The Best Places to Stay and Do in Indonesia

Perched on a clifftop above the Bukit Peninsula, this luxury resort has the Indian Ocean crashing hundreds of feet below and three pools that seem to dissolve into it from above. Six Senses has made wellness its brand, but the sustainability program here is unusually thorough: composted food, on-site bottled water, indigenous planting, and villas built almost entirely from sustainably farmed timber. Rocka handles Indonesian classics; Crudo takes an improbable Nikkei turn.

Koral's dining room sits inside a full aquarium, which tells you something about the scale of ambition here. This cliff-top Nusa Dua resort runs to nearly 500 rooms, suites, and villas cascading down to the sea, most with private plunge pools. The aesthetic is polished and near-monochrome, more urban cool than tropical rattan. A lagoon pool, an extravagant spa, and a cluster of restaurants and bars keep guests from needing to leave, which is probably the point.

A balé is a traditional Balinese pavilion, and this resort's twenty-six of them read more Milan than village, with sharp lines, dark wood, and Zen furnishings. Each comes walled for privacy, with a private pool, an open-air daybed veranda, and outdoor bath. The kind of place where the butler is theoretically an option, and 24-hour room service makes the remoteness feel rather civilized.

Seven lagoon-shaped pools thread through the grounds here, which tells you the kind of resort this is: beachfront, sprawling, and built for people who enjoy finding a new sun lounger each day. It sits in Nusa Dua, Bali's quieter, more planned southern enclave, far from the chaos of Seminyak. The Arwana Restaurant handles dinner with an Asian grill menu beachside, and on Thursday evenings there's traditional fire dancing on the terrace, which nobody complains about.

Perched on the limestone cliffs of Uluwatu, this clifftop villa resort sits directly above the Indian Ocean, with each private villa or suite styled around a different aesthetic, from Balinese open-plan to Hamptons colonial. Suites share a pool with no more than four other rooms, and book enough bedrooms and the grounds go entirely private. Waatu, the on-site restaurant, cooks over open flame with no gas or electricity, which feels very on-brand for somewhere this elemental.

Seven suites on a Uluwatu clifftop, each named for an Indonesian surf break, with the Indian Ocean directly below and your own private stretch of sand at the bottom of the cliff. This small resort grew out of a members-only beach club, so the social infrastructure is already in place: a 25-meter infinity pool, an open-air bar, and the occasional serious DJ set that never quite tips into chaos. Seven rooms means the service stays personal enough to feel a little uncanny.

A concierge from a line of high priests who can arrange fire purification rituals and sessions with blind healers is not something most resorts lead with, but Anantara Ubud leans into it. Eighty-five suites and private-pool villas spill down a forested hillside in Payangan, forty minutes from central Ubud. The Indonesian kitchen at the all-day restaurant is the food program's anchor. A Michelin Selected Hotel.

The infinity pool here doesn't face the ocean, it faces the jungle canopy dropping into the Ayung River valley, which tells you this is not your standard Bali resort. Designed by Kerry Hill, the hillside property sits near the village of Payangan, well inland from the beach crowds, close to rice paddies and family compounds. A spa, an in-house gallery, and Mediterranean-leaning food round out a stay that feels more like a retreat than a holiday.

A half-hour speedboat from Bali's east coast, Nusa Lembongan offers everything its famous neighbor does, minus the traffic and the crowds. This cliff-edge resort has villas and suites in that familiar Balinese blend of modernist and traditional, most with plunge pools, outdoor baths, or terraces facing Mount Agung across the strait. Three pools, a full spa, serious surf breaks, and excellent diving keep the days full without requiring you to fight for a sun lounger with half of Europe.

Balinese-style villas tucked into virgin rainforest, with private jacuzzis and South China Sea views just beyond the trees, this is the kind of resort where "doing nothing" is treated as a serious pursuit. A 45-minute catamaran from Singapore keeps it reachable without feeling too civilized. Scuba, sailing, and golf exist for the restless, but the spa is the real argument for the visit, deeply, shamelessly passive.

Every room faces the ocean, with Nusa Penida sitting across the strait like a reminder that you're in East Bali, not the usual circus. This resort, designed by hotel architect Kerry Hill, arranges four low buildings around a palm-lined pool in a way that feels grounded rather than imposed on the landscape. Lower rooms have private terraces; upper rooms come with day beds on the balconies. The beach is a short walk, though the gardens make leaving feel slightly unreasonable.

Fourteen mod-Balinese villas on a forested mountainside above Lovina Bay, about as far as you can get from the Denpasar party circuit, which is largely the point. This small resort reads less like a traditional villa compound and more like a sleek residential complex that remembered where it was, with plunge pools, private pavilions, and open-air spa treatments. The three-hour drive from the airport is a commitment; the guests who make it tend to stay put.

Concrete villas on Bali's quiet north coast, each one framing an unbroken view of the sea like a painting someone forgot to hang indoors. The indoor-outdoor bathrooms and plunge-pool terraces are standard Balinese-villa grammar, but the remoteness of Tejakula is the real variable. The Sampan spa and an open-air restaurant heavy on fresh seafood are on-site, and the snorkeling and diving up here draws people who've already done the south.

A resort hotel on Bandung's mountainous northern edge, surrounded by greenery and open to long views across the city, the InterContinental sits alone at the top of the market here, the way InterContinentals tend to do in cities that haven't been overrun. Rooms are large and muted, with Indonesian detailing kept quiet. There's an infinity pool, a spa, and two restaurants, including a Chinese kitchen perched above a golf course.

The Agra rooftop lounge claims the highest perch in Central Java, which gives you a sense of how Alila Solo carries itself. This sleek urban hotel towers over Surakarta with stylish rooms and suites, a Spa Alila, and a pool deck that looks engineered to make you cancel your afternoon. A Javanese-international restaurant and a poolside café round out the social calendar for guests who can't quite bring themselves to leave.

A villa resort sitting 700 meters from the 9th-century Borobudur Temple, surrounded by jungle-clad volcanoes in Central Java. Every freestanding villa comes with teak wood interiors and floor-to-ceiling windows; the better ones add a private plunge pool. A French-Indonesian restaurant and a rooftop bar handle meals, and guided temple tours mean you don't have to figure any of that out yourself, which is half the point of staying here.

A boutique hotel barely nine feet wide on a central Salatiga street, PituRooms leans hard into its absurd proportions rather than apologizing for them. The seven rooms each commit entirely to a single color, furnishings and all, and the public spaces sprinkle in small jokes about the situation. The top-floor lounge punches above its footprint with genuinely good views. The Michelin Guide has it among its selected hotels.

The ninth-century Buddhist temple at Borobudur sits right on the horizon, which sets the mood before you've unpacked. This all-villa resort in the Menoreh Hills runs on traditional Indonesian architecture with fully contemporary comforts, meaning every villa arrives with its own pool, a rain shower, a deep-soak tub, and an outdoor terrace. Three restaurants, a spa, and a yoga pavilion fill the daylight hours for anyone who isn't just staring at the view.

Six villas sit in the inland hills of central Java, with Borobudur's ninth-century Buddhist terraces visible from the property whether you planned it or not. Five are traditional joglo pavilions; the sixth comes with its own pool and staff. Meals are included, in the spirit of Javanese hospitality toward house guests. Hiking, rafting, cycling, and a spa fill the gaps between temple visits. Bali is not just far away; it feels like a different idea entirely.

A seaplane from Bali drops you on Moyo Island, a protected nature reserve where the only sign of human presence is this 17-tent luxury camp. Aman's outpost here sits between jungle and beach, each canvas tent fitted out with king beds and a bathroom that makes you question the tent classification entirely. Diving, fishing, guided treks, and spa treatments keep the days full, or don't; the point is mostly the silence.

The beds face the sea, and that's not an accident. This resort on Lombok's quiet east coast takes its shape from traditional Lumbung granary homes, then strips them down to minimalist stilted villas built from locally sourced wood, stone, and concrete, hovering above a living space set directly on the sand. Three hundred meters of private beach and a 35-meter infinity pool make inertia easy, though the team will happily send you out kayaking or fishing for your own dinner.

Rote Island gets the same wild coastline, surf breaks, and reef as its more famous neighbors, with a fraction of the crowds. NIHI Rote is a beachfront villa resort where the staff are hospitality students learning on the job, which gives the service a certain enthusiastic earnestness you won't find at a polished chain. The island's unspoiled lagoons and mangroves do most of the work; the resort's job is just to keep up.

A swim-up bar with stools elevated just above the pool's surface is the detail that tells you what kind of resort this is. Set on Kuta Mandalika beach, the Pullman Lombok arranges its pools, villas, and open-air lobby bar to face the Indian Ocean, while the architecture nods to Sasak building traditions. Rooms run from sea-view suites to private-garden villas with plunge pools, and a roving street-food cart handles snacks between proper meals.

Twenty-four suites on a crescent of white sand in northwest Lombok, with coconut palms, a long infinity pool, and turquoise water doing most of the heavy lifting. Suites open through floor-to-ceiling glass onto thatched terraces with Jacuzzis and open-air showers, and the ground-floor oceanview rooms spill straight onto the pool deck. A swim-up bar, two dining venues, and a spa that runs late round things out without the crowds a larger resort would bring.

Seven overwater villas built on circular floor plans that mirror traditional Wae Rebo mountain houses float above sea turtles at the edge of Komodo National Park. This luxury resort takes the dragons-and-dive-trip crowd seriously: a rooftop bar whose ceiling echoes ancient rice field patterns, a beachside feast venue, and a spa doing Bajo massages with herbal poultices. The overwater bar pours cocktails distilled from fermented palm sap, which is exactly the kind of detail that makes the trip.

The hotel band is made up of actual staff, which tells you a lot about how this Belgian-owned resort on Medana Bay operates. Cold drinks and ice cream appear poolside before you think to ask, breakfast comes whenever you want it, and a five-course dinner menu meets a wood-fired Italian kitchen at lunch. The infinity pool faces Mount Rinjani. The Gili Islands are a short boat ride away, if you can be bothered to leave.

A resort so deep in the West Bali National Park that Kuta might as well be a rumor. The villas sit a few yards from the beach, with outdoor baths and traditional architecture; the Monsoon Lodge rooms cluster around a pool in the forest. Clubbing is firmly off the agenda, replaced by snorkeling, sea kayaking, diving, and serious birdwatching in the park. This is Bali for people who find the southern coast exhausting just to think about.

Private villas behind stone walls and under thatched roofs sit on a 24-acre estate along 550 meters of quiet beach, which is the point of coming to Lombok rather than its louder neighbor to the west. This resort keeps things unhurried: garden baths, teakwood furnishings, and an outdoor spa running Javanese treatments in the tropical breeze. The Michelin Guide has it among its selected hotels.

Cars are banned on Gili Air, which is barely two square miles of tropical island off Lombok, so Villa Tokay lends you a bicycle and sends you on your way. This small eco-resort is a collection of freestanding villas built almost entirely from bamboo, with sweeping curved ceilings, lofted sleeping areas, and private pools shaped like no pool you've seen before. Breakfast arrives at your villa; snorkeling gear is free; the beach is steps from the gate.