The Best Beaches for Families in Southern Bali
Bali's beaches vary enormously in how child-friendly they are, and the famous names are not always the useful ones. The west coast surf beaches that made the island's reputation are exciting places to watch the sea and frequently poor places to let a six-year-old into it, while several less-celebrated bays on the other side of the peninsula are calm, shallow and almost purpose-built for families.
Understand the geography first, because it explains everything. The west-facing beaches - Kuta, Legian, Seminyak, Canggu - take the open Indian Ocean swell, which gives them their surf, their dramatic sunsets and their rip currents. The beaches on the southern and eastern side of the Bukit peninsula and around Sanur are sheltered, often reef-protected, and correspondingly gentler.
Sanur is the standard family answer and deserves it. A long reef-protected lagoon means shallow, calm, warm water with essentially no surf, backed by a flat paved promenade that is a gift for prams and small bicycles. There is shade, a run of unhurried cafés, and a pace that is markedly slower than the west coast. It is not the most glamorous place on the island and it is comfortably the easiest.
Nusa Dua offers the same calm water with more polish. Reef-sheltered, well maintained, plenty of shade and clean facilities, though the beachfront is largely resort-owned and it can feel a little sealed off from the rest of the island. For families who want the water to be reliably safe and everything else to be reliably easy, it works well.
Jimbaran gets you the calm water and a proper sense of place. A wide, gently shelving bay on the sheltered side, with a working fishing beach at one end and the well-known seafood grills at the other. Late afternoon here, with children in the shallows and dinner cooking over coconut husks, is one of the nicer family evenings the island offers.
Treat the west-coast beaches as somewhere to visit rather than swim. Seminyak and Canggu are wonderful for sandcastles, football, kite-flying and watching the sunset, and the beach itself is broad and pleasant. But the currents are real, lifeguard cover is limited to flagged sections, and the sensible approach with young children is paddling only, within the flags, with an adult in the water.
Whichever beach you choose, the same handful of things apply. Shade is scarce on most Bali beaches, so bring or hire an umbrella and plan around the middle of the day. Sun cream needs reapplying far more often than at home. Swim between the flags where there are flags, and where there are none, ask locally rather than guessing. And the sand gets genuinely hot by eleven, so bring something for small feet.
The short version: for actual swimming with young children, head for Sanur, Nusa Dua or Jimbaran. For an afternoon on a spectacular beach with a sunset at the end of it, the west coast is unbeatable, provided everyone understands the sea is for looking at.