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Central Sanur, Bali, Indonesia
A villa for two, with the longest pool of the six
Baris is the odd one out, in the useful way: one bedroom for two people, and an eight-metre pool — the same length as the villas that sleep four. If there are two of you and you actually swim, this is the one to take.
You wake under a Balinese four-poster canopy bed and step out onto the terrace. The pool is finished in blue mosaic tile and runs the full length of a bangkirai deck, the original hardwood rather than the composite used elsewhere on the property.
The main bathroom has a terrazzo bathtub alongside its rain shower, and there is a second rain shower outside in the garden. Baris and Barong are the only two villas with a bath. Inside, teakwood furniture and Buddha-influenced pieces against plain walls.
Everything is on one level — there are no stairs in the villa.
The villa faces east.
Sanur runs a few kilometres north to south along the coast, and the villas sit in the middle of it. Jl. Danau Tamblingan — the main street, with the restaurants, spas and shops — is 150 metres away, and the Andaz and the Hyatt are about 200 metres in the other direction.
This is the older, quieter side of southern Bali. Sanur is where the island's tourism began in the 1950s and it has stayed slower than Seminyak or Canggu — wide pavements, trees along the main street, long dinners rather than nightlife. You are a few minutes' walk from all of it, on a residential lane rather than on the street itself.
Bali sits about eight degrees south of the equator, so the midday sun passes close to overhead and every garden gets it. Which way a villa faces makes less difference here than it would further north or south — we list it on each villa anyway, for anyone who wants to know.
Four hundred metres and you are on the sand. The stretch in front of the Hyatt is one of the greener parts of the shore, with loungers to rent and restaurants along the front.
Sanur faces east, which is the reverse of Bali's west-coast beaches: the sun rises over the water here rather than setting into it. And a reef about a kilometre offshore takes the swell before it arrives, so the water inshore stays flat — shallow a long way out, no undertow, and calm enough for children.
The promenade runs roughly five kilometres north to south, car-free and flat the whole way.
This is the question we are asked most often, so: no villa overlooks another, and none of them faces a street. They sit together on a lane in a residential part of central Sanur, walled and screened with planting on every side — you can swim, eat and sleep outdoors without being overlooked.
The same goes for noise. There is no road frontage and no through traffic, so what reaches the garden is the neighbourhood rather than the street.
There is a front office on the property, and you are met and shown around when you arrive rather than sent a door code. If something needs fixing, someone is on site to fix it — which is the part of a villa stay that self check-in quietly removes.
Bicycles are free to borrow, and Sanur is flat, walled with quiet lanes and small enough to cross on one. Housekeeping comes daily.
Each villa is entered through its own kori — the gateway that marks the threshold into a Balinese compound. Ours are minimalist rather than ornately carved, built in batu paras.
You walk through one to reach your own door, not into a shared lobby. It is a small thing that sets the tone: Balinese houses with modern comforts, rather than modern builds with Balinese decoration.
