If you spend enough time in Bali, you get used to two things: motorbikes zigzag through traffic - and someone you know ending up in a hospital because of one. Add in reefs sharp enough to slice open your leg, waves that throw surfers around like rag dolls, and the occasional tropical stomach bug that thinks it’s auditioning for a horror film. Bali is not for babies.

There is a bit of good news in here. The island’s medical care is more robust than people imagine. The hospitals here are not just holding things together with Band-Aids. There is the new Bali International Hospital that has concierge level medicine: slick lobbies, private suites, on call specialists, and checkups that cost less than a weekend in Santa Ynez (around $2,000).

And if you get sick while on holiday, foreigners can expect to pay about $100 for a white coat, “white glove”, doctor at your door service.

For full “scan everything” checkups, expats and cashed-up locals often head to Kuala Lumpur or Bangkok. Prince Court in KL will run you about $500, depending on how far you want to take it. Bumrungrad in Bangkok is the Four Seasons Resort of medical care, offering packages from $500 for basics up to $1,500 if you want the works, heart, lungs, and every organ in between, analyzed.

My own baptism into Bali medical care came not from a surf accident or motorbike crash, but an amoeba. One minute I thought I had food poisoning, the next I was flat on my back in the intensive care unit at Bali International Medical Center, tubes everywhere, kidneys staging a mutiny, nurses whispering “sepsis.” A week in ICU taught me what 24/7 care feels like here: monitors pinging, nurses rotating in shifts, fluids dripping, PICC lines snaking under my skin. I was very scared, but, upon reflection, I was also impressed by how the whole thing ran, like a team that had seen every flavor of chaos before breakfast.

I walked (very slowly) out of there, alive, patched up, grateful, and with a new appreciation for Bali’s unsung safety net. It is not the kind of story that I like to tell often, but it is the one every long term traveler eventually needs, where to go when things break, bodies rebel, or waves bite back.

Bali is beaches and temples, of course. It is also ICUs and concierge medicine. The real adventure is not only climbing up volcanoes or chasing mola mola, it is getting stitched back together in time to do it over and over again.