Villa Dusa

Gang Cempaka Putih is a lane of walls and warungs on the quiet inland side of Canggu, and nothing about it prepares you for what is behind the gate. Villa Dusa opens onto a courtyard built entirely around its pool: pale limestone underfoot, three white arches across the far end, and a bright blue timber door set into the middle of them like a full stop. Under the centre arch a round upholstered daybed sits half a step above the water. Bougainvillea leans in over one wall, a seated stone figure keeps watch from a niche of white river stone, and a run of alang-alang thatch throws shade down one side all afternoon.

The interior is one bright room behind steel-framed glass. A low sofa is built into the plaster along two walls, dressed in linen with a scatter of turquoise, with black-and-white photographs of Bali hung above it; a long teak table with cane-backed chairs stands where the room turns; and the kitchen runs along the back wall in warm teak under white stone, its open shelves lined with terracotta pots and glassware. There is deliberately no television anywhere in the house, which sounds like a deprivation until the second evening, when you notice everyone has drifted outside instead and the doors have been folded open since breakfast.

Both bedrooms are kings with their own bathrooms. One sits directly off the pool terrace behind its own glass doors, an arch of white river stone rising behind the bed and a tall cane-framed mirror leaning in the corner; the other looks out at a long window of green and keeps the traffic of the day at a distance. The bathrooms are unfussy and rather beautiful — a stone basin on a plaster ledge in one, a freestanding oval tub beneath a carved white mirror in the other, black tapware throughout, and daylight coming in from windows set into the garden wall.

Then there is the roof. A staircase from the courtyard climbs to a white deck the size of the villa, railed in driftwood posts and strung with festoon lights, with a teak daybed platform and a live-edge table on one side and two white loungers on the other. It looks west over gardens and rooftops, which is where Canggu keeps its sunsets. Staff clean daily, the pool and planting are tended through the week, and the concierge handles transfers, a cook, massages, scooters and tables at the warungs two hundred metres down the lane.

Villa Dusa gets the proportions right: a small house, a large courtyard, and a roof that gives back the sky. Swim in the morning while the thatch still holds the shade, eat where the warung smoke drifts up the lane, and take the last hour of light upstairs with the festoon lights just coming on.