Villa Sanook Review - Seminyak, Bali, Indonesia

A little piece of heaven on earth..

Villa Sanook

Dates of Stay: 

04-06 April 2015

Itinerary: 

02 April - Surabaya to Mt. Bromo

03 April - Climb Mt. Bromo & travel to Kawah Ijen

04 April - Climb Kawah Ijen & travel to Bali

05 April - Bali

06 April - Bali

07 April - Bali to Singapore

Rough estimate for the entire trip:

Not inclusive of food and shopping

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I would also like to give a shout-out to my friend, Kenneth, for taking and providing me with wonderful shots during our trip! All those photos you see that are done professional and waaaaay above average shots were beautifully taken by him. Please do go to his Instagram or website and check out his photos!

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Address: Jalan Drupadi, Bali, Indonesia

Email: info@villasanook.com

Website: http://www.villasanook.com/

Room Type: 4 Bedroom Villa 

Rates: US$475 (Low), US$ 575 (High) , US$675 (Peak)

After two days of hiking at Mount Bromo & Kawah Ijen, we're headed to Bali to relax and recuperate from whatever torture we put ourselves through.

Initially, we found Villa Sanook on Air B&B. Being the Kiasu me, I went to do more research while waiting for the owner to reply me with the questions I had asked. Lo & behold, I actually found their website. It is actually much cheaper if you book the villa directly on their website as there is no booking fees charged by AirB&B.

Pool view

One of the main reasons why we chose this Villa was the close proximity to the beach and the main Seminyak street! Also, I noticed from the description and photos there were no specific Master bedroom. It was four almost identical (yet different) rooms with their own private outdoor shower and bathtub! There were a total of 7 of us and it was perfect as we do not need to draw lots nor fight who sleeps in the Master Bedroom!

Map of Villa Sanook

One piece of advice though, Potato Head may seem like it is within walking distance, but I'd rather you just take a taxi there. There are plenty of taxis going past the entrance of Villa Sanook, along Jalan Drupadi, so you don't have to wait for long. Taxi ride by metered fare to Ku De Ta was about Rp30,000, so perhaps a taxi ride to Potato Head will cost you Rp 60,000 at most? That's inexpensive and saves you time! We took about an hour and a half just to walk there. Of course we stopped for drinks and shopping around the main Seminyak street before heading over, but we were pretty worn out by the walk.

Two of the rooms were standalone pool-view rooms, away from the main villa building like the picture below. The other two rooms are located inside the villa building itself and has views of the small garden behind the glass.

That's my room on the left!

The outdoor area has a verandah and three sun beds. The pool has a shallow end as well as a deep end, which was really really deep! I couldn't even stand at all. There are ledges around the pool so that you're able to sit comfortably in the water too!

Outdoor verandah for us to lounge on!

There were quite a number of mosquitoes (but not too many that we couldn't handle), so we just lit a mosquito coil and placed it under one of the sun beds. We were so excited to be staying in such an exquisite villa, we just couldn't contain our excitement. We got changed into our swimwear and dived right in without even unpacking.

Living Room

Another reason we liked Villa Sanook was that there's sliding doors to separate the living room and outdoor areas. We looked at many villas but they were mainly open concept where it would be a feast for the mosquitoes. With this, we were able to turn on the A/C & cool off the summer heat!

Have I mentioned how comfy & soft the sofas are..? 

Dining area

We had our breakfasts and lunches here at the dining area & it can fit 10 persons comfortably. For the first morning, we had eggs, bacon and toast. On the second morning, we requested for Indonesian style breakfast so Sukra & his colleague prepared a portion of Nasi Goreng & Mie Goreng with a fried egg on top for us! It was so delicious! I would love to have more, but sadly, I was only allowed one helping. 

Breakfast of Mie & Nasi Goreng with fried egg! 

yummy eggs and toast!

State of the art kitchen!

To be honest, I opened up all the cabinets and drawers in the kitchen. I swear they had anything you could think of! It was like my own kitchen back home where I had all sort of condiments & even flour! We could help ourselves to iced water from the fridge anytime. I don't usually drink water dispensed from fridges because the water always tasted funky and plastic-y. I guess Sukra really cleaned it damn well or a lot of people had already drank from it and washed away the weird smell with each refill. This really is my dream kitchen! Just look at the space and the island counter! Even the oven was humongous and beautiful! 

If you can see on the island counter top on the right, there's this light blue speaker thing where you can just unplug it, connect it via Bluetooth to your mobile device and bring it out to the pool side. It was so awesome!

Pool view room

The bedrooms are spacious, clean and felt so homely! All rooms are fitted with King sized beds and wooden furnishing. In the photo above is the layout for the pool-view rooms.

Bathroom - pool view room

My favourite part of the room is undeniably the bathroom! Not only is it spacious, it has a bathtub AND an outdoor shower! The funny part about the bathrooms was that we could all chat while we were in our respective rooms taking showers. P would sneeze two rooms away, J would say "Bless You!", and I would start laughing like a mad woman. No, we couldn't see each other, but we could definitely hear each other.

Garden View Room

Washroom

The bathrooms for the garden view rooms seem larger though as compared to the pool view ones. I'm not complaining though. I'm happy enough! For the pool view rooms, there's a glass door and panel separating the outdoor shower to the rest of the bathroom, but for the garden view rooms, there's no such panel so mosquitoes may fly in anytime and you may feel the heat during the day. There's even rubber duckies soap dish for you to play with!

Despite the villa being so vast and beautiful, it's still the little things that blew me away! The first detail was that because the showers were "outdoors", people from the outside may climb into our villa at night, thus there's a lock from the bedroom so you may lock it before you go to bed. Of course, there's also a lock from inside the bathroom, but it's the simple slide lock that you can find in all public restrooms.

Sukra also burns mosquito coils in all the garden view bathrooms because there's no glass panel to block out mosquitoes. For the pool view rooms, he burns the mosquito coil near our bedroom doors to drive away the mosquitoes. He does this diligently, everyday!

Also, when he saw us bringing the rubber duckies out to the pool to play, he even took out a floating rugby ball so we could all play like little children.

Fresh flowers.. Fresh flowers everywhere! There were flowers decorating all the statues and ornaments in the villa too! It was on the towels, on the bed, on the dining table. Everywhere.

The only thing that I would consider a con in this villa of pros would be that I couldn't get second helping for breakfast. I wanted more bacon and coffee, but I saw that they had washed all the pottery and cutleries and I didn't think it was possible without feeling guilty. Also, we could only choose one type for breakfast. Either American (eggs, bacon and toast), pancakes or Indonesian style. I wish I would eat my omelette with pancakes though.

It was just a small little hitch, but I absolutely loved this place & I wished we stayed longer! I will definitely be back!

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Find out more about my hike up Mount Bromo & Kawah Ijen!

Or what we did in Bali!