BALI PING PONG — EST. 2026
Your Guide to Playing
Ping Pong in Paradise
Where can we play table tennis?
01 — THE ORIGIN
The State of Play
There is a table tennis table behind the pool at almost every villa in Bali. It has two bats. One of them has lost its rubber. The net is a shoelace, or it is missing, or it is a net in the sense that a hammock is a net.
We know this because we went looking. Not systematically at first — just wanting a game after work, the way you might want a coffee. What we found instead was an island covered in tables that nobody plays on, warping quietly in the heat, taking up the best six metres in the room.
The problem isn’t that Bali doesn’t have tables. It has hundreds. The problem is that they’re all free, and free means nobody’s job, and nobody’s job means a warped top and one bat by March.
So we started keeping a list. Then we started fixing them.
THE PROBLEM
02 — THE SURVEY
What we found
Forty-odd tables between Canggu and Uluwatu. Maybe six you’d want to play a serious point on.
The good ones are almost always indoors and almost always somewhere unglamorous — a gym, a club, a hall behind a school. The beautiful ones, the ones in the photos with the pool and the frangipani, are usually unplayable. Sun-warped, wind-blown, a ball that dies on the second bounce.
Meanwhile every second person on this island has taken up padel and won’t stop talking about it. Good for them.
Table tennis is the cheapest, fastest, most sociable racquet sport there is. It fits in a room you already have. It just needs somebody to look after it.
03 — THE USEFUL BIT
What we do now
Three things. We keep the list — every table we know about, honestly rated, updated when we check them. We run leagues, played properly, teams of three, house bats only. And we hire out good tables for people who want one for a weekend, a wedding, or an office.