Siddhartha Oceanfront Resort & Spa Bali

A beautiful, well run resort and a great choice for a first visit to Tulamben. Very comfortable bungalow rooms in immaculate gardens and a lovely pool area next to the ocean. The restaurant has a good range of western and Indonesian dishes with great breakfast options and a range of vegetarian dishes.Service is excellent throughout but I must make a special mention of the dive centre. Sandra, Katrina and Mini run a very professional, well organised and friendly set up with a great variety of dive sites accessible by boat and the dives are led by really good guides. Thanks for making the only non-German in the group welcome and giving me such a VIP diving experience! Overall there is nothing I could fault with the resort and definitely want to return

Wouldn’t recommend this resort. The resort looks clean, nice big pool and close to the beach. Sadly other than snorkeling/diving there isn’t much to do in and around the resort. The gym shouldn’t be called a gym.. The machines are partially broken and the options are very limited. The “game” area is a bit outdated. You can take daytrips like we did, but you pay a lot of money for the trip itself. During the trip you have to pay for entrees everywhere, same for your lunch. Local guide would be cheaper. The room is very big and looks very beautiful, sadly we were located on a very noisy spot. At the end of the day we would hear loud music, what the receptionist said was from the village next to us. When the music would go down late at night dogs would start barking the entire night. At day time the garden-team was mowing the gras for mutiple days in a row. What didn’t make our stay quite peaceful. The breakfast is good, nothing special. The lunch/dinner wasn’t tasty to us, so we went out for food most of the time. If you go out you have to take a taxi from the hotel, because they told us there weren’t any grab taxi’s in the area. This stay was much more expensive than our other stays in Bali, so we were disappointed with the services. We did really like the staff members. They really did their best to make it a great stay and we really valued them.

Skip - Do not recommend - Unless you’re looking for a mediocre German holiday in Bali. The contrast to other Balinese hotels which were less expensive and far superior is stunning! Generally dislike giving poor reviews but there are several serious issues — many of which are fixable — so it’s a question of management. 1) Food: If you want mediocre German food this is the place for you! Inexcusable in Bali where even roadside stands serve delicious meals with fresh produce from surrounding farms. I hadn’t had a bad meal in my travels until Siddartha. My grilled prawns came with boiled vegetables - utterly tasteless - guessing frozen and not local as I didn’t see such at the local market. A lack of Balinese fare overall. Even that was bland, tasteless. (Fruit juices were excellent!) My packed breakfast consisted of a beaten banana and an… apple. An Apple in the tropics? Along with a mangled sandwich which looks so appallingly unappetizing it’s embarrassing for a 4 star resort. 2) Ambiance: inescapable 1970s American music at the restaurant AND bar. If Dirty Dancing met the Bee-gees. Atrocious. What a missed opportunity to honor Bali and all of us who traveled so far to be IN Bali. This isn’t even music you’d hear at a decent hotel in the USA — it’s the stuff you’d catch in a half-empty casino lounge in Reno or maybe at 3 PM in a Florida retirement home rec room. Clearly the owner/management is tone deaf to their customers as I’m not the first to note this — just like others who have weighed in on the food in reviews — as before I could finish asking who selects the music the gracious personnel (and they are always gracious as Balinese seem incapable of impoliteness) finished my sentence. 3) Costcutting shortcuts and cutting corners: odd details that just make no sense and cheapen the experience — serve yourself at the water station for dinner while waiters bring your food and drinks (just why?); no hair conditioner, no pool attendant for towels yet very strict instructions posted re: towel use/taking, worn out gym; every other step not lit going down from the reception to the rooms so personnel wisely advises caution as the staircase really is dangerous at night, etc. 4) Location: this place really is for divers and sunbathers only as you can’t swim in front of the hotel. I can’t comment on the dive shop as I arranged a tour away from the hotel for snorkeling. 5) yoga: instructor is FABULOUS and the space is just open air so you hear the waves and feel the breezes and sun — so very pretty. 6) spa: masseuse was PHENOMENAL! While it was unfortunate that workers were repairing something in the spa during treatment, she did the best she could to drown out the noise; she was excellent in technique. Top notch and the spa room is quite pretty. 7) rooms: very large, super comfortable bed, beautiful outdoor bathroom, lovely lounge chairs out front. You can hear the ocean while You’re inside and that is quite lovely! While this place can’t do anything about the location (not a problem for those only interested in sunbathing or diving), it could attend to creating an authentic 4 star experience in Bali — instead of a mediocre holiday in Germany with sunshine and salt water.