The Museum Pasifika, Nusa Dua & The Le Mayeur Museum, Sanur

The resort concierges all recommend day tours outside of their resorts. There is a famous temple tour that’s not too far away called Ulu Watu, & that can be a 1/2 day or sunset tour. Bali is a small island. The kilometer distance between sites may not look far but the road infrastructure is not modern. The traffic is notorious. After Nusa Dua, I am saving my touring days for on the way to Ubud, where I’ll stay next, & for nearby to Ubud day trips. I recommend against trips to that area from Nusa Dua. They would be exhausting all day affairs likely with 4-5 plus hours just riding in the car, van or bus.

So what can you do in Nusa Dua outside of your beach resort & resort activities? There is an outdoor shopping mall that provides a shuttle to & from the hotels. It’s called the Bali Collection. My older phone that I am using with a local SIM card has shorter than desired battery life. I wanted to buy a booster. And I thought I would find local nail & massage there at non resort spa prices, which I did.

Compared to shopping malls in Bangkok & Kuala Lumpur, the Bali Collection was small and underwhelming. That includes the restaurant choices. There’s a good department store if you’ve forgotten a bathing suit or shorts. Uncle Jo’s Supermarket had the booster & snacks to bring back to the hotel. Diagonally across the mall from Jo’s was the best nail, foot massage & massage place in the mall. It is called My Bali Healing. It’s clean & nice & I liked my services. TIP: They will pick you up & take you back to your resort. I used that twice & tipped the driver.

So I only took the scheduled Bali Collection Shuttle the first time out. There were other guests, & I sat in the front seat of the van. Right nearby the Laguna Luxury Collection Hotel, the shuttle driver turned into a driveway to reverse directions. I saw a huge sign that said Museum Pasifika. It was walking distance, practically across the street. None of the Concierges had mentioned it & I had not heard anything about it. When I returned to my hotel, I looked it up. Oh my, you do not want to miss this magnificent art collection of Asia-Pacific Art. TIP: The Museum will send a driver to & from your resort too!

The next day, I asked the concierge to call the museum & they sent a driver to bring me. The Admission Fee was 150,000 INR or about $9.00 US. There’s a map of the Collection. I took photos of what moved me but there’s much more.

The first room is dedicated to the Indonesian artists in the collection.



The next room was European artists. We are all familiar with the French artist Paul Gauguin’s South Pacific paintings and sculpture. The Museum Pasifika owns two pieces. But they were out on loan to the Chicago Art Institute when I visited. Like Gauguin, other European artists were similarly enchanted by Asia-South Pacific, & passed through or worked in Bali.
There was a sculpture room too. But I was most enchanted by the collection of paintings by one Belgian artist, Adrien-Jean Le Mayeur. Le Mayeur arrived in Bali by boat in 1932 when he was in his early 50s. He met a 15 year old Balinese girl who later became both his muse & his wife. He lived in Bali in Sanur & painted into his mid 80s. Sanur is located between Denpasar & Nusa Dua, & Le Mayeur’s Home is now a lovely little museum which I also visited.

His oil paintings are exquisite as is each hand carved wooden frame, all different. The Le Mayeur’s in the Museum Pasifika are in outstanding condition:

The Art in the Le Mayeur’s House Museum is more varied but is in original rather than restored condition:


I was happy to pay the modest admission 100,000 INR or $6.00 US to contribute to the needed Museum upkeep fund. I offered to also pay for my driver who had never been there before but they said he could go in for free.
Some Trip Advisor reviews (not mine) are critical of the House Museum. Yes, the humidity has damaged some of the precious art pieces there. But a visit is an opportunity to see a traditional Balinese Home compound. The art in its home studio setting is most meaningful. And the wood carvings, both the painting frames, & the home traditional carved windows, panels & doors make this well worth a visit. The gardens are also lovely.

PS: During my visit to the Museum Pasifika, I saw that the classroom space near the snack bar was set up for a large group. When I inquired, I learned that a middle school group was coming for a Museum Tour & a Batik workshop. I asked if I could book a class & indeed came back the next day. A staff member guided me through the process of choosing a design to stencil or drawing my own, then dripping wax & painting dye over the wax. My Batik is a bit primitive with lots of lovely dots; wax drips! The experience gave me greater appreciation for the labor, precision, & design complexity of the batik fabrics we see in Bali.