You’re planning your trip to Bali and you’ve seen hundreds of amazing pictures on Facebook and Instagram. There’s a good chance a lot of these pictures were taken on Nusa Lembongan, Penida, Ceningan, Gili Islands and/or Lombok.

After two years of traveling to Indonesia, the Nusa’s have become our favorite set of islands. How to get there and how to book your fast or slow boat is explained right here.

From Bali to Nusa … ?

Every boat departs from Sanur or Padang Bai. Most likely you’ll find yourself somewhere in Sanur waiting on your boat. Believe us when we say don’t book something in Sanur, it’s crowded and the beaches are dirty.

Protip! Try to get your tickets in one of the offices close to Sanur Beach. The street that leads up to the beach is stacked with small offices. The price will be a lot cheaper than in the countless small booths scattered throughout Bali and on the Nusa islands.

Protip! Make sure you ask them if there’s free transport included from your Bali hotel to Sanur Beach and free transport from the harbor of one of the Nusa Islands to a hotel of your choice. You should be able to discuss this without any problem.

We paid 400.000 for a return trip with no exact dates to go to Nusa Lembongan with:

• Transportation from Hotel to the Sanur Harbor
• The fast boat ride (approximately thirty minutes)
• Lembongan Harbor to Hotel
• Lembongan Hotel to Lembongan Harbor
• Sanur Harbor to Nguruh Rai Airport (which would cost you about 300k alone)

If you do this separately you’re easily spending over 400k in transportation costs. Kudos to them because the transportation is on time and pretty neatly organized, which you wouldn’t expect if you experience the chaos in the harbors.

Don’t make any reservations from your native country. The prices online are way more expensive than booking it on the spot. You do have to make an effort to visit the booths and bargain for a good price though.

If you have more questions on this topic, I advise you to buy the Lonely Planet edition of Bali!