Bali as a base?

Deep dive into a strong lifestyle destination in Asia

Been a while since I posted here so time for some more content after I spent over a month in Bali again just now.

I came to Bali the first time in 2012 when I was travelling back to the EUssr from Australia. I hated pretty much everything there was about Australia - too much regulations, too little freedom. So after 3 months of this bullshit upon arriving in Bali I felt free again. Since then alot has changed but Bali overall became a much stronger destination. I still like it at least as much now as I liked it back then and I think it’s one of the best destinations world wide for digital nomads and definitely the world’s best island - forget Phuket or Samui, it’s not in the same league.

In the following essay I will go abit into why Bali is a nice and unique place to establish a base or even live fulltime and also dive abit into realestate and investments in this regard.

As some of you may know I bought a 2bedroom townhouse with a small pool on plan during covid. Place turned out as expected - absolute great quality and location & for the foreseeable future I will reside there for around 2-4 months a year. This year I am staying 2 months but likely will stay abit longer during the coming years because I really feel good being here.

around the Bali pad

Bali is unique in the sense that you literally live in a village but with the amenities of a megacity for a fraction of the price. Since I spend most of the rest of my time in Dubai and Manila I can best draw comparisons to those two.

Being in Canggu Bali you have access to 100s of restaurants and coffee shops within a 10minute bike ride. This is a much higher density compared to Dubai or Manila. Also the food on average is much better and the coffee is much much better and the service is on a completely different level. It’s hard to imagine that even Dubai gets beaten in these metrics by a literal village but it is what it is. Also compared to 10 years ago now you have a pretty good delivery infrastructure so that you can get all food & groceries straight to your door and also have access to tokopedia which is like an Amazon clone for Indonesia. However next day deliveries aren’t really a thing yet.

To give an idea: I’m now here for 5 weeks and had breakfast in over 30 different places & had my coffee in over 45 different places. I did not have one bad cup of coffee or one bad meal. In restaurants as soon as you sit down you are getting served with a smile. In Manila you can be happy if the waiter comes to you within 10minutes after sitting down. Overall you get extreme value for money and very very high quality food.

Similar differences you will find in housing. While in Dubai a nice 1bedroom in good location will set you back at least 2.5k a month in rent you will get a pretty nice 2br villa with your own private pool in Bali. If you have 200k usd lying around you will be able to secure that villa for the next 25years via a lease and won’t need to worry about paying rent anymore. The fact you cant own in Bali has some advantages and some disadvantages on which I will further elaborate later.

Bottom line thus far is you get an extremely good lifestyle in Bali with great weather 8 months a year, outstanding food, beach 5 minutes away, low crime, friendly locals for a fraction of the price you will pay in capital cities around the world.

Quick Cost of living comparisson Dubai, Manila, Bali:

Take note that I will be looking at absolute prime food and prime lifestyle in A locations here, definitely possible to run much cheaper in all 3 if eating more local, living in B or C area, etc. Also from my experience something like good tenderloin steak tends to be expensive everywhere because very often just imported. Also luxury is expensive everywhere, good lifestyle and good food has a price. However in order to save money in Dubai you will have to make big compromises on location and quality of food while in Bali with small adjustments you will be able to live incredibly cheap and still have pretty good food in good location. In Dubai instead you would be 10-15km out of the city center and mostly have indian and filipino fare…

rent:
Dubai nice 1bedroom 3k usd++ month
Manila nice 1bedroom 1.5k-2k usd
Bali nice 2br villa with pool 1.5-2.5k usd

Food:

Breakfast 5 eggs, bacon, sparkling water, espresso
Bali 15-20usd, Manila 20-30usd, Dubai 40-50usd

Lunch 150g sashimi
Bali 25-35usd, Manila 20-30usd, Dubai 35-55usd

Dinner 300-400g tenderloin steak with sidedish
Bali 35-55usd, Manila 45-65usd, Dubai 35-65usd

Espresso:
Bali 1,60-2,60usd, Manila 2,00-2,5usd, Dubai 4,00-6,50usd

restos and coffee

restos and coffee pt2

Obviously though there are also things which aren’t that great. Thus far it is still fairly complicated to secure a longer term visa which will often lead foreigners to do visa runs every other month.

Also the infrastructure is a real problem. While internet these days is great especially compared to 10 year ago the streets basically haven’t changed. There are no boardwalks in Bali so if you walk you basically always walk on the street and also the streets are very narrow so that especially during peak season you will experience traffic jams. I never use cars here due to this because bicycle or motorbike is always much much faster than taking a car. As long as you are in a good location and mostly stay there all this traffic won’t do much to you but if you want to go somewhere and even if it is only 10kms away it may be 90mins one way by car. If you are a tourist like no matter where you wanna go it always ends up being a daytrip. Since in this regards basically nothing changed in over 10 years it’s fair to assume not much will change in the next 10 years but all things considered if being based in Bali and working from home this will just be a minor inconvinience. Another downside of this is that you don’t have any nice running tracks either unless you wanna run on the streets so that I moved my cardio indoor and to swimming.

Also in general Bali is quite far away from most places. Even from Dubai it’s a 9 hour flight so you are fairly off the grid so to speak. If you have ties in EUssr, US, etc. this is not a location where you want to visit home every other month or so - something to keep in mind.

Overall climate is great. Currently in July/August it is very pleasant and rarely over 30degrees. No rain, lots of sunshine. In general Bali has two distinct seasons, wet and dry. From experience of living here for 6 months during low season I can first hand tell you this is not really the time when you want to be here because there just isn’t much to do if it is raining all day. Worst time is from november until february when there really is alot of rain and like people leave Dubai in peak summer because of the heat I don’t think it’s unreasonable to leave Bali during this time if you can afford to. Bali rarely gets too hot and never gets too cold but it arguably gets too wet 3-4 months a year.

At the end I want to look abit into investments and real estate in Bali and give you my honest opinion. While Bali is beating Manila & Dubai in alot of lifestyle metrics in regards to investments it falls short due to several factors I will outline below:

Above all else Bali can be described in two words: “highly competitive”. Since I am free to pick the markets I get involved the less competition the better. For instance I am quite sure in Manila I could run a very profitable turkish restaurant and in Dubai I could establish a topnotch coffee shop. Not because I am that great but because the competition is average and you won’t need to be crazy good in order to crush. However as I described initially food & co in Bali is already on an insanely high standard so it will be a pain in the ass to compete. In Manila I am happy when I discover a 4.5star google rated new resto. In Bali I’m not even sure if I put it on my list because there are still 15 4.8star places I haven’t even tried yet.

Abit better in this regard is real estate but there are still alot of issues you don’t have in other markets. For once foreigners cannot own so pretty much everything is done via 25 year leaseholds which expire. In the end those aren’t more than a glorified longterm rental contract. The modus operandi here usually is to buy new project with 25years, rent it out for 5 years, flip it with 20 years remaining for 25-50% profit and be already invested in the next project. In all honesty this reminds me alot about shitcoin trading on a much longer timeperiod. Constant flipping every couple of years to max out EV. If you are good in this you will be able to print quite nicely but this isn’t my approach to real estate. I want to buy prime locations and then hold for 10, 15 or 20 years even without having to worry anything while cashing in on rent. After 15 years in Dubai I will almost guaranteed make alot of money via price appreciation. If I do the same in Bali there will be 10 years left of my lease and the lease will be worth a fraction of what I paid initially. I see lots of people sweettalking those leases becauses the entry prices are much cheaper. As I said for 200k you will already get a decent 2br villa with a pool BUT those prices are cheaper for a reason and the reason is you DONT FUCKING OWN THE PLACE which is quite a big difference. Another big issue with Bali is that it constantly develops and districts and places to be are moving over the years. When I came to Bali Seminyak was the place to be. Now the place to be is Canggu. In 10 years the place to be will be again something else. In Dubai you buy Downtown or Marina I can guarantee you that in 15 years from now those two still will be the places to be in Dubai where all the action is! Due to those dynamics even if you want to play real estate in Bali you need to be on the ground, you need to know people, need to know locals etc. You need to have a feeling where the next hot place is going to be and already invest before anybody does so. In Dubai even from abroad you can just buy something nice in Downtown and then just chill without ever setting foot into the UAE. Alot of deals done in Bali are pure hustling. You know the locals. You know the community. “ahh, i heard your mum got sick and she needs an operation. Listen, don’t you have some land in Perenenan? Let me help you out and have a coffee tomoro”. This kind of stuff. In my opionion guys who really crush here speak fluently bahasa and know their community well. Lots of work to get there & lots of socialising etc.

Another thing is oversupply. Everybody who goes to Bali and stays for a while comes to the conclusion: “ohhwell, why don’t i do some real estate here”. There is an insane amount of nice villas in the hotspots like Canggu, Seminyak, Uluwatu etc. If you think you can just get one, put it on airbnb and start printing good luck to you. Again, too much competition for my taste. On top of this everything is incredibly reliant on tourism. If something happens everything is dead as fuck. During the covid shenenigans even Manila still saw somewhat decent demand albeit at much lower prices while Bali was basically dead for a quite a while. Dubai obviously entirely different story in this regard.

One last thing which is an issue is that people in Bali are just not that hungry. People go to Manila & Dubai to work their ass of and make it and this shows especially in Dubai. If you ask a broker in Dubai he will tell you his goal is to get filthy rich and that guy will put in the work. Bali attracts abit different crowd which wants a nice lifestyle and enough money to not worry about anything but alot of people lack the hunger to make it no matter what. Once they have a million or two on the side they will start taking it very easy while the same person in Dubai will grind all day because he wants 10m or 20… In business though I really much rather work with people who I know to be still very hungry…

I hope that I gave a nice overview in regards to Bali with this short essay & if there are any questions feel free to use the comment function.

To sum things up I think that Bali is a fantastic destination to be at, be it parttime, fulltime or just for a holiday - if you haven’t been yet I strongly recommend you to check it out. There is a reason out of all the places I could be in the world I chose Bali as a base I want to spend time at each year. You get an incredible lifestyle with everything you need for a very low pricepoint. People are very laid back, easy to make friends and build a circle, etc. Especially for people for whom Dubai might be too expensive and too sterile Bali is offering an excellent alternative.

However from an investment standpoint other locations are just better. Less competition, you can own, better infrastructure, etc. The only reason where it makes alot of sense is if you can own land (because you have indonesian spouse) or if you are really fulltime in Bali and you live and breathe realestate. This isn’t a market you can just play abit on the side, this will be a fulltime job and take up lots of your time.

If you ever consider renting/leasing or buying something in Bali I have good connections to brokers I can get you in touch with.

_____________________________________________________________,

If you like my substack & feel like supporting me best via the link below, every signup & follow via my links will help me!

all links in nice form here:
Snacklink Bio