Christmas

Christmas is quiet and pretty nice. New Year is full to bursting but a great experience. It depends where you are. I have spent a few years celebrating both there as a tourist. For those here that live there, then you will get a different response because its different.

I have spent Christmas at Lovina and Christmas was the quietest affair ever as was New Year although the food was pretty good. Kuta was mad on NYE (250,000 people on the beach each armed with as many fireworks as they could handle) and Christmas was really like any other day except with tinsel.

If you are planning to go there for Christmas, book ahead as prices go up fast and hotels book up faster.

Luke sums it up very nicely, and from the point of view of an expat living in Bali, Christmas and New Years is second only to July and August in terms of tourists on island, viz as a peak season.  It is busy, not only with foreign tourists but with domestic tourists as well, so always good to book in advance.   

Late December/early January is the early part of our rainy season, so one can expect periods of steady rain generally in the late afternoon and into the evening, but those periods generally don't last more than a couple of hours.  We don't normally get several continuous days of monsoon type of rain here on Bali.