest swings, but the lower ones were perfectly fine, and our youngest came off grinning so hard her cheeks hurt. The whole place is built for photos, which we have mixed feelings about, but it is also genuinely fun and the view from the platforms is, undeniably, spectacular.

On the walk back to the car, the kids found another statue.

Tirta Empul Holy Spring

Tirta Empul, twenty minutes further north of Tegalalang, is a working temple where Balinese Hindus have come for purification rituals for over a thousand years. The central pool is fed by springs that bubble up through black sand, and a row of stone spouts lets pilgrims move from one to the next, dipping their heads under each in turn.

We didn't bathe — the queue was long and we weren't sure of the etiquette as a visiting family — but we walked the perimeter of the koi pond and watched. A small group sat on the ledge near the shrine, feet brushing the water, while orange and white koi the size of small dogs slid past underneath.

Sarongs are rented at the entrance (10,000 IDR or included in the entry fee depending on the year), and they're required for everyone, including kids. Shoulders covered, knees covered, no exceptions. The temple is busy by mid-morning, so arrive by 9 AM if you want to feel the quiet of the place.

Practical Tips

A few things that smoothed the week:

If you'd rather not stitch together drivers across five day-trips, a guided Ubud-based countryside day-tour can cover several of the stops above in one go — useful for the day you don't have the energy to negotiate your own logistics.

If you're doing more than two long day-trips from Ubud, locking a private driver via Discover Cars Bali before you arrive is usually cheaper than rebooking through the villa each time — fixed daily rate, same driver across days (which matters when kids get attached), and the price already includes the petrol-and-parking ambiguity most local quotes leave out.

- Pack patience and snacks: Bali distances look short on a map and are not on the ground. A 40 km drive can take two hours. Crackers, fruit, and a refillable water bottle per person made every long day-trip easier. - Crowds: Tanah Lot before 8 AM, Tegalalang before 9 AM, Uluwatu around 5 PM for the Kecak, Tirta Empul early. Munduk and Sidemen stay quiet most of the day. - Sarongs: Required at every temple. Most rentals are free or token-priced. Bring your own for repeat use and avoid the small daily friction. - Scooter safety with kids: One adult, one child, real helmets, back roads only, slow speeds. Never the whole family on one bike, no matter what the locals do. - Cash: ATMs exist in Ubud but get patchier in the highlands and the east. Carry enough rupiah for the day, especially for parking, temple donations, and small warungs. - Sun: The equatorial sun is no joke at altitude either. Hats and sunscreen even when the highland air feels cool.

More Family Travel Across Southeast Asia

If you're planning a longer loop through the region, these companion guides cover what we did in the rest of Indonesia and across the border into mainland Southeast Asia. The Penestanan villa week is the slow counterpart to this day-trip article — same trip, opposite pace.

FAQ

How many day-trips from Ubud are realistic in a week? We did five in five days and rested one full day at the villa in the middle. With kids, that's the upper limit — three to four is more comfortable, with pool afternoons in between. Bali rewards a slower pace.

Driver or scooter — which is better for a family? Driver for anything over an hour from Ubud, scooter for short hops on quieter roads. Four people, a folded stroller and a day's worth of snacks don't fit on two scooters, and the heat plus motion sickness can ruin a long ride. The driver also navigates parking, which is a small gift.

What's the best day-trip from Ubud with young kids? Tegalalang and Tirta Empul together, in a single morning. Both are close, both are visually striking, and the Bali Swing complex adds a bit of fun if your children are big enough. Save Munduk and the south coast for older kids who can handle longer drives.

Is the Kecak fire dance at Uluwatu suitable for children? Yes, but arrive early to get a seat with sea view and bring a small snack — the show is an hour and the build-up is intense. Younger kids might find the torches and the chanting overwhelming; ours were rapt. Watch your belongings around the monkeys throughout.

Five day-trips in five days, one pool afternoon, and the quiet realisation that the best of Bali isn't in any single place — it's in the moving between them, the volcano on the horizon, the rooster at dawn, the way the rice steps catch the light at four in the afternoon. We left wanting to come back slower, with more time and the same villa. That might be the truest review we can give.