Villa Solaia

Bingin is a warren of narrow lanes dropping towards the cliff, and Villa Solaia sits in a small cluster of white-rendered houses part of the way down. There is nothing to see from the street. Inside the wall, a lap pool tiled in deep green glass mosaic runs the length of a courtyard, jade in full sun and darker where the travellers palms lean over it, with submerged steps at the near end and two woven loungers on the pale stone. The end wall opens into an arch clad in irregular limestone, and under it a long cushioned banquette sits in shade for most of the day. The whole plot is small and it is used completely.

The ground floor is a single room facing that water. A low built-in sofa runs beneath a tall arched window that fills the wall with green, dressed in teal cushions and striped ceramics, with a fluted timber coffee table on a jute rug. The kitchen occupies the far end under a marble counter with pale timber cabinetry, a gas hob and oven, and recessed niches holding glassware and blue-glazed jars. Between them stands a round timber table with four cane chairs and an oversized woven pendant hanging low above it. A white stair, curved where it meets the ceiling, climbs from the dining end.

Upstairs are two king bedrooms, each with a bathroom of its own, and the styling repeats from one to the other: teal throws, off-white linen, carved timber side tables, a rattan pendant. One opens through sliding doors onto a balcony railed in timber, where you look down onto the pool and out over the curved white parapets of the neighbours towards the trees. The bathrooms are done in seamless microcement with grey stacked tile in the showers, brass fittings and arched timber-framed mirrors, and there is a second shower outdoors by the pool for coming back from the beach.

That shaded alcove is the most useful thing in the villa, and it shapes what is worth asking the concierge for. Breakfast eaten there rather than in the sun is the obvious one, and the same team will send a cook for dinner, which matters because Bingin’s food is spread along lanes that are no fun to walk after dark. A scooter or two solves the same problem and gets you to the surf; a massage table fits on the pool terrace. Staff clean each day and the pool and planting are tended through the week.

Villa Solaia is a two-bedroom house that knows what it is: a quiet, well-finished base for two couples or a small family on the Bukit, within a few minutes of the best of the peninsula’s surf and its cliff-edge restaurants. The pool is the whole point, and the alcove beside it is where the day slows down.