Bellavista Amici

Jalan Babadan runs down towards the sand, and the plain white wall along it gives nothing away. Behind it Bellavista Amici opens into a courtyard built entirely around water: a pool of green-teal mosaic, straight along its length and curved at one end, laid into pale terrazzo paving. Two storeys of white render rise on one side, pierced by tall arches, and at the far end a single-storey bedroom pavilion carries a black-framed glass door under its own arch. Coconut palms and heliconia lean over the boundary wall, an arched timber gate sits in the render, and the beach is eight hundred metres down the lane. Almost none of Pererenan is visible from inside, which is rather the point.

The ground floor is one long bright room that steps down as you enter it. A sunken lounge runs beneath a wall of arched niches filled with woven discs, ceramics and dried grasses, and a seventy-five-inch screen sits among them for the afternoons when the rain arrives at four. Beyond it an oval dining table for six stands under woven pendants, and the kitchen closes the room in warm timber joinery with a stone-topped island and cane bar stools. There is an oven, a stove, a coffee maker and a full set of dishes, so a slow breakfast at the island is as reasonable a plan as walking out for one, and the glass along the pool folds away while you decide.

Three king bedrooms, each with its own bathroom, share a single language of white walls, cane-fronted joinery, rattan pendants and floors that stay cool underfoot. The ground-floor room opens straight onto the terrace through arch-topped glass doors, putting the pool four steps from the end of the bed. Upstairs, one room hangs an arched full-length mirror beside the walk-through to its en-suite, while another looks over the courtyard through a curtain wall. The bathrooms are the quiet pleasure of the house: sage-green square tile, fluted timber vanities, brass tapware and pebble-shaped mirrors, with one of the three given a freestanding tub and a twin-basin counter.

Climb past the first-floor walkway and the roof opens out into a slatted timber pergola over a long built-in sectional, potted cactus at the corners and palm crowns running to the next lane. It is where the villa moves in the late afternoon. Staff come in daily to clean, a welcome drink arrives on the day you land, and the concierge sits behind everything else, from airport transfers and a car or a scooter to a chef for dinner, massage in the courtyard, a nanny and a pool fence for toddlers. Three equal king suites split evenly between three couples, or leave a family the ground-floor room for the children.

Bellavista Amici is a house of white arches and green water, arranged so that nearly every room ends at the pool. Mornings belong to the courtyard, late afternoons to the roof, and the walk down to Babadan Beach takes rather less time than deciding who is making the coffee.