Villa Anna

Gang Pondok Asri is one of the quiet lanes in the northern half of Canggu, where the nearest warung is a few hundred metres down the road and the beach traffic is somebody else’s problem. Villa Anna presents a charcoal two-storey face to it, screened in horizontal timber battens, with a first-floor balcony on a slim steel rail. Behind the gate the ground opens to a rectangular pool laid along a hardwood deck, two white moulded loungers on the boards, and a stone and breeze-block wall carrying palms and heliconia. Two hundred and fifty square metres of house open onto that water through sliding glass that runs almost end to end.

The ground floor is one long room with a ceiling fan turning above it. Cream sofas and woven-back timber armchairs gather around a low table facing the smart television, and a wall of raw microcement gives the space its only real colour. A timber-framed internal window separates the lounge from the stair hall, where a floating timber staircase rides a single black steel stringer up to the first floor. At the far end, six timber chairs sit around a dining table under two woven rattan pendants, and the kitchen behind it works off a marble-topped island with bar stools, a stove, a microwave, a blender and a rice cooker.

Three bedrooms, all with king beds, en-suite bathrooms, air conditioning, black-out blinds and a safe in the wardrobe. Two are on the ground floor, one behind a tall solid-timber wardrobe with a dressing nook and a mirror, the other looking out through a window into the planting. The third is upstairs and has the best of it: framed tree artwork, linen curtains, and its own gazebo balcony to take coffee on before anyone else is up. The bathrooms repeat one good idea — a live-edge timber slab as a vanity, a white vessel basin on top, a timber-framed mirror above and a walk-in shower behind glass — and there is an outdoor shower as well.

Every beach worth the name is four to five kilometres from this gate, so wheels come first: there is free parking on the plot for a hire car, and a driver available if the group would rather reach Berawa or Echo without anyone thinking about the way home. Groceries can be delivered, which the marble island and the six-seat table make worth doing, and a cook can be booked to use both. As for the massage, the gazebo balcony off the upstairs bedroom is the quietest corner in the house and takes a table neatly, though the hardwood pool deck does the job too once the sun has come off it. Daily housekeeping and the upkeep of pool and garden are already covered.

Villa Anna is a plain-spoken modern house that spends its budget where it shows: the timber deck, the stair, the slab vanities, three bedrooms nobody has to draw lots for. It sits far enough back from the coast to sleep properly, and the beaches are a short drive when you want them.