Villa Halo

The door tells you what this is before anything else does: a rounded timber door set into a white wall, a rank of tall columnar cacti standing to attention along it, pebble mosaic underfoot. Behind it Villa Halo opens into a courtyard that could be an island house anywhere in the Mediterranean — an arcade of white arches down one side, a wall of alang-alang thatch down the other, and between them a pool with no straight edge anywhere in it, its coping rolled and rounded as though the whole thing had been poured rather than built. Palms lean in over the top. Jalan Padang Linjong and its warungs are two hundred metres away and you would never guess it.

Everything on the ground floor faces that water through full-height glazing set into arched openings. The living room is a deep boucle sectional gathered around a round travertine table, with a smart television recessed between plaster niches of pots and books and a ceiling fan turning in the double-height space above. Dining is a round table under three rice-paper globes with a bright print of Canggu on the wall behind it. The kitchen is the piece worth looking at, though: a curved island of pale microcement with four cane-backed stools pulled up to one side, a cream retro-style refrigerator behind, and a dishwasher, toaster and kettle hidden in the joinery — sculpture that happens to work.

Three king bedrooms open under the colonnade, each bed on a fluted plaster base set into an arched recess in the wall, paper pendants hanging either side and a mirror leaning in a corner. They are close enough in size and finish that nobody draws the short straw. What lifts the house is what sits behind them: bathrooms in blush tadelakt, the plaster running unbroken from floor to ceiling and curving up into a built-in bath, with brass tapware, an arched shower behind black-framed glass, twin basins on a plaster shelf and a skylight that lays a bar of sun across the tub at midday. Each has a second toilet of its own.

Breakfast is not part of the rate, but that curved island is the best surface in the house and the concierge will send a cook to work at it, which is worth doing at least once. The same desk arranges airport transfers and the scooters you will want, because the warungs may be up the lane but Echo Beach is a ride away. Housekeeping comes daily and there is a safe in each room. A masseuse will set up in the shade of the arcade beside the water. Three near-equal king suites make this a straightforward house for three couples, or for a family who would rather everyone had their own bathroom.

Villa Halo is a house where the architecture does the work: no straight lines, no sharp corners, and a courtyard that turns its back on Canggu altogether. Coffee at the island, an afternoon in the pink bath, dinner at the round table under the paper globes — the days here more or less arrange themselves.