Talk:Indonesia/@comment-24682153-20170126092231

Here is a short travel report to Bali from your admin:

In Bali, especially if you look white (= rich) you have to bargain hard for everything and you will still be overcharged.

At the airport Telkomsel sells ridiculously big data SIMs with 20 GB or more for some hundred thousand IDR. In town the price for a starter is much lower. But again it depends on how hard you bargain. 35-40000 especially if there is some pulsa still included includes a reasonable premium. Top-ups on the other hands done in minimarkets always come with a 3-5% on top of the value. This is the same for locals.

Telkomsel and XL are the preferred brands locally, but all 4 networks have LTE in Kuta now. Telkomsel is better if you travel to other places too. XL is basically a bit cheaper. Again bargain hard. Speeds are good at the airport with 15 Mbps on LTE, but can fall considerably to a few Mbps in town due to congestion on all networks. So huge packages don't make so much sense.

This gives you a dilemma. Arriving at the airport the taxi mafia is in full force. Rides with an airport taxi are 3 times more expensive than usual rides. This you can beat with Uber or the local Grab app. There is Wifi in the airport building, but this is gone as soon as you are out. The taxi mafia physically blocks Uber and Grab cars to enter the driveway to the terminal to pick up passengers. So you need to fix a pickup point at a parking lot some meters off.

For this you need an Indonesian SIM or roaming data at least. So you can choose to be ripped of either by telcom hawkers or the taxi cooperative. Take your choice.

I will give some updates about Lombok and the Gili islands soon.