Villa Cuatro

Jalan Lebak Sari runs off Petitenget into a knot of quiet lanes, and behind one wall of it Villa Cuatro turns its back on the street entirely. The plan is two wings facing each other across a pool, with a broad grey timber deck running the full length of the water and a boundary planted so densely in banana, traveller’s palm and areca that the neighbours simply disappear. A sun lounger sits in the shallow end of the pool itself, which is where most guests end up by eleven. Everything else — living, dining, kitchen, three bedrooms — lines up along that deck, so the water is never more than a step away.

The living pavilion has no wall on the pool side at all. Low banquettes in linen run around two edges, ceiling fans turn overhead, and the centrepiece is an enormous teak root, polished flat and used as a coffee table, with a pair of oversized turquoise ceramic lamps under woven shades standing either side of it. Behind that sit a dark stone bar counter with timber stools, a glass-topped dining table for six and a run of copper pendant lights that carries the eye all the way to the kitchen. The kitchen is a proper galley in teak with a long window over the counter, a gas stove and shelves of glass and china, and the concierge will send a cook to use it if you would rather not.

All three bedrooms are kings, each with its own bathroom, air conditioning, a wall-mounted television and a safe in the wardrobe. One has a mint-green wall hung with woven discs and glass doors to the pool deck; another is fitted out in full teak joinery with a framed portrait canvas facing the bed; the third keeps a carved timber headboard panel and a rattan chair by the window. The bathrooms are the villa’s quiet pleasure — paired river-stone bowl basins on pale plaster ledges under black-framed mirrors, mosaic-bordered floors, an outdoor shower, and in one of them a freestanding oval tub set under a skylight against a panel of bark cloth.

Nine kilometres of road separate this gate from the airport, which makes the transfer short and a late arrival painless; there is room to park on the premises, though little here needs a car. Laundry is what most groups end up using, since the house has no washing machine and six people in Seminyak get through clothes quickly. Massage is the other: the grey timber deck runs the full length of the pool, wide enough to take a table in the shade of the traveller’s palms, with the outdoor shower beside it. Groceries can be delivered to that galley kitchen, and the dark stone bar counter under its copper pendants is where a cook, once booked, sets out dinner.

Villa Cuatro is an unshowy, well-run three-bedroom house that gets the essentials right: equal rooms, a pool you can lie in rather than beside, and a lane address five minutes’ walk from dinner. Book it for two or three couples who want Seminyak within reach and a green wall between them and it.