Is Bali Family-Friendly? Why We're Raising Our kids There (Hint: It's Not the Beaches)
- 3 days ago
- 4 min read
When people hear my family is moving to Bali this July, they tend to picture the postcard: yoga retreats, Instagram-worthy waterfalls, hotel infinity pools spilling over rice terraces. And yes, Bali is beautiful. We get both the beaches and mountains (in the form of volcanoes), which is its own kind of luxury.
But I want to be clear about something, because it's the heart of this whole decision: we are not moving for the scenery.
If pretty views were the point, there are prettier beaches and more dramatic mountains scattered all over the world (some of them a much shorter flight from Texas). Scenery is a nice bonus. It is not the reason. We're moving for the one thing about Bali that makes it one of the most interesting and unique places in the world: its culture.
The Most Family-Friendly Place I've Ever Been
I've traveled to more than fifty countries, and I can say this without hesitation. Bali is the most family-friendly and young-kid-friendly place I have ever set foot in. Not "family-friendly" in the marketing sense, where a hotel slaps the word on a brochure and hands your toddler a coloring sheet. I mean it in a way that's woven into how people actually treat children.
A few stories that have stuck with me and retold dozens of times:
When our four year-old son threw a tantrum in a hotel restaurant and ran out of the restaurant, a hotel worker picked him up, calmed him down, and told me I could finish dinner while she kept him company.
When we arrived at a new hotel with a sleeping preschooler, but needed to inspect a room, the front desk staff offered to watch him. And we actually left him with strangers. (Would you ever do that in the US??).
A cashier at the grocery store offered to watch our friends’ kids while they shopped.
This isn't unusual there. It's the baseline. Children in Bali aren't treated as an interruption to adult life that you're supposed to keep contained and quiet. They're treated as everyone's responsibility and everyone's delight. They treat kids like little princes and princesses, with a kindness experienced daily in Bali, but rarely seen in America. For a parent (especially a parent of two young boys), that shift in the surrounding air is hard to describe and impossible to unfeel once you've felt it.
A Beautifully Devotional Faith
The Balinese practice their own version of Hinduism, and it is one of the most beautifully devotional things I've ever witnessed.
You see it the moment you walk out a door. Outside nearly every doorway, including the Airbnbs we stayed in, the nearby families place a small offering to their gods: a little tray woven from a palm leaf, holding flowers, burning incense, a few rice crackers. They're called canang sari, and families make and lay them fresh every single day.
They are everywhere. So much a part of the streetscape that you literally have to step over them as you walk. At first you notice them as charming. Then you realize what you're actually looking at: an entire society pausing, every day, to give thanks and to honor something larger than themselves. Devotion isn't reserved for a building you visit once a week. It's laid out on the ground in front of you, constantly, as an ordinary act of love. That devotion imbues into the locals' personalities a gracious, loving, and kind way of treating others.
They also believe in and act on Karma, more than any culture I’ve experienced. They believe what you put out, comes back (in this lifetime, or the next). So why not put out kindness?
As someone wanting to move toward a deeper spiritual life, I can't think of a more nourishing environment to live in.
Family Is the Center of Gravity
For a week of our sabbatical, we stayed with a Balinese family, and I'm so thankful we did. We learned how the whole culture is built around family. Many Balinese live in compounds, multiple generations sharing a walled cluster of homes, with each compound having a family temple at its heart. They celebrate birth, marriages, and death, in the family temple. Life is communal by design. Grandparents, parents, and children are woven into each other's days rather than scattered into separate, busy, isolated households.
Coming from American life, where I live a car ride away from the people I love and drive by at least a dozen of homeless men and women on my way to Target, this made an impact on me. I saw one homeless person in six weeks in Bali, because family members take care of each other, much the way we did generations ago. It's a living example of the values I talk about with my wife and clients. Community. Responsibility. Care. Belonging. Generosity.
As a result of the tight family culture (and belief in Karma), there is almost no violent crime, and minimal petty crime. We did, however, meet a family whose house was broken into and laptop stolen. They were able to track down the individual. Soon after, the parents of the individual visited to profusely apologize for their son’s behavior! Can you imagine that happening here?
The Practical Side
Bali delivers here as well: great international schools, a cost of living that is 50-75% less than the US, and a warm, established community of international families building intentional lives. There's room for meaningful work and restorative leisure.
The practical side is what made Bali possible. The culture is what made it ours.
The Real Answer
So when someone asks me, "Why Bali?", the short answer is the culture. The longer answer is that I want to raise my boys somewhere that treats children as a gift, treats devotion as a daily habit, and treats family as the center of life rather than the thing you squeeze in around work.
The beaches and volcanoes are lovely. But we're not crossing the planet for a view. We're crossing it for a way of living.
(If you'd like the more personal story, I wrote this companion piece of how a lifelong dream led us to live in Bali with our young family.)
Warmly,
Bryan
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