Villa Seabel

Villa Seabel stands at the end of Gang Kunyit, a lane off Jalan Pantai Seseh with paddy on both sides and the sound of surf carrying over it. The house turns its back on the road and opens instead onto a pool tiled in dark green stone, laid along a travertine deck that runs the width of the plot. At the far end a wall of rough pale stone holds a lit arched recess with a daybed built into it, which is where people end up by four in the afternoon. Above, the upper storey is clad in vertical timber battens the colour of dried chilli, and the grey roofs come down low over walls of black-framed glass.

Inside, the living room climbs two storeys to a raked ceiling, a coral-red modular sofa set on a woven rug with a live-edge timber table in front of it. One wall is given over to plastered niches on timber shelves, filled with ceramics, shells and woven fans; opposite, a staircase of black steel and open timber treads folds up to the mezzanine. The kitchen tucks in behind the dining table, a slab of suar wood on a carved base with six chairs round it and two black rattan pendants hanging low. Push the glass back on both sides and the whole room becomes a breezeway between the pool and a small planted courtyard.

The master is on the ground floor, in soft ochre plaster, with a carved timber sunburst lit behind the bed and woven pendants either side of it. A slipper bath stands at the window under timber Venetian blinds, a television faces the bed, and a leather massage table waits in the corner, so treatments happen in the room rather than somewhere else. A sliding teak door leads through to its stone-lined bathroom. Upstairs the mezzanine bedroom is the quieter of the two, glazed on two sides so the paddies fill the windows and the morning mist comes up through them; it has its own bathroom, and from its doorway you look down over the pendants into the living room.

The villa is staffed, cleaned daily and stocked with a welcome drink, towels, fast Wi-Fi and a safe before you arrive; you let yourself in, with someone reachable around the clock. The concierge handles the rest, from a driver at the airport and a car with or without one to scooters, breakfast, a chef for dinner, a Balinese or deep-tissue massage on that table, a babysitter, a pool fence, laundry and surf lessons up the coast. Four guests in two king suites suits two couples or a small family, though there is no parking on the plot, so cars are dropped at the lane.

Villa Seabel keeps its best trick for last: the pool runs the length of the house, the glass folds away on both sides, and by mid-morning the living room is simply a shaded platform between the water and the paddies. Walk ten minutes to the sand, or stay where you are and let the day pass in that arched stone recess.