Remote Work in Bali with a Kid: An Honest Month-Long Review

When you think of Bali, certain images come to mind. Surfing, tropical nature, digital nomads with laptops open in coworking spaces. It’s a place often called the holy land of workations.

I was drawn to that image too. I thought it would give my child a new experience at an international kindergarten, and give my family a sense of escape from the daily routine. In early 2023, I used my company’s overseas remote work policy to live and work in Bali for about a month.

To cut to the chase: remote work in Bali was more underwhelming than expected for a family with a young child. This post is an honest record of that experience. If you’re considering remote work in Bali, especially with a young child, I hope this helps you make a more informed decision.

Before Departure: What You Need to Prepare

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Approval and Tax Issues

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Before booking flights for overseas remote work, you need to get company approval first. The approval process can lead to schedule changes.

In my case, I initially applied for a three-month stay, but during the tax review I was told that only stays of two months or less were allowed under tax regulations. This is because tax treatment varies depending on the length of overseas stay. If I had already booked my flights, I would have had to pay change fees. Always purchase your tickets after approval is confirmed.

I used Korean Air mileage for the flights, and it turned out to be a great deal since the mileage deducted was relatively low compared to the cost.

Accommodation: The Villa Trap

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There are generally two options for accommodation in Bali. You can hop between hotels and resorts, or rent a villa on a monthly basis.

I stayed at a hotel for about three days, then signed a monthly contract for a Bali-style villa with a swimming pool. It looks stunning in photos. A private pool beneath palm trees, a spacious living room, a tropical garden. The problem is that actually living there is a different story. I ended up canceling the villa and going back to a hotel.

The reality of villas:

• Bugs everywhere. Ants and mosquitoes are a given, and all sorts of unidentifiable insects show up. Hotels and resorts fumigate, but villas generally don’t.
• Inconsistent bedding and cleanliness. The level of maintenance varies wildly from place to place.
• Water supply issues. I’ll get into this later, but this was the biggest problem.
• Transportation is inconvenient. There’s a reason villas are cheap. Most are located far from the center of town, and walking anywhere in Bali is practically impossible.

If you’re staying a month or longer, a villa might seem like the rational choice, but especially if you have a child, a hotel or serviced residence is better. In terms of maintenance, hygiene, and convenience, it wins on every front.

Hygiene: Bali’s Biggest Risk

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There are a few topics that dominate Indonesia travel communities. “Which hospital should I go to?”, “Can someone recommend medicine?”, “Looking for a showerhead filter.”

This is not an exaggeration.

The Water Problem

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Many places in Bali draw from groundwater. Contamination is not uncommon, and even after scrubbing with soap, your skin can feel perpetually slippery. It’s a different kind of unpleasantness from the limescale-heavy water in Europe.

Swimming pools are everywhere in Bali, but many of them don’t smell of chlorine. No chlorine smell means they’re not being disinfected. In a tropical climate where bacteria thrive.

The beaches aren’t safe either. Many people get sick after swallowing contaminated seawater that flows in from the land while surfing. You can’t even be sure whether the ice in cold drinks at cafes is made from purified water.

My Child’s Hospitalization

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I did my best to prepare before departure. We got typhoid vaccinations, and the day before our flight, I had blood tests done at a general hospital to check inflammation and white blood cell levels. I also started giving my child probiotics two weeks in advance.

Three days after arrival, my child developed a high fever.

A child who had never gone above 38°C spiked to 39.5°C. We went to the emergency room three times. At the third ER visit, when I said I wanted to go home, they told me to sign a form stating they wouldn’t be held responsible. We ended up being admitted. Four days in the hospital.

Looking back, this experience was truly harrowing.

• A fundamental distrust of Indonesia’s outdated medical facilities. Communication was also difficult.
• While my child was in the ER, it started pouring rain and the ceiling collapsed. There was a thunderous crash, the ceiling light fixtures fell, and we grabbed our child and ran out moments before the ceiling caved in. This happened at what was supposedly the best hospital in the area.
• About 500,000 KRW per ER visit including tests. Total medical expenses: over 3 million KRW.

Travel insurance is absolutely essential. Make sure to carefully check the coverage details and choose a plan with a sufficient medical expense limit. And honestly, after this experience, the thought “What are we even doing here?” wouldn’t leave my mind.

Daily Life with a Child: Expectations vs. Reality

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There’s Nothing to Do

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Think about what you do with your child on a typical day in Korea. Reading books, taking walks, going to playgrounds, visiting kids’ cafes, playing with toys, weekend camping. In Bali, you can do almost none of these things.

• No books. Unless you pack a suitcase full of Korean picture books, you have nothing to read to your child.
• Walking is impossible. Bali has almost no sidewalks. The saying “if you want to go more than three steps, you need to call a motorbike” is barely an exaggeration. Walking under the blazing sun through exhaust fumes, you live in constant fear of getting your feet run over by a motorbike. Taking a walk with a child is unthinkable.
• Almost no playgrounds. It’s not like Korea where every apartment complex has a playground. It doesn’t seem to be a legally required facility either. You occasionally spot one here and there, but the quality is dramatically lower than what you’d find in Korea.
• No indoor play environment. At home you have familiar toys, but here there are none.

In the end, you find yourself letting them watch YouTube, something you never allowed back home. That’s the reality.

The Kindergarten I Had Hoped For

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Because Bali has a large Australian expat community, there are well-established English-language kindergartens. I had high expectations about giving my child an immersive English-language experience.

But I overlooked my child’s personality. Our child is introverted and doesn’t take the initiative to approach others. In an environment where most of the other kids speak English, I had to watch my child play alone for two weeks. We eventually decided to stop sending them. The bigger the expectations, the bigger the disappointment.

The experience can vary entirely depending on your child’s temperament. If your child is sociable and adapts quickly, it could be a great experience. But not every child is like that. You need to honestly assess your child’s personality.

My Daily Life: It’s a Workation, Not a Vacation

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Extra Time Doesn’t Magically Appear

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Let me describe my routine back in Korea. I’m not a particularly early riser. I wake up, feed my child, send them to kindergarten, work, and after work, play with my child. Once the child falls asleep, I have maybe one hour, two at most. I watch YouTube, catch up on work, or exercise.

Being in Bali doesn’t magically create time that didn’t exist. A person who has one hour of free time a day doesn’t suddenly get three hours just by changing locations. If anything, my commute got longer.

Internet: The VPN Wall

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Working from home was effectively impossible. The internet was slow, power outages were frequent, and the connection dropped constantly.

Coworking spaces are a different story. Good ones have UPS systems and their own generators, and they contract with multiple ISPs so that if one goes down, another line keeps things running. Most of them met the minimum internet speed my company required.

The problem is VPN. Company security policy required me to be on VPN while working, and the moment I turned it on, internet speed dropped to about 10-20% of normal. Across all of Bali, only a handful of coworking spaces let you work comfortably with VPN on. Those places charge around 20,000 KRW a day, and they’re not close to where you’re staying either.

The Reality of Evenings

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After work, nighttime. Surfing or outdoor activities are out of the question. It’s not like Europe where street musicians perform. Realistically, what you can do is go to a decent restaurant or bar, eat something good, and have a drink.

But even that isn’t as easy as it sounds.

• The drinking culture is underdeveloped. Perhaps because of the Islamic background, craft beer is limited to two or three local breweries, and there’s no imported craft beer at all. Spirits are expensive, and wines are imported with limited selection and high prices.
• The decent places are as expensive as Korea. Drinks are charged separately, and taxes add 15-20%. Eating at decent places every day puts serious pressure on your bank account.
• If you stick to the cheap places, you start wondering why you came all the way to another country just to suffer like this.

Two weeks after arriving, I watched my bank balance plummet.

The Things That Were Good

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It feels like I’ve only been negative, so let me honestly share what was good too.

Coworking Spaces

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The coworking space culture in Bali is genuinely impressive. Part internet cafe, part library, part coffee shop. Just exploring them was a fun experience in itself, checking out the vibe of this one, discovering what that one had on the menu. Working alongside digital nomads from around the world in the same space wasn’t bad at all.

Beach Clubs

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Pool behind you, ocean in front. Music and delicious food. Bali’s beach clubs are truly a unique experience. Just watching young people enjoy themselves was energizing.

Weekends

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On weekends, I finally felt like I had actually come to Bali for a holiday. We went on tours, visited beach clubs, went surfing. The charm of Bali that was invisible during the week hit all at once on weekends. Paradoxically, this was the precise meaning of the word “workation.” Work and vacation don’t come simultaneously; they alternate.

Summary: Who Is Bali Remote Work Right For?

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Summing up a month of experience, satisfaction with remote work in Bali splits sharply depending on your lifestyle.

Checklist Before You Go

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If you’re a family with children and still want to go:

• Travel insurance: Check the medical expense coverage limit. A single ER visit can cost 500,000 KRW.
• Typhoid vaccination: Get vaccinated at least two weeks before departure.
• Accommodation: Hotels or serviced residences over villas. The difference in hygiene and maintenance is real.
• VPN testing: Research coworking spaces in advance where you can work with your company VPN on.
• Supplies for kids: Korean books, toys, offline content downloaded to a tablet.
• Kindergarten: Honestly assess your child’s temperament. An English-language kindergarten can be stressful for an introverted child.
• Budget: Plan for your usual living expenses plus an extra 30-50%. The idea that Bali is cheap is based on local food and local accommodation. To maintain a quality of life that a Korean would find satisfactory, it can cost the same as or more than Korea.

Closing Thoughts

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Looking back after returning, the biggest takeaway from remote work in Bali is this:

Changing your location doesn’t change your life. A person with one hour of free time a day still has one hour in Bali. A parent who needs to care for their child still needs to care for their child in Bali. On top of that, add hygiene risks, medical anxiety, and infrastructure inconveniences.

That said, I don’t regret this experience. If I hadn’t done it, I would have stayed curious, harboring a vague fantasy about Bali. There was value in simply confirming the fantasy against reality.

However, if I were to do overseas remote work again under the same conditions (with a young child), it wouldn’t be Bali. A city with solid medical infrastructure, where you can take walks with your child. A place with sidewalks, playgrounds, and trustworthy tap water. A workation in a city where the basics of daily life are in place is a true workation.