After three days in the chaos of Canggu, Sigourney found herself somewhere else entirely.
Sigourney recently travelled to Bali with her family, and after three days in the chaos of Canggu, found herself somewhere else entirely. This is her Sanur Bali hotel review: two nights at Bali Beach Hotel, The Heritage Collection, and The Meru Sanur, two of the most compelling places to stay in Bali right now. It is not the Bali you think you know.
Sanur is the quieter, more culturally intact alternative to Canggu and Seminyak — and it has quietly become one of the most sophisticated destinations in Bali, anchored by two extraordinary hotels: the heritage grandeur of Bali Beach Hotel, The Heritage Collection, and the dramatic new luxury of The Meru Sanur. If you want beauty, ease and genuine culture without the noise, this is where you go.
It seems that everyone goes to Canggu or Uluwatu and I get it — they’re energetic and full of extraordinary food and great shopping. We did our first three days in Pererenan with all the scooters, construction noise and beautiful chaos. By day three I was ready for a slower pace. Enter Sanur.
My friend Karlie, founder of Bali Buddies, knows how to do Bali well. She moved to Sanur a decade ago. “Everyone thought I was daggy living in Sanur,” she told me, laughing. The clients were in Seminyak and Canggu. The scene was elsewhere. “Now everyone wants to live here.”
Everyone thought I was daggy living in Sanur. Now everyone wants to live here.
Foot massages for the family in Sanur.
She says the reason Canggu became Canggu the nightclubs, the construction, the relentless churn of new development is partly because the local landowners in that area were historically less prosperous, and when developers came knocking, they sold. The Sanur locals were already well-established, already protective of their community, and they simply said no to a great deal of what Canggu said yes to. No nightclubs. No high-rises. No overnight transformation into a party destination. What remains is a place where actual Balinese and Indonesian people live their actual lives, and visitors are woven gently through rather than overwhelming the place entirely.
Exploring Sanur with the kids.
Add to this the fact that Sanur has no surf break — and therefore no surfer crowd, and therefore none of the scene that follows surfers from Legian to Seminyak to Canggu to Uluwatu in an endless migration — and you have an area that has, almost accidentally, remained itself. “It has a proper village vibe,” Karlie said. “Nobody cares what you do or where you live. It is completely the opposite of Seminyak.” She moved there for her children. She wanted them riding bikes along the beach path, not growing up in what she described, with admirable precision, as “the eastern suburbs of Bali.”
Dinner in Sanur with our feet in the sand.
Walking around Sanur, I understood immediately. (If you are weighing up where to stay in Bali with kids, this is the area I would start with.) The beach path is wide and flat and lined with warungs and cafes, and people — local people, families, elderly couples, stray dogs of extraordinary variety — simply move through it in both directions all day long. The strip of cafes along the harbour near the port is excellent and unself-conscious. We had beach massages in the late afternoon, the kids chased dogs. It is easy breezy and beautiful and I am already thinking about going back.
The Sanur Special Economic Zone: What It Actually Means
Here is where Sanur begins to look less like a quiet beach town and more like one of the most significant hospitality and wellness destinations in Asia. In June 2025, President Prabowo Subianto officially inaugurated the Sanur Health Special Economic Zone — a 41-hectare government-backed coastal enclave dedicated to medical and wellness tourism.
At its centre: the Bali International Hospital — the first hospital in Indonesia permitted to employ foreign doctors under the new SEZ regulatory framework. A collaboration between Indonesia Healthcare Corporation and the globally revered Mayo Clinic, it offers specialisations in cardiology, oncology, neurology, orthopaedics, and regenerative medicine. The vision, as the government has stated plainly, is to give Indonesians — and international visitors — a reason to seek world-class medical care in Bali rather than flying to Singapore or Malaysia. I can tell you from personal experience that it works.
I arrived in Bali with a virus and was coughing so badly on my second night in Sanur that I couldn’t lie flat or get a wink of sleep. The next morning, the staff at The Meru swiftly whipped me to the Bali International Hospital via golf buggy. There was no triage queue. No waiting room purgatory. Just a private glass-walled room, a doctor who was efficient and thorough and clearly very good, a vitamin and electrolyte drip that sorted me out with considerable speed. I was there for perhaps ninety minutes, including all treatment time. I left feeling considerably better. If you are unwell in Bali, do not hesitate — this is the place to go.
Why Sanur Should Be on Every Bali Itinerary
We had been in a Canggu villa for three nights before arriving in Sanur, and that transition was everything. The villa had been wonderful. Canggu had been full-on. Sanur was the circuit breaker we needed: a few days of beauty, ease, genuine luxury and genuine culture before we crossed to Nusa Lembongan for the island portion of the trip.
My strong recommendation, if you are planning a Bali itinerary — whether it is a family getaway or a couples retreat — is to build in a few nights at each hotel. They’re different properties with different energies — the heritage grandeur of Bali Beach Hotel on one side (and the views!), the dramatic new vision of The Meru on the other — and together they give you something a single hotel can’t. The restaurants share menus across the complex, which means you can eat at Roso one night and Arunika the next without leaving the zone. Sanur, as Karlie will tell you with the quiet satisfaction of someone who was right a decade before everyone else caught up, is not a compromise. It is not the place you end up when the better areas are full. It is the place you choose when you know what you’re doing.
