We have spent 2 months in Ubud, Bali.
Here are some of the costs and good things that we found.
Villa - we hired 2. First one was 1 bed, with a shared pool and breakfast delivered every day. We paid £25 per day, but if we rented it by the month it would have cost £250 per month. Pretty cheap. We decided we needed an extra room, and we wanted a quieter location. Our next villa was a 2 bedroom place with a decent pool and a lovely view of rice fields. This costs £750 per month.
Food and Drink - there are loads of great cafés in Ubud. You can expect to pay about £2-£4 for a main course. You can get Nasi goreng at a local place for under £1. It's cheap enough that it's not worth cooking. We have 2 baby coconuts delivered every day for £1. At the local supermarket (Bintang) you can get decent cheddar from Australia and decent sausages. The imported foods cost about the same or a little more than in Sweden. So it is quite expensive to buy those. A lot of the cafés focus on health or raw food and the quality is good in most places. We have had pizza delivery amongst others. The other day us 4 shared pizza and salad for dinner and the total bill was £4.10.
Internet and phone - mobile Internet is about 1mb/s so quite good. This costs about 50p per gigabyte. Many cafés have free decent internet. Clear Café is good. Dumara Café has over 10 mb/s.
Transport - we hired 2 mopeds for £30 per month each. Taxis are reasonable. To the airport is £10 and a day trip to the beach at Sanur is about £20. Petrol is 40p per litre.
For Kids -
we hired a nanny for £2.50 per hour. Other expats pay less.
The Reuse Centre where kids can make stuff out of rubbish, for £2.50 per kid for a few hours. Our kids loved it, but I saw the owners husband hit his 2 year old and had a right shout at him, before pointing him towards some good information. We'll see if it made any difference next time we go there.
Kidsworld is about 15mins by moped and costs £4.50 per kid. They have a load of bouncy castles, pool, WiFi, cheap lunch and Winston and Henry love it.
The Mansion has a kids club for £2.50 per child per hour. Where they can play supervised by a teacher from Pelangi school at the weekends. You can also pay £1.50 to have access to there nice pool, but the food is overpriced and they started charging for internet.
The art museum has a hornbill in the garden. It costs £4 entry, and you can hold the hornbill.
Sopa garden has a weekly kids club, where they do craft things or treasure hunt. It costs £2.50 per kid.
The local schools offer drop in, or you can pay yearly or monthly. They seem pretty good with a variety of philosophies.
The Paradiso cinema is fantastic. You can have a heathy and delicious meal there and a beer while the kids also watch the move sitting on little chairs at the front. The film costs £2.50 per adult and £1.25 for kids, and the food is regular prices. We have been to the 5pm showing 4 times so far.
Fake Lego is cheap and good in a shop in Denpasar.
There is a restaurant in Denpasar where you can catch your own fish and they cook it.
The feast at the Sheraton in Kuta is an amazing buffet for about £15 for adults, and the kids get their own mini-buffet with some staff taking care of them and playing with toys. Winston and Henry loved it.
People are friendly and nice to kids. Winston and Henry love it, and want to stay there as long as possible which would be easy to do. Maybe we will travel around a bit more but go back there. It's a decent base to explore Asia and Australasia from.
