Villa Jendela di Bali

Villa Jendela di Bali is a storybook hideaway in the green uplands around Ubud. Pass between carved gate posts hung with brass gongs and you enter an 800-square-metre garden of coconut palms, flowering borders and winding stone paths, with a bright hammock strung between two trees and a fountain murmuring beside the pool. It is quiet, romantic and wonderfully far from the bustle of central Ubud.

The main house glows with colour: ochre walls, terracotta floors, rich timber and walls of framed vintage photographs, with a cosy lounge, a dining table for four and a compact kitchen looking out over the seven-metre pool. Loungers and parasols line the pool deck, and a shaded table by the water makes breakfast, included every day and prepared by the villa’s own cook, a slow, sunny ritual.

The two bedrooms sit in their own garden pavilions, each with a different personality. One is a dark-timber retreat in deep purple tones with a netted four-poster and a freestanding bath; the other is a whitewashed, A-frame cottage under a soaring thatched roof, with glass walls to the garden and a bathtub looking into the greenery. Both have generous ensuite bathrooms and plenty of space to unwind.