Villa Puri Senang

Gang Manu is a dead-end lane off Jalan Raya Semat, and Villa Puri Senang announces itself with a pair of recycled-timber doors set into a wall of charcoal split stone. Push them open and the courtyard is all water: a turquoise-tiled pool running the length of the plot, a frangipani leaning out across it, a bank of heliconia and banana closing the far wall. From the slab of the first floor a curtain of trailing vines hangs down over the water, which keeps the terrace shaded well into the afternoon. Two hundred and forty square metres of house wrap that pool on two levels, and the whole ground floor opens straight onto it.

The living room is a single double-height volume, its ceiling cut away so that a run of oversized woven-rattan pendants can drop through the void. A long grey sectional and a low teak table hold one end; at the other a teak dining table seats eight between a bench and a pair of round rattan tub chairs, with the white kitchen island just beyond. Black-framed glass slides away down the entire pool side, so lunch migrates outdoors without anyone deciding to move it. Two carved Balinese guardian figures stand at the foot of the stair, and the kitchen is genuinely equipped: gas hob, oven, coffee machine, rice cooker, a fridge and freezer that will take a week of shopping.

All four bedrooms have a bathroom of their own, air conditioning and a desk, which matters more than it used to in a house people work from. The master takes the canopy — a teak four-poster under a white net, a long timber console with a smart television, doors to the first-floor balcony where one rattan chair looks over white roofs and coconut palms. Its bathroom is the best room upstairs: a freestanding oval tub behind a glass screen, twin arched mirrors above a double vanity. The other three speak the same language, a cane or woven headboard, a backlit arched mirror, a white vessel basin, and the landing outside them looks straight down into the living room and the pool.

Laundry is the one thing this house cannot do for itself, having no machine of its own, so it goes out with the concierge team; they also cover what the villa specifically asks for, a transfer for the hour’s drive in from Ngurah Rai and a pool fence if a toddler is coming, because the water runs deep right up to the courtyard wall. Breakfast is not included but it can be delivered, and the sensible place to eat it is the bale at the pool’s end, where the daybed catches the early sun before the vines throw shade across it. Drinks are made at the outdoor bar counter beside it, poured concrete over a fluted timber front with a stone Buddha head at one end. Housekeeping and pool care are already part of the stay.

Nine can sleep here, four bedrooms plus that extra single in the master, which makes it a straightforward choice for two families travelling together or a group of friends who each want their own bathroom. The beach is a twenty-minute walk or five minutes on a scooter, and the coffee is two minutes away in either direction.