Bali or Angkor Wat for your next Aussie escape? Indonesia is cheaper to fly to and pricier on the ground; Cambodia is the opposite. Both need visas — neither is visa-free for Australians. The honest 2026 comparison.
Both are excellent first trips into Southeast Asia. Pick Indonesia (specifically Bali) if you want beach, spa, surf, and accessible nightlife with familiar Aussie crowds — visa is $35 USD (~$53 AUD) e-VOA plus the Bali tourism levy (IDR 150,000 / ~$15 AUD). Pick Cambodia if you want world-class temples (Angkor Wat), genuinely off-the-beaten-track travel, half the prices of Bali, and fewer fellow Aussies — visa is $80 USD (~$122 AUD) all-in for our Tourist eVisa, approved in 3 business days. Many Aussies do both within the same Indochina-plus-Indonesia year.
Bali is the default first international trip for hundreds of thousands of Australians. It is closer to Perth than Melbourne is, it is cheap to fly to, and almost everyone you know has been at least once. Cambodia gets pitched as something more exotic, more difficult, and more expensive — which is half right. It is more different than Aussies expect, but it is meaningfully cheaper day-to-day than Bali in 2026 and the visa is not actually any harder.
The honest framing is this: Indonesia is the easy default but the more expensive ground game; Cambodia is the slightly bigger pre-trip lift but the cheaper on-the-ground holiday. Both need a visa — Australians do not have a visa-free option for either country. The choice really comes down to whether you want a beach holiday with predictable amenities, or a temple-and-history trip with proper off-the-beaten-track moments.
Most of the Aussies who ask us this question end up doing both within the same year — Bali in the dry season for the beach reset, Cambodia in the shoulder months for the cultural trip. If that sounds like you, the Cambodia visa for Australia pillar covers the eligibility side, and the Australian application walkthrough is the field-by-field version of our application form.
Two countries, two completely separate visa systems, two different fee structures. The shared facts: neither country offers visa-free entry to Australians, both run online application portals, and both stamps give you a 30-day stay. After that, the products diverge in important ways. Here is the honest side-by-side for Australian passport holders.
Australia is not on Indonesia's visa-exempt list. The standard route in 2026 is the Electronic Visa on Arrival (e-VOA) — $35 USD (~$53 AUD), applied for online before you fly. It gives a 30-day stay starting from the day you land, and it can be extended once in-country for another 30 days, taking the maximum stay to 60. You can also pay $35 USD in cash on arrival (the older VoA), but the queue at Denpasar arrivals is long and unpredictable, so most Aussies now file the e-VOA online a few days before flying. Both products cost exactly the same — the difference is whether you queue or you do not.
If you are landing in Bali specifically, there is a second, separate fee: the Bali tourism levy. Effective 14 February 2024, every international tourist arriving in Bali must pay IDR 150,000 (~$15 AUD) per person. You can pay it before you arrive or in the airport at a dedicated counter — the airport queue is famously slow, so paying online is the easy move. The levy only applies to Bali. If you fly into Jakarta, Yogyakarta, or Surabaya for a Java or Lombok trip, you do not pay it.
Australians need a Cambodia visa too — no exceptions, no visa-free option, every passport holder including infants. Our Tourist eVisa is $80 USD (~$122 AUD) all-in for a 30-day single-entry stamp, valid for three months from issue. The Business eVisa is $90 USD (~$137 AUD) for the broader category that covers meetings, paid work, conferences, sales calls, supplier visits, due-diligence trips, and longer stays. Both are processed in three business days. The all-in price means no surprise add-ons at checkout: passport and photo pre-checks, Aussie-timezone support, the approved PDF emailed to your inbox, and free resubmission if Immigration flags a correction. The eVisa vs VoA comparison covers why this beats the airport route, and the Do Australians Need a Visa for Cambodia pillar covers the broader eligibility story.
This is the part most blog comparisons get backwards. Yes, Bali is cheaper to fly to from Australia — a return Jetstar fare from Perth or Melbourne to Denpasar regularly drops under $500 in the shoulder season, and Sydney is typically $600 to $800. Phnom Penh and Siem Reap are usually $900 to $1,400 return from the east coast, almost always with a stopover in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, or Bangkok. So the flight cost is meaningfully different.
Once you arrive, the picture flips. Bali has gentrified hard over the last five years. A nice mid-range room in Seminyak or Canggu runs $80 to $150 AUD per night in peak season; the same standard in Siem Reap is $40 to $70 AUD. A western-style breakfast in Bali is $15 to $20 AUD; in Cambodia it is $5 to $8 AUD. A 30-minute taxi in Seminyak via Grab is $10 to $15 AUD; the same ride in Phnom Penh via PassApp is $3 to $5 AUD. Cocktails, dive trips, sunset boats, tuk-tuks — everything in Cambodia comes in roughly 30 to 40 percent under the equivalent Bali line item.
Aussie warungs and Bintang specials still exist, of course — if you stay in Kuta or Sanur and eat at local warungs, Bali can absolutely be done cheaply. But the equivalent local Cambodia trip is cheaper still. The Cambodia visa cost guide for Australians has the full visa-side breakdown, and the Cambodia visa processing time from Australia guide covers the timing question if you are weighing a last-minute Cambodia trip against a last-minute Bali one.
Beach, spa, surf, warungs, bohemian Ubud, world-class dive sites in Nusa Penida and the Gili Islands, and accessible nightlife in Seminyak and Canggu. Bali is the established Aussie holiday formula and the formula works: direct flights, English everywhere in the tourist zones, sunloungers within five minutes of every airport hotel, surf schools that take complete beginners, and yoga retreats that take complete sceptics. Outside Bali, Java has Borobudur and the Yogyakarta cultural scene, Lombok has untouched beaches and the Mount Rinjani trek, and Sumatra has orangutans and the Lake Toba caldera. Indonesia is genuinely huge — the country is the size of Western Europe end to end, and a Bali trip is one small slice of it.
Angkor Wat (still the single most impressive temple complex any Aussie traveller will see in their life), the colonial-era riverside in Phnom Penh, the genuinely confronting Tuol Sleng and Killing Fields history, the slow-pace Mekong river scene, the pepper farms and salt fields of Kampot, and the still-undeveloped Koh Rong island group off Sihanoukville. The pace is slower than Bali, the crowds are thinner, and the prices are lower. The off-the-beaten-track quotient is real — you can spend three days in northern Cambodia without seeing another Australian. The best time to visit Cambodia guide breaks the seasonal question down by month.
Many Aussies who do both report the same takeaway: Bali for the beach reset, Cambodia for the depth. Neither is better — they answer different questions. The best-time-to-visit Cambodia guide is useful if you want to layer Cambodia onto an existing Indochina or Indonesia plan.
On the safety side, both destinations are well within standard Aussie tourist territory. The Smartraveller advisory for Cambodia and the Smartraveller advisory for Indonesia are both worth a five-minute read before you book — particularly around the wet season for either country and any region-specific notes.
A growing number of Aussies do not pick one — they do a 14-night combo. The standard shape is Bali for 7 nights (beach reset, surf, spa, warungs in Canggu, sunset in Uluwatu), then fly to Siem Reap for 4 nights (Angkor Wat at sunrise, the Old Market, Phare Circus), then Phnom Penh for 3 nights (riverside, Tuol Sleng, Royal Palace) before flying home. The combined visa cost is modest and the routing is cleaner than it looks on a map.
Flight-wise: Perth, Sydney, Melbourne, or Brisbane direct to Denpasar to start. From Bali to Cambodia, the easiest route is DPS to Singapore on Scoot or Singapore Airlines (2.5 hours), then SIN to Siem Reap (SAI) on Jetstar Asia or Singapore Airlines (2.5 hours). Total transit day about 7 to 8 hours including the connection. From Phnom Penh home, the same Singapore or Kuala Lumpur stopover gets you back to any Australian gateway. Some Aussies finish from Phnom Penh via Bangkok instead — both work.
About $220 AUD all in for both countries' visas, the Bali levy, and the e-Arrival Card — on a 14-night trip that will easily run $4,500 to $7,500 per person depending on accommodation tier. Paperwork is less than 5 percent of the trip cost. If you want to extend the loop further, the Vietnam–Cambodia visa combo and the Cambodia vs Thailand routing piece both cover the wider Southeast Asia options.
When you are ready to lock in the Cambodia leg, the Cambodia eVisa application is short — passport scan, digital photo, card payment, three business days. Worth noting: any Bangkok stopover in 2026 still cannot be overland into Cambodia, because every Thailand–Cambodia land border has been closed since June 2025. The Thailand–Cambodia border closure update has the full background.
Next steps and related reading for Australians: apply for your Cambodia eVisa when you are ready to lodge, bookmark our Cambodia visa hub for Australian citizens as the single canonical reference, skim the
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第一次前往柬埔寨？这是美国人的诚实初次旅行者清单 —— 签证、美元货币怪癖、安全现实、疫苗、寺庙着装规范，以及2026年新机场到达的实际情况。
自2025年6月以来，所有七个泰国-柬埔寨陆地边界都已关闭，因此2026年，美国人从泰国进入柬埔寨的唯一途径是飞行。以下是从曼谷到暹粒和从曼谷到金边的航线工作原理、您在登机前需要的柬埔寨电子签证，以及为什么旧的波贝过境计划不再存在。
三种方式可以覆盖柬埔寨首都和吴哥窟之间的195英里：15美元的快车、45分钟的航班或缓慢的河渡轮。以下是每种方式对美国旅行者的实际费用、所需时间以及哪种方式适合您的旅行。
曼谷入境，暹粒出境——但陆路口岸已关闭。
阅读2026年最新动态 →经典印支组合。富国岛海滩30天免签。
See the combo guide →Bali is the default Aussie escape. Pair it with Siem Reap for the long combo.
You are reading this guide →The stopover every Aussie connects through on the way to Cambodia.
Sort the stopover →If you are weighing Thailand instead of Indonesia, this is the comparison.
Read the routing piece →
