Ubud

The climate is the first thing families notice. Ubud is high enough to be several degrees cooler than Canggu, which makes middle-of-the-day outdoor time possible with young children in a way the coast often does not. It also rains more, so plans need an indoor fallback more often than in the south.

For children it offers a different set of things entirely: walks through rice terraces and river valleys, craft workshops, and a food scene that skews heavily towards fresh and vegetable-forward. The Monkey Forest is the famous attraction and the most common source of trouble — the macaques are wild, quick and interested in bags, and small children should not be carrying food. Bali is rabies-endemic, so treat any bite or scratch as a same-day medical matter rather than a scrape, and go to a clinic that can give post-exposure shots.

The centre is congested and its pavements are narrow and uneven, so a pram is more hindrance than help; a carrier works better. Many families stay slightly outside the middle, in the villages and rice fields a few minutes out, and go into town deliberately. There is no beach, and the drive to one is an hour or more.