The Macan Canggu

Jalan Batu Mejan runs quietly for a lane this close to the middle of Canggu, and The Macan Canggu gives away nothing from it. The door is the first thing you notice: a tall arched door of pale timber set in a plain white wall, lit from a slot of skylight two storeys above, so you step out of the scooters and into a cool white shaft of light. Beyond it the villa opens out along its pool, a narrow ribbon of turquoise laid against pale terrazzo with loungers at one end and a wall of black-framed glass down the other. The beach is seven hundred metres off, which in Canggu means you walk.

The best room in the villa has no walls. At the far end of the water a rough stone arch is set into the boundary wall, and an alang-alang thatch on heavy timber posts throws a deep patch of shade over it. Beneath sits a built-in plaster bench the full width of the recess, piled with woven cushions, a small carved stool pulled up for a coffee. It faces straight down the length of the pool, catches whatever breeze comes up the lane in the afternoon, and is where guests tend to spend the hours between eleven and four. Banana leaf and traveller’s palm crowd in behind the stone, so Canggu arrives filtered.

Inside, the living space is built rather than furnished. A plaster banquette curves around two sides of the room in oatmeal linen, a thick round table of solid timber sits in the middle of it, and the television is sunk into an arched niche in the white wall. The kitchen is a terrazzo counter with a brass sink and tap against white brick, an oven below and two woven pendants over a breakfast bar with timber stools. The bedroom takes the ochre note: a fluted timber headboard, a kilim thrown across the bed, arched niches of ceramics, and an arched steel window that opens straight into banana leaves. Its bathroom has a stone trough basin, brass fittings and a deep soaking tub.

Almost nothing here needs a car. Old Man’s, Deus Ex Machina and The Lawn are a walk or a two-minute scooter ride, so the concierge services that earn their keep are the surf lessons, the restaurant bookings and a driver only for days you leave the neighbourhood. The private chef is worth knowing about: the kitchen is properly set up, and dinner is better eaten at the daybed than in a queue on Batu Bolong. Laundry goes out, since there is no machine in the villa. Staff clean daily, the pool and garden are tended two or three times a week, and towels, Wi-Fi fast enough to work on and a safe come with the room.

The Macan Canggu is a small villa built with unusual care, and it repays staying in rather than passing through: the arch, the thatch, the brass, the ochre headboard. Two people can spend a week here surfacing only for coffee and a swim in the sea, and never once wish the place were larger.