Villa Fonda

Villa Fonda is new enough that the plaster still looks freshly floated, and it stands behind a wall on Jalan Munduk Belan with Seseh Beach an eight-minute walk away at the end of the lane. The plot is narrow and the house uses all of it: a pool tiled in green mosaic runs down one side of a walled courtyard paved in pale stone, and a perforated breeze-block screen closes the far end and glows once the lights come on. Halfway along, a bamboo pergola lays bands of striped shade over a timber bench table, which is where breakfast tends to happen. Two hundred square metres, almost all of it turned towards the water.

The living room climbs two storeys and is finished in white plaster over terracotta hexagons, a floor that looks handmade because it is. A cane-framed sofa with cream cushions sits on a red-and-green kilim beside a small round table in green enamel, and a cluster of leaf-shaped rattan pendants hangs in the void above. There is a television, but the room is really built around a projector that throws onto the end wall at a size which turns a film into an event. The kitchen is an island of white stone with timber bar stools, cane-fronted cabinets behind it, a stove, a microwave, a freezer and a coffee maker.

An open-tread timber stair with a slim black balustrade climbs to a mezzanine landing where a built-in desk looks back down into the room, which makes it the best place in the house to work or to sit out the hottest hour. Both bedrooms are on the living floor, both take a king and both have a bathroom of their own. One opens through a full wall of glass onto the pool paving; the other has a run of cane-fronted wardrobes and a woven tapestry hung above the bed. One en-suite holds a freestanding stone soaking tub in a wet room lined floor to ceiling in small white mosaic, the other a long plaster vanity under two woven lanterns.

Unusually for this coast there is room to park on the plot, which makes hiring a car — with or without someone to drive it — the sensible move for Tanah Lot eight kilometres up the road and the beaches beyond Cemagi. Also unusually, a dryer, an iron and a drying rack live in the kitchen, so a week of swimwear needs no outside help at all. Where the concierge is genuinely useful is the pool fence, since the green mosaic water runs the length of a walled courtyard that children will treat as theirs, and a cook, who can work the white stone island and serve under the bamboo pergola where breakfast already happens.

Villa Fonda does a great deal with a narrow plot: water down one side, shade down the other, and a room tall enough to make a film feel like a night out. Walk to Seseh for the sunset, come back, put something on the wall, and let the terracotta hold on to the day’s warmth.