Villa Amore

Gang Gelatik runs off Batu Belig Street behind a rendered wall, and the way in is a carved timber gate the width of two men — an old temple door reset into new plaster, with a small Amore plaque beside it. Behind it the ground opens out: a twelve-metre pool down the middle, lawn along one flank, teak decking along the other, and a mature tree leaning over the far end so half the water sits in shade by mid-afternoon. Pavilions face it on three sides under shingled roofs. Batu Belig Beach is a kilometre off, a few minutes on foot or on a scooter, and Cafe Del Mar about five.

The main pavilion has no walls to speak of. Under a high roof of exposed timber trusses lined in split bamboo, low daybed sofas sit round a long teak coffee table facing a television, and the whole thing opens on two sides to the pool and the garden, so the fans overhead do most of the work the air conditioning does in the bedrooms. The dining table runs alongside under a pair of woven pendants, seating ten with room to spare, and the kitchen is a proper timber galley behind it — stone counter, stove and oven, dishwasher, freezer, coffee machine — laid out for someone who intends to cook.

Four bedrooms, four kings, four bathrooms, and no argument about who gets which. Each sits under its own timber truss, with a walk-in closet, a safe big enough for a laptop and a door to the garden or the deck. The detailing is where the architect’s joglo idea shows: an antique carved panel above one bed, olive-green drapes and old shutters in another, mosquito nets gathered over a four-poster in a third. The bathrooms are the modern counterpoint — polished grey cement with round backlit mirrors, stone vessel basins on floating timber shelves, patterned cement floors and small plants hung along the wall beside the shower.

The set piece is the old timber pavilion on the deck side, a genuine antique carried in and rebuilt, with shuttered doors, carved panels and a bench where you can sit out of the sun and still watch the water. Staff clean daily and tend the pool and garden two or three times a week; a welcome drink, towels, fast Wi-Fi, a safe in every room and the concierge come with the stay, while breakfast, a cook, a car, a massage, a nanny or a pool fence are a message away. Three hundred and fifty square metres for eight makes this a villa for two families or a group of friends who want Seminyak’s restaurants within walking reach and a quiet lane to come back to.

Villa Amore is a compound rather than a house: four roofs around a long green pool, an old timber pavilion at one edge, and a gate that shuts Batu Belig Street out entirely. Dinner is a five-minute walk away, and the lane you come back down afterwards is very quiet indeed.