Villa Mellow

Villa Mellow is down a gang off Jalan Nelayan, in the part of Canggu where the lanes still run out into rice field before they reach anything else. Two white wings under pitched clay-tiled roofs face each other across a long pool, arched black steel doors folded back along both, and a timber-framed daybed sits at the head of the water beneath a canvas parasol wide enough for two. Clipped hedging and travellers’ palm screen the boundary walls, and a hammock hangs at the far end of the garden. Batu Bolong beach is a short walk, La Brisa closer than that, and the surf at Nelayan three minutes away.

Inside, the ceiling lifts. The main pavilion runs the length of the pool beneath a white-painted pitch with exposed rafters and a black fan turning slowly under it, and the floor steps down into a sunken lounge of long white sofas gathered around two low rattan drums. One guest wrote simply that the sunken lounge is heaven, which is about right at four in the afternoon. Arched niches cut into the plaster hold ceramics, books and small carvings along one wall, a large smart television faces the sofas, and the whole room opens through the steel doors straight onto the pool deck.

Behind the lounge a single slab of pale timber seats eight, cane and timber chairs down both sides, and the kitchen closes the run with a white marble island on warm timber cabinetry, a black extractor hood, a Nespresso machine and a full-height fridge. Both bedrooms take a king on a low timber platform with a built-in headboard shelf, air conditioning, floor-to-ceiling steel windows and framed surf prints on polished grey-green plaster. Each has its own bathroom with a timber vanity and a wall of framed botanicals, and one of the two holds a bath. A guest washroom sits off the living room.

A driver is the one thing you can probably do without here: Nelayan sand is three minutes away, The Barn is a hundred metres up the lane, and there is parking inside the gate for whatever you hire instead. Laundry earns its keep — the villa has no washing machine, and a week of beach towels and salt-stiff swimwear mounts up. Massage is the other worthwhile call, taken on the timber-framed daybed at the head of the pool, which its canvas parasol keeps shaded through most of the afternoon. Groceries and restaurant deliveries can be arranged as well, which suits a marble island and a Nespresso machine on a lane where nobody wants to drive to a supermarket.

Villa Mellow does one thing very well: it sets a big, cool, high-ceilinged room between two king suites and a long pool, and then leaves you to it. Walk down to the beach in the morning, cook at the marble island or let the concierge send dinner over, and end the evening back in that sunken sofa.