Villa Laksmana Hideaway 2

Gang Khayangan is one of those Seminyak lanes you would otherwise walk straight past, a slot between shopfronts off Jalan Drupadi with a warung on the corner and a coffee shop a couple of hundred metres up. Behind an antique carved timber door with a lattice fanlight, three steps lift you into an open-sided pavilion and the street noise simply stops. Villa Laksmana Hideaway 2 has no front wall and no hallway: the living room begins where the courtyard ends, under a whitewashed truss roof, with water running along two of its sides. Two bedroom pavilions face one another across that water, and the pool slides between them like a canal before opening out into a broad rounded lagoon at the front.

The living pavilion is furnished for the tropics rather than against them. A long grey sectional wears batik cushions in chocolate and cream, a heavy dark timber table holds whatever is being read, and the floor is old cement tile laid with a patterned border that runs around the room like a rug. A smart television sits on a low white console with Netflix already loaded, ceiling fans turn slowly under the trusses, and carved panels and woven fan discs break up the white walls. Behind the sofa a breakfast bar with timber stools opens to a compact kitchen of pale stone counters and louvred cupboards, and the dining table for six stands beside a seated stone Buddha kept in fresh frangipani.

Sleep is the reason the pool is shaped the way it is. Each of the two bedrooms occupies its own pavilion at the water’s edge, glazed and curtained on three sides, so that lying in the four-poster under its white mosquito net you look straight down the length of the water at the other one. There are dark timber floors underfoot, a writing desk set in the window, air conditioning behind the curtains and a narrow deck outside the doors where a bean bag waits. Both rooms are en suite, and the bathrooms keep the same unfussy line: a dark timber shelf carrying a white basin, a carved timber mirror, a ladder hung with towels and a semi-open shower tiled in small mosaic.

Housekeepers come every day, the gardener and pool man keep the water and the planting in order, and the team will shop for groceries and cook a simple breakfast for no more than the cost of the shopping itself, receipts handed over afterwards. Drinking water flows freely, the Wi-Fi is quick enough to work on, there is a safe in the villa, and parking sits inside the gate, which is rare this deep into Seminyak. Airport transfers, a pool fence, massage, laundry, scooters and day trips all run through the management team. Four guests in two matched pavilions, with no lesser bedroom to argue over, suits two couples or a small family.

Little in Seminyak still feels this quiet a hundred metres from dinner. Villa Laksmana Hideaway 2 keeps its back to the lane and its face to the water, and the days settle into a pattern almost at once: swim, shade, bean bags, and then the long blue hour when the pool lights come on and the two pavilions turn into lanterns.