Thailand v Bali: what would you pick for your next holiday?

By Amy Cooper

Let's get straight to the baht of the matter. Thailand has 1430 islands. Bali has... one.

Size counts, especially when it comes to spending your hard-earned holiday dollars, and it's hard to beat the breadth of choice you're buying with a Thailand break.

Here's a wonderland 100 times bigger than Bali, where 500,000-plus kilometres of geographic and cultural diversity offers endless variations on a theme of paradise.

Thailand's 77 provinces have 2700 kilometres of shoreline and all kinds of contrasting landscapes: virgin forest, mountain peaks, fertile plains, lush jungle, golden beaches. Whether you see yourself dancing amid 30,000 revellers beneath a full moon, on a big-city spa and shopping break or entirely off-grid, the Land of Smiles delivers.

If you spent all your holidays in Thailand, you'd still only touch the surface, although you'd probably plunge beneath it, too, as the spectacular Andaman coast boasts some of the world's best dive sites. In those pristine waters, where limestone archipelagos are scattered in the ocean like emerald stars in a sapphire sky, there might even be unmapped islands.

You can hop your whole trip on a live-aboard boat or choose a new koh - or island - each time you go.

And then there's Bangkok, that sensory-overloading citadel of temples and palaces, mega-malls and markets, street life and skyscrapers. There is no city quite like it to stir your soul. While Bali's capital Denpasar tends to be merely a gateway, Bangkok is a bucket-list destination in itself.

Thailand and Bali both excel at beach-side drinking. But nothing compares to Bangkok's rooftop bars, which are, quite literally, the height of indulgence. Once you've known the heady thrill of a martini in a glamorous eyrie like Sky Bar at Sirocco, soaring above street level like some sort of drinking deity, you're spoiled for cocktails at anything less than 247 metres.

Nothing embodies Thailand's a-lot-for-less spirit quite like its food. While other southeast Asian cuisines hit a few tasty notes, Thai food is an incomparable orchestra of intensity and complexity, with salty, spicy, sweet and sour all symphonising on your plate. Street vendor or Michelin chef, rich northern Khao Soi noodle broth or fiery southern Khua Kling dry curry, Thai food is the edible essence of its country's variety, generosity and depth.

Even a Thai massage gives you more. Balinese know how to knead, but a Thai masseur goes deeper still, applying not just hands but knees, legs, feet and elbows to iron out your knots.

The souvenirs say it all: precious gems and bespoke Thai silk here, or wooden painted phallus and Bintang singlet there? It's a Muay Thai knockout.

By Mal Chenu

From Sydney, it's a six-and-a-half-hour flight to Denpasar, versus around 10 hours to Bangkok. This puts you on a day bed or banana lounge in Kuta, Jimbaran or Legian about three cocktails before the connecting flight from Bangkok to Koh Samui or Khao Lak even starts boarding.

Communication is uncomplicated in Bali, where Bahasa Indonesia uses the standard Latin-script alphabet. The signs in Thailand will have you channelling Mr Squiggle and wanting to draw on them to turn the letters into something more understandable, like a spider's web or the Mandelbrot set of fractal geometry.

Whereas Bali is a year-round destination, Thailand suffers from what its PR spin doctors like to call the "green season".

In this case, green means rain. Monsoons of it. And oppressive heat. From June to September, a lot of Thailand takes a break. Tours pause and restaurants reduce their menus. You can work up a sweat walking from your hotel room to the pool.

The Balinese surf is perpetual and gnarly too, whereas Thailand offers limited breaks between April and October before surfers have to take a six-month break and probably head to Bali.

Bali's beach clubs boast a barefoot buzz, streets heave with trendy bars and restaurants, and you can live like royalty at top-end hotels and private villas at surprisingly affordable prices. Bali is the best place in the world to just take it easy and let the sunshine, tropical breezes and scented canang sari, small tributes filled with rice, flowers and incense, wash over you. The hardest part is finding the time to relax between unwinding and resting.

But it's not all about luxe relaxing. For a taste of Balinese culture, spend some time in Ubud in the centre of the island. Tour the monkey forest or watch thousands of herons fly into the village of Petulu just before sunset. Listen to the strains of gamelan music, and visit Neka Art Museum, where the gentle artistic traditions will touch your soul.

And beyond Bali, which is known as the Island of the Gods, and which should be a big enough hint that you're already in Nirvana, lie further adventures in Lembongan, Lombok and the surrounding Gili islands. Not to mention the rest of a reasonably sizeable country called Indonesia. You can also take an easy one-hour flight across to Komodo and see the dragons, the world's biggest lizard. Cocktails and dragons and gods, oh my! (Apologies to Dorothy and the rest of the Wizard of Oz crowd).

Shopping is a lot easier in Bali, too. At about 10,000 rupiahs to the Aussie dollar, even vegie mathematicians can do the conversion. And the Balinese love to haggle. Bartering is better than baht-ering, and I've got the Bintang singlet and $6 boardies to prove it.