Travel Influencer: MT World

August 05, 2015
Wetravel Story Writer
4 min read

Every Thursday, we at Wetravel are looking to bring you tips and tricks from seasoned travelers through our Travel Influencer series. This week, we have Tobias and Melanie of MT World, who are sharing their advice on how to find the perfect house to rent in Bali!

Hello beautiful people! We are Tobias and Melanie, a couple from Sweden who live as digital freedom-preneurs, which means that we travel the world all the time and carry our office with us wherever we go. Today, we are very happy to share this guest blog with you all! We are going to talk a bit about what you should do in order to find the best house to rent in Bali and the cost of living there. We hope that you enjoy this post and find it valuable!

 

Image source: MT World
Image source: MT World

 

We love Bali!

We have traveled to Bali many times and have fallen in love with this island and the fantastic and friendly people who live here. When we visited Bali for the first time, we stayed for 10 days and in different hotels, as we were just on a short trip. But we decided to return back to this beautiful place and to stay longer, so we could rent our own house. Last year, we decided to go to Bali and live there for 4 months. After landing in Denpasar from an early morning flight from Manila, we were very pleased to come to this calm place, compared to the busy and big city that was our last stop. We took a taxi from the airport to Ubud, which is in the middle of the island, and it cost us 250,000 Indonesian rupiah, or about 19 USD. It’s a fixed price from the airport, so you don’t need to bargain for the best price, which is really great! The ride from the airport to Ubud usually takes an hour, but that depends on the traffic.

 

Image source: MT World
Image source: MT World

 

How do you find the best house?

We have learned that it’s easier to stay in a hotel for a couple of days, so you can walk around to look at the houses in different areas and to check any boards outside shops and grocery stores. We’ve found a lot of advertisements for houses at Bintang Supermarket, which we also recommend that you visit, so you can get an Indonesian SIM card. That way, you can call the house owners to see if the house is still available during the days that you want and arrange a meeting with them to see it. Many of the house owners and housecarers speak really good English, so you don’t have to worry so much about a language barrier. If you have the time, this is the best way to find your perfect house for the best price, since you’ll get to see the place before you rent it. You can also bargain if you’re going to stay there for a longer period of time because you can get a really good price for long-term rentals. We also recommend searching on Facebook, as there are many groups where you can see different houses all over Bali and arrange appointments to see them. Be aware though that if you look at houses on the internet, they are often really pricey compared to when you take your time and walk around. The rent for one night at these houses often costs as much as the rent for a whole month at the same type of house!

There's a lot included!

Some of the houses in Bali come with a wide variety of amenities and services. The house that you rent often comes with cleaning every day or at least 3 times a week. If you’d like, some houses even offer to cook dinner for you. A lot of homes have internet included, but some of them require you to pay with monthly plans or through a SIM card plugged into the USB modem. The speed of the internet can vary from time to time and with different plans. Sometimes, it can be very slow, but it generally works well for everyday email, social media, and surfing the web.

The houses themselves often look like pieces of artwork with their beautiful decorations and soothing ambiance. Expect to pay a bit more for a house if a pool is included, but we think that it’s well worth the price on a hot summer day. If the house that you rent doesn’t have a pool, but you still want to enjoy a swim or cool off, you can go to a nearby hotel and ask how much it would cost to use their pool.

A virtual tour of our house.

We will now give you a tour of the house that we rented in Ubud, Bali and tell you a little bit more about the cost of living there. We hope that you enjoy the video!

https://youtu.be/8zzUWIy9_X0

5 tips to get your perfect house in Bali.

Here are our top 5 tips to find and rent your dream house in Bali.

  1. Know what you're looking for. (Example: How big should the house be, how long do you plan on staying there, do you want a pool or not?)
  2. Take your time and walk around, so you can look at the different houses that interest you.
  3. Browse the boards at supermarkets and cafés for house ads.
  4. Check Facebook groups for houses, but remember that this can be more expensive sometimes.
  5. Do an online search of certain keywords, such as “rent house in Bali.” (Note that this will be the most expensive option. But if you have a big budget and prefer not to spend too much time searching for a place, then you’ll find some really nice houses.)

We hope that you enjoyed this blog post and that you find the perfect house for you in Bali!

We at Wetravel want to thank Tobias and Melanie of MT World for taking the time to write this guest blog post for us. If you enjoyed Tobias and Melanie’s advice and want to learn more from them, be sure to check out MT World through their website and social media channels down below!

MT World's Homepage | YouTube | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram

 

Image source: MT World
Image source: MT World