Villa Eliad

Off Jalan Raya Semat the gate gives onto a courtyard laid out lengthways: a lap pool in green mosaic down one side, a run of white arches down the other, and between them four sand-coloured beanbags and a canvas parasol. The wall above the water carries a raised bed of columnar cactus and prickly pear, stiff and vertical against the render, with banana palms breaking over the top of it. A slatted timber pergola roofs the loggia and throws stripes across the stone by late morning, and a first-floor balcony of white breeze block, pierced all along with circles, runs the length of the house. This is a Mediterranean idea built in Berawa, and the light does most of the decorating.

The ground floor is a single room under a vaulted ceiling with exposed timber beams. A long L-shaped sofa on a timber frame takes the corner nearest the pool; through a plaster arch, a round timber table with woven rattan chairs stands where the black steel doors slide back onto the courtyard. The kitchen holds the far end, an island faced in vertical timber slats with three cane bar stools drawn up to it and two rattan basket pendants hung over a long lit shelf. It is properly equipped — hob, microwave, toaster, coffee machine, wine glasses — and it is also the room people end up standing in, which is the usual test.

One bedroom is on this floor. The other two are above, past a raised plaster platform on the landing scattered with floor cushions and jute rugs, a bamboo ladder propped against the wall beside it. Each room has a king bed and its own bathroom, and each headboard is different: a round carved timber disc, a carved leaf motif, a raffia sunburst. Both upper rooms open onto the circle-pierced balcony above the pool. The bathrooms are the surprise — cream tadelakt counters with white stone vessel basins, walk-in showers with bamboo towel ladders under tall arched steel windows, and in one, a bath cut from dark volcanic stone standing beside a glazed light-well planted with elephant ear and fern.

Because the island is the best thing in the house, a private cook is the request worth making here, with dinner carried the four steps to the round table and the doors left open. Staff clean daily and tend the pool and that cactus bed two or three times a week, which is why the courtyard looks the way it does in these photographs. A driver is the other sensible booking: Finns and Old Man’s are both about a kilometre and a half off, a pleasant walk in the morning and a less pleasant one at midnight. The roof terrace, empty most of the day, is where the massage table goes at five. Six guests across three equal king suites suits two or three couples, or a family who dislike drawing lots for rooms.

Villa Eliad reads as one long gesture from the gate: water, arches, cactus, and a staircase that keeps going until it runs out on the roof. Three kings, three bathrooms and a kitchen worth cooking in, a kilometre and a half from Berawa’s beach clubs and a good deal quieter than any of them.