Villa Yuka

Villa Yuka stands in Mas, the woodcarvers’ village on the Ubud side of Gianyar, and the drive in gives no warning of the drop behind it. The house turns its back on the lane and opens onto a fifteen-metre pool with a dark stone edge that runs straight out at the treeline, coconut palms leaning in from three sides and the noise of the valley taking over from the road. Loungers and parasols sit on a timber deck along one side, a jacuzzi bubbles at the near end, and the whole thing is aimed west, so the late light comes up the water and into the house. Ubud proper is a few minutes away; the ARMA museum is under two kilometres.

The living wing is glass on the jungle side and timber everywhere else — a slatted ceiling, woven cane pendants hung low, a deep sectional sofa gathered around a live-edge table. Alongside it a raw-edged dining table seats twelve under a row of those same pendants, and the kitchen runs off it behind a black-topped island with pale bar stools, properly fitted out with an oven, a rice cooker, a blender and a full set of pans. There is a separate study with a long desk and rattan chairs for whoever cannot leave work behind. Outside, a second dining table sits on a deck under a pergola of climbing vines.

Five bedrooms carry king beds, air conditioning and a smart TV apiece, and the layout is honest about how it works: three have their own bathrooms, and two share a further one between them, which suits a family better than it suits five couples. Each room has a headboard wall of timber — chevron in one, slats in another, a macrame hanging over a third — with an open dressing area behind it and doors to the garden. The bathrooms are the good part, river-stone basins on solid timber counters, showers with slot windows onto planting, and one bath set outdoors against a living wall of foliage with the jungle audible over the top of it.

Upstairs the roof gives way to a sunset terrace with a bar and a long U-shaped built-in lounge, which is where twelve people end up at six o’clock. Housekeeping comes daily; a welcome drink, towels, fast Wi-Fi, a safe and parking inside the gate come with the stay, and the concierge handles airport transfers, a car and driver, scooters, a private cook, massages, a nanny, a pool fence and days out to the temples and the waterfalls. It is a genuinely large house — some five hundred and sixty-five square metres — and it takes a full group without ever feeling crowded.

Villa Yuka is built for a group that wants Ubud without being in it: a long green pool at the edge of the trees, one very large room to eat and argue in, and a terrace above the roofline for the part of the evening nobody wants to end. Come with a family, or with friends who do not mind sharing a bathroom.