Villa Yuri

Villa Yuri sits down a gang off Jalan Kayu Tulang, and the walls go up before anything else does: high, white, rendered, with a row of arched niches cut into them that fill with light after dark. Inside them is a courtyard almost the width of the plot, a rectangular pool along one side and a strip of lawn crossed by round stepping stones along the other. What makes the pool unusual is the timber deck built out into the water itself, two loungers and a low table sitting on it under an alang-alang parasol, so the shade is in the middle of the swim rather than beside it. Coconut palms lean in over the wall from the neighbouring gardens.

The ground floor is one long room behind sliding glass. The lounge drops a single step, a pale sectional wrapping around a low timber table, facing a television mounted on a wall of rough natural stone; a palm grows through the floor beside it. At the far end the kitchen is the piece worth looking at — a curved travertine island on a fluted timber base, two rattan pendants over it, a stone-tiled splashback behind the hob with a single timber shelf holding glasses and a coffee machine. The dining table seats six in plain timber, close enough to the doors that lunch tends to migrate outside without anyone deciding to.

Both bedrooms are king, both have their own bathroom, and both put the bed inside an arched plaster niche lit from within the cove — a small trick that works better than any headboard. One has a built-in window seat facing the planting and botanical prints along the wall; the other has a hanging rattan chair beside black-framed doors that open onto a paved side terrace with two timber lounge chairs. Each bedroom leads to its own dressing room, with a timber bench, open shelving and woven baskets, and then to a bathroom: a freestanding oval tub in an arched alcove under a rattan pendant, a dark rainfall shower, arched mirrors lit from behind.

Housekeeping comes in every day and the villa is fully staffed, but the service worth booking here is the private chef, because the island is the best surface in the house and the doors beside it open straight onto the deck. A massage table goes down on the lawn in the late afternoon when the wall throws shade across it. Scooters or a car with a driver are easy to arrange, though Batu Bolong Beach, Masonry, Gigi Susu and the padel courts at Bali Social Club are all inside ten minutes anyway. Four guests, two equal suites, one very quiet courtyard.

Villa Yuri is a two-bedroom house that behaves like a much larger one: a courtyard you cannot be overlooked in, a pool with its own island of shade, and two suites finished to the same standard so there is no lesser room. Canggu is ten minutes away in every direction and completely inaudible from the lawn.