Uluwatu Tropical Estate

Three houses stand shoulder to shoulder in the back lanes of Ungasan, and for the length of your stay all three of them are yours. Villa Athena, Villa Coco and Villa Cinta are single-storey and near-identical in plan, each with its own front door, its own kitchen, its own living room and its own long lap pool running the length of a side courtyard beside grey timber decking. Together they make nine bedrooms without the compromises a nine-bedroom house usually forces on a group. The planting does most of the work here — banana, heliconia and traveller’s palm pressed against glass on every side — so from indoors you look at green rather than at the wall next door.

Inside, each living room drops. The floor falls away into a sunken well of seating: in one house a curved beige sectional wraps around an oval slab of timber on a red-and-blue kilim, in another a block of terracotta cushions faces a recessed media niche. White walls are cut with arched alcoves holding ceramics, books and framed pictures, and a run of glass at the far end opens onto the courtyard. The kitchens are serious ones, white stone waterfall islands set against warm timber cabinetry with ovens, blenders, rice cookers and coffee machines, and the round dining tables sit under sculptural brass chandeliers shaped like palm fronds, within sight of the water.

The nine bedrooms are spread three to a house, three with king beds and six with queens, every one air-conditioned and every one on the ground floor — there is not a stair anywhere on the estate, which matters more than you would expect with grandparents or toddlers in the party. They share a language: solid timber bedheads, shutter-fronted wardrobes, arched full-length mirrors, geometric kilim rugs underfoot and a timber-bladed fan turning overhead. Each has floor-to-ceiling glass onto its own planted light court, so you wake up looking at palm fronds. Six bathrooms serve them, two houses with deep tubs and the third with walk-in showers, plus an outdoor shower for coming in off the sand.

Ungasan sits well down the Bukit, and the honest note is that the cliff bars are a proper drive rather than a stroll, so the first thing to book through the concierge is a car with a driver waiting at the airport. The second is a private cook — with three kitchens and a round table under a palm-frond chandelier in each house, dinner at home beats the traffic most evenings, and recent guests did exactly that. Massage tables go out on the pool decking in the afternoon, and a fence can be fitted around any of the three pools for small swimmers. Daily cleaning, towels, Wi-Fi and safes come with the stay.

Uluwatu Tropical Estate suits the group that wants to be together without living on top of one another: three front doors, three pools, three kitchens and nine bedrooms that are genuinely equal. Melasti Beach and Savaya are a short run down the hill, and most of the day happens beside one or other stretch of water.