Villa Isly

Jalan Pantai Seseh runs down to black sand through a strip of rice field and new-built walls, and Villa Isly sits behind one of them. The plot is arranged the long way: a narrow pool of green tile down the middle, a wall of black-framed glass along one side, and on the other a run of natural stone with banana palms and heliconia planted tight against it. Halfway along, an arch of blue-and-white patterned tile is set into that wall above a built-in stone bench heaped with cushions, two big terracotta urns for company. It is a small villa that has been given the ideas of a much larger one, and it carries them off.

There are no stairs anywhere. The house sits on one level under a high pitched ceiling with a band of clerestory glass at the ridge, so the living room stays bright and airy without feeling like a box. A deep arched niche holds the television between floating timber shelves and a row of carved figures, and below it a low black table sits between two pale linen sofas, with three black woven pendants hanging in a line overhead. The kitchen occupies the far end: a rendered island with a timber top, four woven-seat chairs pulled up to it, and the stone from the garden wall carrying on indoors behind.

Both bedrooms have a king bed on a timber platform, a slatted timber wall behind or beside it, and glass doors straight out into the planting. The first has a round carved mirror above a timber console and a panel of patterned tile at the bedhead; the second looks across at the pergola. Their bathrooms share one good idea: twin black stone basins on a single long timber shelf beneath a pair of round rattan-framed mirrors, with a steel-framed door out to a planted light well. There is an outdoor shower as well, a black rain head against a full wall of blue-and-white tile with a heliconia growing up beside it.

The two best rooms here are both outdoors. Under a reed-roofed pergola at the pool end sit an oval timber table for six and a gas barbecue built into a stone counter, which is where most evenings end up; facing it across the water, a shaded lounge with two tiled arches and an L-shaped banquette takes the heat out of the afternoon. The kitchen runs to a rice cooker, a blender, a coffee maker and a toaster, so cooking for yourselves is genuinely easy, though a driver usually is worth booking because Seseh is quiet and the Pererenan cafes are a few kilometres east. Staff clean daily, and the massage table goes under the pergola.

Villa Isly suits four people who want the beach at the end of the lane and not much else on the schedule. Seseh’s black sand is eight hundred metres off, Black Sand Bar a little further, and the villa’s own grill turns most evenings into a question about charcoal rather than a reservation.