Villa Kusuma

Villa Kusuma sits at the end of a private road in Pecatu, on a plot of some two and a half thousand square metres, and the first thing you see through the entrance corridor is the Indian Ocean. The house is long and white and two storeys, colonnaded along its front, with a grey pitched roof and an alang-alang pavilion at one end. In front of it a sixteen-metre infinity pool runs across the width of the garden, its deck laid in pale crazy paving set into grass, black daybeds and canvas parasols spaced along one side. Beyond the lawn the land drops into treetops and then there is nothing but water and weather.

The ground floor is arranged for a large group that wants to be together without being on top of each other. There are two separate living rooms, the main one a tall white space under a black rattan drum chandelier where low sofas gather around a live-edge slab of timber. The kitchen is the owner’s pride, dark cabinetry and a working island with timber stools, properly equipped down to the wine glasses and the capsule coffee machine, and beside it a round dining table under a pitched ceiling. The best table, though, is outdoors: a long one for ten under the thatched pavilion, its white arches open to the pool on three sides and its floor laid in black-and-white cement tile.

Five bedrooms take king or super-king beds in black four-poster frames, each with its own bathroom, air conditioning and a television. Two sit on the ground floor a step from the pool, so the first thing you can do in the morning is swim. The two upstairs are the masters, both facing the ocean, and between them is a second sitting room with a screen for the evenings. The bathrooms are white and generous, with carved timber-framed mirrors, freestanding tubs and small grid tile; two more bathrooms stand out in the garden, which is a hint at how the lawn gets used. There is a resurfaced sports court with a basketball hoop at one end, and a swing under the flame trees.

The staffing is what separates this house from most of the Bukit. A butler, maids, helpers, a pool man, a gardener and round-the-clock security all live on site behind their own service entrance, with daily housekeeping, free-flow drinking water, branded bathroom products and a free coffee capsule a day for each guest. The maid will cook a simple breakfast if you cover the groceries, and spa treatments, babysitting, airport transfers and a pool fence can all be arranged. Savaya is three minutes away, Omnia and Quila a little over a kilometre, and Topan Beach a quarter of an hour on foot.

Villa Kusuma is the rare Bukit house that is genuinely large rather than cleverly arranged: a long pool, a lawn you could play on, a court, two living rooms and a full complement of staff. Book it when there are ten of you and the point of the trip is the villa itself.