You will notice that just about anywhere you visit in Bali whether it’s a temple, museum or other cultural attractions a fee has to be paid before you can enter. In fact, there are very few places in Bali that are tourism-related that don’t incur a fee.
If you intend visiting Kimtamani to see Gunung Batur then you are in for a bit of a rise in the fees. There are several roads up to the mountain to try and get around these scoundrels and on my last three trips using different roads but they seemed to have covered those as well. The latest situation is that there is now a 200% increase in tourist fees at Kintamani.
The article I read regarding this was in the Bali Discovery and according to the article: In an effort to increase tax revenues earned from its tourism sector, the regional government of Bangli have suddenly decided to increase by more than 200% the “tourism retribution fee” charged to visitors to area tourist attractions from Rp. 3,300 (US$0.35) to Rp.10,000 (US$1.09) per visitor.
This might seem trivial to some folk but when you have watched over the years how prices have increased just to ‘make a buck’ out of tourists is erring on greedy. At one time, decades ago, visiting Kintamani for a relaxing lunch was a great day out. Now, it’s costly hassle.
