What is the availability and trustworthiness of ATMs on the island? Are ATMs readily available in the airport when you land? How about the rest of Bali? Are they reliable ie not many skimming devices? We are staying at the W Seminyak and we'll be flying in from Singapore, and we always use ATMs on all of our travels and never exchange money. I do carry a few hundred USD on me just in case.

At DPS there are a few ATMs (including a Citibank) at the baggage collection area just after immigration. If I remember correctly there is also an ATM along the main road near the W entrance (probably Mandiri or ANZ)

Great, thank you so much.

On another note, how much do you recommend we take out for 4 nights and 2 people? We will most likely put everything on our room in our resort, but we plan to travel around and explore outside the hotel every day. Is 5mill rupiah($550USD) enough?

There are plenty of ATMs of various banks around the Denpasar area and Ubud. You'll have no trouble finding one. The key thing is to find one that dispenses Rp in 50000 bills. 100000 bills get you lots of annoyed looks by shopkeepers. Which leads to your question about how much to take out. If you are planning on buying some really nice things, then 5 million might be good, but I'd start with 2 million and get more if you need it. If you were to spend 5 million in 4 days without buying something really really nice, I'd say youre getting taken advantage of.

As a frequent visitor to Indonesia, I actually prefer the Rp100,000 notes, my wallet feels lighter. Mind you it's only equivalent to $10 and I find it amusing you got the annoyed looks. Having said that it's always good to carry smaller notes if you are taking taxis since the drivers will always claim they don't carry change.

Rp5 million for 2 over 4 days is comfortable but not excessive. A decent lunch for 2 will easily set you back Rp500,000 unless you intend to eat at the local warungs. Taxis are not cheap either (for SE Asian standard) and the island is huge, if you hire a car for a day it would easily cost Rp400-500,000 (don't quote me on this since the last time I hired a car was more than 5 years ago). Also allow Rp300,000 for airport departure tax for 2. No Bali is not cheap .....

We prefer to eat local and not hit the touristy spots. I don't think we'll be buying much, but with my wife you never know.

We booked a full day tour(driver only) and it came out to 350000 for the car.

http://www.bali-day-trip.com/Ubud-Volcano-Tours.html

I will still allow Rp1 million for each day, and be prepared for 'extra' charges for your tour.

Your driver is also unlikely to send you to a local eatery even if you are comfortable with the hygiene level. Drivers usually eat for free at the restaurants they recommend, so you may not have much choice.

Never been to Bali, but this happens everywhere. I really hate it too. In the Angkor Wat grounds our driver said he would take us to a very good restaurant. His English wasn't so hot, but we asked him, "Is it for tourists or local people?" He said, "Local people, it is good place". Ok fantastic. We get there and our driver doesn't come to eat with us. That should have tipped us off. Walk inside, it's 100% tourists. It was flippin expensive (relative to Cambodia) and the food was terrible.

So what is the solution to this problem? Ask the driver to go where he wants to eat? Tell the driver you will pay him extra to take you to eat somewhere else? When he drops you off at the restaurant, just walk somewhere else? Bring your own food? We actually brought our own food the second day in Angkor. We don't want no stinkin over priced tourist trap crap!

Menu isn't in English? Winner!

edit: or russian/other asian language

ATM's are readily available all over Bali. Basically all of the major commercial banks in Indonesia are linked in to the international ATM networks (Star, Plus, Cirrus, etc.), so ATM cards from US banks should work reliably in almost any ATM you find. And almost all have English functionality options.

The only proviso to that is that some ATMs limit the amount of withdrawal you can take (not sure why, maybe running low on cash) at a single whack. So even if the screen gives you a Rp 2 million option, you might get an error message on the next screen because the machine doesn't really want to give you more than Rp 500,000. If you run into this problem, just find another machine and try again.

Personally, I don't like it when an ATM gives me Rp 2 million in 50,000-rupiah notes. Forty of those notes is very thick and gets inconvenient when folded over in my wallet. But unless the machine has a little sign indicating that it'll give out 50,000-rupiah notes, you won't know what denomination you're going to get until the machine spits it out.