Sanur was the first place in Bali to be developed for visitors, in the 1960s, and it has spent the sixty years since quietly refusing to become anywhere else. It faces east, so this is the sunrise coast rather than the sunset one, and a long offshore reef takes the swell out before it arrives. The result is a five kilometre strip of flat, shallow, protected water with a paved path running the whole length of it behind the sand.
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The Bali Beach Hotel went up here in 1966 with Japanese war reparation money, ten storeys high, and the reaction against it produced the rule that still governs the island: nothing may be built taller than a coconut palm. That is a reasonable summary of Sanur's character. It is older, slower and lower than the south coast resorts, it is where a lot of long-term residents live, and it is the harbour for the fast boats to Nusa Penida and Lembongan.
What Makes Sanur Different to Pack For
The reef, and the tide
The reef that makes the swimming calm also sits close to the surface. At low tide the water inside the lagoon drops to ankle depth over a wide flat of coral rubble, seagrass and sharp dead coral, and swimming becomes impossible for a few hours.
Reef shoes are the single most useful thing you can pack for Sanur and most visitors do not bring them. The coral cuts, and coral cuts in the tropics infect readily and heal slowly. Check a tide table, which every hotel has, and plan the swim around it.
Hot and humid all year, with two seasons
Sanur runs 27°C to 32°C in every month with humidity that rarely drops below seventy percent. The dry season is roughly April to September and the wet season October to March, when rain arrives as heavy afternoon downpours rather than all day drizzle. A packable rain jacket earns its place in the wet months, though an umbrella is often more practical because the rain is warm and the issue is volume rather than wind.
Temples have a dress code and it is enforced
Entering any Balinese temple requires a sarong and a sash tied at the waist, for everyone. These are lent or hired at the entrance to the main temples, but carrying your own sarong is easier, cheaper and endlessly useful as a beach wrap, a shoulder cover and a towel.
The air conditioning problem
Indoor spaces, restaurants and the boats to the islands are aggressively cold, and moving between 32°C outside and 19°C inside all day is what actually makes people ill here. A merino wool base layer for women sounds wrong for the tropics and is not: it is thin, it manages sweat instead of trapping it, it does not develop a smell over several days in humidity, and it covers you on the boats and in the cold restaurants.
Recommended Tours and Experiences
The Sanur Packing List
Footwear
Reef shoes or sturdy water sandals, for the reason above. Flip flops for the path and the town. One pair of closed, comfortable shoes for temples, for Ubud or the volcanoes if you take a day trip, and for the times a footpath turns into a building site, which in Bali is often.
If you plan to walk Mount Batur at sunrise or the Campuhan ridge inland, waterproof hiking shoes are the right tool. Batur is loose volcanic scree in the dark and sandals are how people get hurt on it.
Clothing
Light, loose, breathable clothing and more of it than you think, because you will change twice a day in the humidity. Quick drying fabrics. Long sleeves and long trousers for the evenings, which is a mosquito measure rather than a temperature one.
A sarong, which doubles as temple wear, sun cover and a wrap on the boat. Cover your shoulders when you go into shops, restaurants and any village away from the beach. Sanur is relaxed but it is not a resort bubble, and swimwear is beach clothing only.
For sun
A wide brim sun hat, high factor reef safe sunscreen and sunglasses. Bali is eight degrees from the equator and the UV index routinely hits extreme by mid morning. The sea breeze on the beach path disguises how fast you are burning.
Health and insects
Dengue is present in Bali year round and rises in the wet season, and it is transmitted by a mosquito that bites during the day rather than at dusk. Repellent with DEET or picaridin, applied in daylight, is the real precaution. There is no vaccine you can rely on as a traveller and no prophylaxis, so bite avoidance is the whole strategy.
Bring rehydration salts, a good antiseptic and waterproof plasters for coral scrapes, and any prescription medication in its original packaging with a copy of the prescription, since Indonesian rules on medicines are strict and some common codeine preparations are controlled.
Practical
Cash in rupiah for warungs, the markets and small transport, and use ATMs attached to bank branches rather than free standing ones, because card skimming is a known problem on the island. A power bank. A dry bag for the fast boats, which arrive wet. A reusable bottle with a filter, since tap water is not drinkable.
What to Wear at Key Sites
The beach path
A paved walking and cycling path runs roughly five kilometres from the Bali Beach Hotel south to the Mertasari end, passing every hotel, warung and jukung outrigger pulled up on the sand.
Practically: this path is the reason to stay in Sanur and it is best between six and eight in the morning. The sunrise is directly over the water, the temperature is bearable, and the whole town is out walking. Bicycles are cheap to hire and the path is flat the entire way.
Temples
Pura Blanjong holds a pillar inscribed in 914, the oldest dated writing in Bali. The Pura Dalem Kahyangan and several smaller temples sit along the strip, and the great sea temples at Tanah Lot and Uluwatu are day trips.
Practically: sarong and sash, always. There is one further custom worth knowing rather than discovering at the gate: Balinese Hindu law holds that anyone bleeding may not enter a temple, which includes women who are menstruating, and signs at temple entrances state this directly. It is not enforced by inspection and nobody will ask, but it is a genuine religious rule rather than a formality, and how you handle it is your own decision made knowingly rather than accidentally.
The Le Mayeur museum
The house of Adrien-Jean Le Mayeur, a Belgian painter who arrived in 1932, married the legong dancer Ni Pollok, and painted her for thirty years in the garden. The house is preserved as it was, beside the beach.
Practically: small, hot, unairconditioned and slightly dilapidated, and it is the most atmospheric thing in Sanur. Covered shoulders.
The boats to Nusa Penida and Lembongan
Fast boats leave the Sanur harbour all morning for the islands offshore, taking thirty to forty five minutes.
Practically: boarding is off the beach or a low pier and you will get wet to the knees, so wear something you can roll up and carry your bag above the water. The crossing through the Badung Strait can be rough, the boats go fast in it, and the ride is genuinely uncomfortable in a swell. Sit at the back. Take motion sickness tablets before boarding rather than after. Safety standards vary between operators and life jacket provision is inconsistent, so look for one when you get on.
The kite season
From July into September the winds bring out enormous traditional kites, some of them ten metres across, flown by teams from the villages, with a festival on the Padang Galak fields north of town.
Practically: the lines are heavy and under real tension, and the ground crews need space. Watch from a distance rather than walking through.
What Not to Bring
Leave the expectation of surf, which the reef removes entirely, and of a party, which is in Seminyak and Canggu rather than here. Sanur's reputation for being quiet is accurate and it is the point.
Leave the assumption that you can swim at any hour, because the tide decides. Leave anything that needs dry cleaning. Leave jewellery worth worrying about. And leave any vaping devices or illegal drugs entirely out of your thinking: Indonesian narcotics law is severe, penalties include life imprisonment and the death penalty, and it applies to quantities that would be trivial elsewhere.
Essential Resources for Women in Sanur
Emergency numbers in Indonesia: 112 is the national emergency number and works from mobiles across the country. Direct lines are 110 for police, 118 or 119 for ambulance and 113 for fire. Response times in Bali are variable and a taxi to a hospital is often faster than waiting for an ambulance.
Tourist support: Bali operates a tourist police unit, the Polisi Pariwisata, with posts in the main visitor areas including Sanur and Denpasar, and they generally have English speakers, which the regular police often do not. A theft needs a police report for any insurance claim, and for a lost passport you need the report before the consulate will act.
US Consulate: the US Consular Agency in Bali is at Jalan Hayam Wuruk 310 in Denpasar, ten minutes from Sanur, telephone +62 361 233 605, with the embassy in Jakarta at id.usembassy.gov. This is one of the most convenient consular posts for any beach destination in Asia. Enrol in the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program at step.state.gov before you travel.
Main hospital or clinic: BIMC Hospital Kuta and Siloam Hospitals Bali at Kuta are the private hospitals used by most visitors and both have English speaking staff and international insurance desks, roughly thirty minutes from Sanur. Sanglah, now RSUP Prof Ngoerah, in Denpasar is the main public hospital and the referral centre for serious trauma. Private care must usually be paid up front and reclaimed, so travel insurance with direct billing or a credit card with room on it matters here. Confirm your insurance covers scooter riding, because most policies exclude it unless you hold the correct licence, and scooter injuries are the single commonest claim in Bali.
Official health authority: the Indonesian Ministry of Health at kemkes.go.id, and the US Centers for Disease Control destination page for Indonesia is the more practical read for vaccinations and dengue.
US State Department travel advisory for Indonesia: current advisory level and detail. Read it directly rather than relying on this page.
UK FCDO travel advice for Indonesia: entry requirements, safety and health guidance, including the specific warnings on methanol poisoning in adulterated spirits, on volcanic activity, and on the severity of drug penalties.
Official tourism authority: the Indonesian national tourism board at indonesia.travel, with the Bali provincial tourism office for temple ceremony dates and the Nyepi closure, when the entire island including the airport shuts for twenty four hours and nobody may go outside.
Solo women safety assessment: Sanur is one of the easiest places in Bali for a woman travelling alone and is noticeably calmer than the south coast. It has a large resident expatriate population, many of them older, a beach path busy from dawn, early evenings, and very little of the aggressive nightlife that causes trouble in Kuta and Seminyak. Violent crime against visitors is rare and street harassment is mild, usually limited to persistent offers of transport and massages, which a firm no ends. Eating alone is completely normal. The genuine risks are not the ones people expect. Road traffic is by a wide margin the most dangerous thing in Bali: scooter accidents injure and kill visitors constantly, most tourists ride without the correct licence which voids their insurance, helmets provided by rental shops are often inadequate, and the roads are chaotic. If you have not ridden a scooter at home, Bali is not where to learn. Use Grab, Gojek or a hotel driver. Second is methanol poisoning from adulterated spirits, particularly in cheap local arak and in cocktails at budget bars, which has killed and blinded tourists in Indonesia; stick to beer, wine and sealed bottles from reputable places. Third, drink spiking occurs in Bali's nightlife areas, so watch your drink. Petty theft is opportunistic: bag snatching from moving scooters is the classic Bali crime, so carry a bag on the side away from the road or across your body, and use hotel safes. Card skimming at standalone ATMs is common. The sea here is gentle inside the reef but the currents in the Badung Strait outside it are strong and have carried swimmers and snorkellers away; stay inside the lagoon unless you are with an operator. Finally, be aware that Indonesian law is strict on drugs and that some prescription medications legal at home are controlled here.
Reading On
Sanur is the sensible base for a first trip to Bali and the right one for anyone who wants the island without the crowd, with the airport twenty minutes away and the boats to the offshore islands leaving from the beach. The Bali travel guide for women is the parent for the island and the Indonesia travel guide for women for the country, with the Bali packing list for women for a trip that moves around. Nearby, the South Bali travel guide for women covers the beach strip to the west and the Ubud travel guide for women the inland rice terraces. Straight offshore, the Nusa Penida packing list for women covers the island the fast boats go to. Further east, the Lombok travel guide for women and the Komodo packing list for women continue the chain. The travel packing guide for women is the parent for all destinations. For why merino is the right fibre in humidity, where it handles sweat and odour better than synthetics, the best merino wool base layers for women explains it, and the Roman Trail collection is where the tops themselves live.
If the outer journey is calling you, the inner one usually is too. Explore SoulMap at romantrail.com/blogs/soulmap.
