Villa Terra Calma

The lane into Seseh gives up its tarmac somewhere past the last warung, and behind a plain wall Villa Terra Calma opens onto water. The pool is the first thing you meet, a narrow run of green mosaic laid the full length of the house, edged in irregular flagstone and pressed on one side by a bank of heliconia and bird-of-paradise grown taller than the wall behind it. Two teak loungers wait at the far end under an arched timber screen. Above them three arched windows sit in white render, and a slatted timber soffit reaches out over the terrace on two round teak columns. The sand is four hundred metres away, at the end of the same lane.

The ground floor is one long room that stops being a room the moment the doors are pushed back. A brown chenille sectional faces a black coffee table standing on two heavy ball feet, with a teak-and-leather sling chair beside it under a zebra-print hide and a ceiling fan turning overhead. Behind runs the kitchen, teak wall cabinets over a rust-brown stone worktop, two woven rattan domes hanging low, an induction hob, an oven and a coffee machine set out beside the kettle. The dining table is teak on black steel legs with six woven-seat chairs, placed where the glass ends and the flagstone begins. Terracotta-red stair treads climb away behind the sofa.

Both bedrooms are upstairs, and they are not the same room twice. The higher one sits beneath an exposed roof of terracotta tiles carried on timber rafters and black steel beams, with a black-framed picture window looking out over village rooftops and coconut palms; woven pendants hang either side of the king bed and a teal panel is set into the wall above it. The second has a flat ceiling, a full wall of solid teak wardrobes and two arched timber doors that swing open onto a small roof terrace. Each has its own bathroom, with white monolithic vanities on teak drawers, black tapware and herringbone floor tile, and in one a round timber mirror beside a fringed raffia pendant.

Seseh keeps its distance from everything: twenty-three kilometres to the airport, and Pererenan and Canggu a drive rather than a stroll, so a car — with a driver, if you would rather not learn the lanes — changes the week more than any other arrangement. Next is a cook, because the teak kitchen has an induction hob and an oven and the nearest warung is four hundred and fifty metres away. The pool runs the full length of the house, straight past the terrace doors, so ask for the fence if anyone small is coming. The little roof terrace off the second bedroom, through its arched timber doors, is where the massage table belongs.

Villa Terra Calma is a narrow house that spends its width on water. The pool runs from the gate to the far wall, the doors fold away, and the whole ground floor turns into a shaded verandah for most of the day; upstairs, under the rafters, you can still hear the surf at the end of the lane.