Villa Valeria

Gang Cempaka Putih is one of the narrow Babakan lanes that run off Jalan Rurung, and there is very little to see from it: a wall, a number, a door. Push that door and the whole villa is in front of you at once. A curved pool takes up most of the courtyard, tiled in a green so dark it reads almost black at midday and turns clear turquoise the moment the lights come on. Around it, white rendered plaster has been shaped into arches and shallow niches, frangipani and a tall prickly cactus stand in fat white pots, and a bamboo pergola throws stripes of shade across the far end. Nothing here is borrowed from outside. The house simply looks inward at its own water.

Living is on one level, and there is no staircase inside the house at all. The main pavilion is a single room with a built-in plaster sofa running along two walls, a jute rug, a pair of low round tables and a smart television on the wall beneath a framed surf print. Steel-framed glass doors, black and finely gridded, fold back along two sides, so the room and the pool terrace end up sharing the same floor. The kitchen sits behind the sofa in pale timber under a stone counter, with a gas hob, an oven, a shelf of glassware overhead and a moka pot that gets used. Four rattan chairs pull up to a round timber table.

Both bedrooms are king rooms with bathrooms of their own, and they are deliberately different. One has black-framed doors straight onto the pool terrace, a full-height arched mirror leaning on its stand and a potted palm by the console. The other puts its bed inside an arched plaster niche lit by two wall lamps, with twin arched doorways leading through to the bathroom, so you walk around the bedhead rather than past it. Both bathrooms repeat the same three things: a floating plaster vanity, a stone vessel basin and a round timber-framed mirror under a pair of rattan pendants. Outside, a stair climbs the courtyard wall to a rooftop deck railed in rough timber and screened with bamboo, which is where the sunset is.

Four seats at that round table is the number worth remembering. It is why a cook for dinner is the concierge extra that earns its keep here — the kitchen is properly equipped, the pergola end of the courtyard is cool by seven, and eating in beats a scooter ride into the Canggu traffic. There is no washing machine and no parking on the lane, so laundry and a car with a driver go through the same team, along with airport pick-ups and a masseuse who sets up beside the pool. Housekeeping comes every day; the pool and the potted planting get attention two or three mornings a week. Two couples or a family of four fit this house exactly; five would not.

Villa Valeria is small, and it knows it. Everything the house has is arranged around one curved pool in one walled courtyard, which makes for a stay with very little in it: swim, read on the daybed, cook, climb to the roof at six. The beaches and the noise of Canggu are a short ride away whenever you decide you want them.