Amed Travel Guide: Bali’s Fishing Village That Tourism Forgot
In this Amed travel guide: when to go to Amed, how to get there from the airport, where to sleep, where to swim, where to eat, and what to actually do once you’re there.
I went to Bali in June 2025, in the gap between a harvest in the southern hemisphere and the next one waiting for me in California. Nine nights, my boyfriend, and my dad flying in for ten days because he’d decided he wanted to dive with his daughter. We did Uluwatu first, which was lovely and completely full of people, and then we drove three hours east to Amed.
It’s a string of fishing villages on the northeast coast, black sand, wooden outrigger boats called jukung lined up on the beach every morning, Mount Agung sitting behind you like it’s supervising. Nobody is trying to sell you a scooter tour every fifteen metres. There’s no club. There’s barely a supermarket.
Here’s everything I’d tell a friend who asked me where to go in Bali if they wanted the version that still feels like a village.
Where is Amed, exactly
Amed sits on the far northeast coast of Bali, in the Karangasem regency, right at the foot of Mount Agung. It’s roughly 100 km from Denpasar airport and about three hours of driving, which is a big part of why it’s stayed quiet.
Technically “Amed” isn’t even one village. It’s a name people use for a stretch of about 14 km of coastline made up of several small villages strung along one road: Amed itself, then Jemeluk, Bunutan, Lipah, Selang, Banyuning, all the way out towards Aas. So when someone says “we stayed in Amed”, ask which end. It changes everything about which beach you’ll walk to.
The other thing to know geographically is that Amed sits in Mount Agung’s rain shadow. The mountain catches the weather coming from the south and the east coast ends up noticeably drier and browner than the postcard green rice terraces everyone photographs in Ubud. I wasn’t expecting that at all.
When to visit Amed: month by month weather
Bali really only has two seasons, and Amed follows the same rhythm as the rest of the island, just drier. Dry season runs roughly May to October, wet season November to April. Even in the wet season it’s not a permanent grey drizzle, it’s a couple of hours of proper tropical rain and then everything steams and goes back to being beautiful.
For Amed specifically, the thing that matters most isn’t whether you get rained on, it’s the water. Rain means runoff, runoff means visibility drops, and if you came all this way to dive or snorkel, that’s the bit you’ll actually feel.
| Month | Weather | Air temp (day) | Sea temp | Rain |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| January | 🌧️ Wettest month of the year, expect real downpours | ~29-31°C | ~29°C | ~390 mm, around 20 rainy days |
| February | 🌧️ Still very wet, hot and sticky | ~29-31°C | ~29°C | ~340 mm |
| March | 🌧️ Wet but starting to ease | ~29-31°C | ~29°C | ~325 mm |
| April | 🌦️ Transition month, showers between sunny spells | ~29-31°C | ~29°C | ~250 mm |
| May | 🌤️ Dry season opening up, still humid | ~29-31°C | ~29°C | ~250 mm |
| June | ☀️ Lovely, dry, warm, this is when we went | ~28-30°C | ~28°C | ~130 mm |
| July | ☀️ Driest stretch begins, coolest nights of the year | ~28-29°C | ~28°C | ~90 mm |
| August | ☀️ Driest and sunniest month, best visibility underwater | ~28-30°C | ~27°C | ~60 mm |
| September | ☀️ Dry, quiet, excellent diving | ~28-30°C | ~27°C | ~90 mm |
| October | 🌤️ Still mostly dry, first showers creeping back | ~29-31°C | ~28°C | ~180 mm |
| November | 🌦️ Rain picks up properly | ~29-31°C | ~29°C | ~320 mm |
| December | 🌧️ Wet, seas can get rough, boats sometimes stay in | ~29-31°C | ~29°C | ~380 mm |
If you want the short version: June to September is the sweet spot, August is the driest, and we went in mid June and got nine days with only one hour of rain. If you can only travel in the wet season, go anyway, just build in flexible days and don’t book your diving for your last morning.
One thing I’d flag whatever month you pick: the sun here is brutal. The UV index is basically pinned at extreme all year round, so be careful.
Shop the sunscreen I travel with →
How to get to Amed from Denpasar airport
There’s no easy public transport to Amed. No airport shuttle, no useful bus, and the Grab and Gojek drivers who’ll happily take you anywhere in the south get very reluctant about a three hour run east. So you book a car, and you split it with whoever you’re travelling with.
The drive is about 98 to 110 km depending on the route and takes around three hours if the traffic gods are kind, more like three and a half if you leave the airport at rush hour. Private transfers generally sit around 700,000 IDR one way, which is roughly 40 euros for the car, not per person. We paid 40 euros for the three of us coming from Uluwatu.
Here’s my actual recommendation though: contact Agus.
Agus is the driver who took us from Uluwatu to Amed. He speaks very good English, he’s genuinely lovely company, and he doesn’t just drive you from A to B. He’ll stop at temples on the way, suggest viewpoints, wait while you take photos, and explain what you’re looking at without doing the whole scripted tour guide thing. If you’re going to spend three hours in a car anyway, you may as well turn it into a road trip with stops.
His number, and yes he’s on WhatsApp like everyone in Bali: (+62) 823-3955-0058
Message him a few days ahead with your dates, your pickup point, and where you want to stop. Agree the price on WhatsApp before you get in the car, that’s normal here and nobody finds it rude. Payment is in cash at the end.
The classic stops on that route are Tirta Gangga water palace and Lempuyang temple, the one with the “gates of heaven” that turn out to be a two hour queue and a man with a mirror under his phone. I’ll let you decide how you feel about that.
Where to stay in Amed
We stayed at Warung Ary & Home Stay, in Bunutan, and I’d book it again for sure next time we visit.
It’s built into the hillside on terraces, which means you don’t have a neighbour on your landing, you don’t hear anyone’s door, and every room looks straight out at the ocean. I woke up, opened the door, and the sea was just there. Three nights for two people cost us 49 euros total, so about 16 euros a night, and that includes breakfast.
And the breakfast is not a sad slice of white bread. It’s properly good and homemade. There’s air conditioning, and the place is also a warung, so you can eat lunch or dinner there without going anywhere.
It’s rated 8.8 on Booking with a couple of hundred reviews, so I’m not the only one.
Book Warung Ary & Home Stay →
A word on where along the coast to base yourself. Bunutan and Lipah are quieter and closer to the good snorkelling coves. Jemeluk is the busiest bit, which in Amed terms means there are maybe six restaurants and a dive shop. Anywhere along that road you’ll want a scooter, or at least be happy walking twenty minutes in the heat to dinner.
How long to stay in Amed
Two nights minimum. Three is better. That’s my honest answer.
Two nights gets you one full day, which is enough to swim, eat well, watch one sunset and understand why people fall for this place. But you’ll leave annoyed.
Three nights gives you a day in the water, a day on a scooter, and a day doing nothing, which is genuinely the correct number of days to do nothing in Amed. If you’re doing your dive certification, you need at least three, because the course itself eats two full days and you’ll want a morning afterwards to lie down a bit.
We had three nights and it still feel not enough.
Where to swim: the three beaches I kept going back to
Amed’s beaches are black sand and the water drops off fast. That’s exactly why the snorkelling is so good so close to shore.
Pura Sentana Hill Beach
Address: Jl. Raya Lipah, Bunutan, Karangasem, Bali 80852. Plus code JMXM+HVX.
About five to ten minutes on a scooter from the middle of Amed, and my favourite of the three. It’s a small cove with clear water and a genuinely relaxed setup: you can get a sun lounger and a cocktail on the beach for basically nothing. Come in the late afternoon, swim, order something, stay too long.
Bayu Beach (Bebayu)
Address: Laba Sari, Kec. Abang, Karangasem, Bali 80852. Plus code MJFJ+QM6.
Black sand, wide, and on a clear day you can see the volcanoes from the water if you’re lucky enough. Because Agung has a habit of wrapping itself in cloud for days at a time. When it does clear, it’s just stunning.
Pantai Jemeluk
Address: Amed St, Bunutan, Abang, Karangasem Regency, Bali 80852.
The beach right in front of the village, in a beautiful curved bay with the jukung boats pulled up on the sand. This is the sunset one. Get there for the last hour of light, and watch the fishermen sorting their gear.
Where to eat in Amed
Amed eating is warung eating. Small, family run, plastic chairs, and food that’s better than anything you’ll pay four times as much for in Seminyak. Here are the three that mattered.
Joli Best View Cafe
Jemeluk Bay, Jl. Ketut Natih, Purwakerti, Kec. Abang, Karangasem, Bali 80852. Plus code MM66+GP4.
The best sunset view in Amed, full stop. It’s up above Jemeluk Bay so you’re looking down over the whole curve of the coast with the boats below and the sun going down behind the hills. Go about an hour before sunset so you get a table on the edge, order a drink, and settle in. This is the one place I’d tell you to plan your evening around rather than just wander into.
Warung Sari Asih Tuna Satay
Jl. Ketut Natih, Purwakerti, Kec. Abang, Karangasem, Bali 80852.
The best warung in Amed for fish, according to my boyfriend and my dad. I am vegetarian, so I’m passing this recommendation on secondhand with total confidence. The tuna satay is the thing to order, it’s in the name for a reason.
Oneway Espresso
Jl. I Ketut Natih, Purwakerti, Kec. Abang, Karangasem, Bali 80852.
Looks a bit fancy from the outside, sits above the rice fields, and is exactly what you want either at eight in the morning before anything has happened or at four in the afternoon when you’ve been on a scooter for three hours and your entire body is painful. Good coffee, proper view.
What to do in Amed
Diving, which is the actual reason to come
Amed is one of the best value dive spots in Indonesia and the main reason my dad flew halfway around the world. The dive sites here start from the shore, which is rare and brilliant. You walk in off the beach and within a few minutes you’re on a coral wall.
We dived with Ocean Tree Bali, and I got my PADI Open Water with them over two days. My instructor Kadek was clear, patient and completely unbothered by the fact that I panicked slightly the first time I had to flood my mask. The whole team was lovely. If you want the full breakdown of what the course involves, how many dives, what it cost me and whether it’s actually worth doing in Bali rather than at home, I wrote a whole separate piece on it: Getting my PADI Open Water in Bali
Ocean Tree Bali on WhatsApp: (+62) 812-9292-9881.
If you don’t dive, the snorkelling in Jemeluk Bay covers a lot of the same ground for the price of a mask rental.
Doing absolutely nothing on the beach
I’m putting this in as an actual activity because in Amed it is one. There’s no pressure here, no beach club with a minimum spend, no one selling you anything. Find a lounger at Pura Sentana Hill, order something cold, and let the day disappear. After a season of 5 am starts in a vineyard, this is the single most valuable thing I did in Bali.
Getting deliberately lost on a scooter
This was my favourite day in Amed and it cost us about 4 euros for two scooters.
You have two directions, and both are good.
Go right out of Amed and follow the coast east. The road threads through village after village, each one a handful of houses, a temple, some boats, a woman waving at you from a doorway. It gets emptier and rougher the further you go, the cliffs get steeper, and eventually you reach Gili Selang Lighthouse at the far eastern tip of Bali. That’s it, that’s the end of the island. The last stretch of road is genuinely bad, steep and broken in places, so if you’re not confident on a scooter, turn around at Aas.
Or go up. Point yourself inland and climb into the hills behind Amed, towards the volcanoes. The temperature drops, the landscape goes from dry coastal scrub to green in about twenty minutes, and you get views back down over the whole coastline that made me stop the scooter roughly every four minutes. This is where the photos are, if you care about that sort of thing.
Two practical notes. Fill up before you head out, because petrol out east is sold from glass bottles at the side of the road and not always available.
The Mount Batur sunrise trek
If you want one proper adventure out of Amed, this is it. Mount Batur is an active volcano at 1,717 m, and the classic version is to climb it in the dark and watch the sun come up over the caldera and Lake Batur.
From Amed the pickup is brutally early, around 1:30 in the morning, because it’s roughly a two hour drive to the trailhead in Kintamani. The climb itself takes about an hour and a half and you’re on the summit for sunrise somewhere around half five or six. Prices from Amed vary a lot with group size, somewhere in the region of 600,000 to 900,000 IDR per person for a private trek with two to four of you, less if you join a bigger group.
It’s a long night and you’ll be useless afterwards. Plan it for a day when you have nothing else on, and don’t schedule a dive for that afternoon.
What to sort out before you go
The Bali tourist levy. Every foreign visitor pays 150,000 IDR, about 9 euros, once per entry. Pay it online through the official Love Bali site before you land and screenshot the QR code, because the queue for the payment counter at the airport is exactly as fun as it sounds.
Your visa. Most nationalities need the eVOA, applied for online before departure. Rules and prices shift, so check the official Indonesian immigration site close to your travel date rather than trusting a blog post, including this one.
Data. There is signal in Amed but it’s patchy once you head east or up into the hills, and you’ll want maps offline anyway. I use an eSIM so it’s set up before I land and I never have to find a shop. Get your Bali eSIM , and my code SKYVINE15 takes 15% off your first order.
Travel insurance, and read the diving clause. This one is not optional in Amed. A lot of standard policies exclude scuba entirely, or only cover you to a certain depth, or only if you’re certified. Check before you book a course, not after. Get covered before you go
Cash. There are ATMs in Amed but not many, and some warungs and all the beach loungers are cash only. Take enough out in Denpasar or Amlapura to not have to think about it.
So is Amed worth it?
Yes, and I’d go further: if you’re going to Bali and you only have time to leave the south once, come here rather than Ubud.
Amed isn’t polished. The beaches are black and stony, the road is rough, there’s nothing to do after nine in the evening, and if you need a rooftop infinity pool and a brunch menu you’re going to hate it. But it’s the only place in Bali where I felt like a guest in a village rather than a customer in a destination. Fishermen still fish. Kids walk to school past your breakfast.
We went for three nights, mostly as a diving stop, and it turned into the part of the trip I talk about and my dad said the Liberty was the best wreck he’d ever seen.
