Bali vs Lombok: Which for Diving in 2026?

by Yannick SchrothSep 5, 20268 min read

Gili Trawangan, off Lombok, the smaller side of this comparison. Photo: Vyacheslav Argenberg, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.

Indonesia has a remote-work visa now, and it is specific

This changed the calculation for anyone thinking in months rather than weeks, and it is worth getting the numbers right rather than from a forum.

The E33G, officially the Visa Rumah Kedua Pekerja Jarak Jauh, second home visa for remote workers: is valid 90 days from issue and allows a stay of one year, extendable online. Immigration asks for a salary of at least US$60,000 a year, at least US$2,000 in the last three months of bank statements, and a work agreement with a company established outside Indonesia. The published cost is Rp 7,000,000 for the one-year stay. Selling goods or services inside Indonesia is not permitted on it, and neither is work outside the scope of the permit.

The visa is national, so it does not choose an island for you. What chooses the island is whether there is anywhere to work when you land, and there the gap is wide but narrowing: Bali's coworking is a mature industry around Canggu and Ubud, while Kuta Lombok has a handful of spaces and has only recently got fibre and Starlink to go with them.

The diving is a seasonal argument, not a quality one

Bali's headline sites do not run on one calendar, which is the part worth planning around.

The mola season is the one people plan trips around and the one that catches them out. The sunfish come up because cold water does, which means the window that makes Crystal Bay famous is also the window in which it is cold and moving. It is not the place to be doing your fourth dive.

The Gilis are the opposite proposition and say so: shallow, warm, turtles, and a reputation for turning out new divers. If your goal is a certification and a good week rather than a bucket-list animal, that is a feature.

Wherever you dive, the chamber is on Bali

Worth knowing before you pick the quieter island. there is no published recompression chamber on Lombok or on the Gilis. The facilities we could verify are both on Bali: Sanglah General Hospital in Denpasar, and Kasih Ibu in Gianyar, which has a chamber taking six patients plus two attendants and states round-the-clock emergency cover, sited between Sanur and Tulamben.

From the Gilis, that is a fast boat and then a road, and the fast boats do not run at night. Ask a Gili centre what their evacuation plan is and how long it has taken in practice. It is a fair question and a good centre will have a specific answer.

What the operator registers add for Bali and Lombok

Neither register is compulsory in Indonesia, so neither list is the whole set. What the last column shows is who let an assessor look.

Green Fins publishes membership at levels that mean different things. A Certified member was assessed in person against a published standard within the last twelve months; a Digital Member filled in a self-evaluation and nobody visited. It is about environmental practice rather than safety, and a centre outside it may run a tighter boat than one inside it.

Bali's dive towns are small and spread out, Amed is the largest at 35, and each has one to three assessed centres. Gili Trawangan is bigger than four of them and has none. On an island group whose selling point is turtles and coral, that is a gap worth noticing.

Bali or Lombok: which to pick

Bali if you want range, if you are chasing mantas or mola mola, or if you are staying long enough that coworking and a hospital with a chamber matter. Lombok and the Gilis for a first course, a quieter week, or a lower cost of living, accepting a longer road to a chamber and no assessed centres to choose from. Both is easy and common; they are a fast boat apart.

What we would not do is plan a July trip to Bali purely for sunfish. The window is real, the animal is not obliged to appear, and the conditions that bring it are the least beginner-friendly of the year.