It was a nice drive of about an hour through yet more rice fields at various stages of development, and some fields turned over to peanuts. I understand that often they do three rice crops, followed by a peanut crop before going back to rice – suppose it’s needed for all that satay!
I arrive at the villa and it’s fab – nice aircon bedroom, living pavilion, decent size private pool and a two storey “bale”, like a little wooden two storey terrace with day beds and chairs.
There are four villas in the complex, two 1 beds, 1 2 bed and 1 3 bed. At the moment, I am the only person here, but from Monday there are people in the other villas most nights. It’s not one of the ultra modern minimalist ones you see here such a lot, it was apparently designed based on a Balinese family compound and in keeping with the village. I am still not too sure about the open air bathroom – you have to time your shower to avoid mozzie time. It’s in a village called Seseh. It’s about 200 metres from a beach, but not a resort type one. It’s black sand with surf type waves and more a home to fishermen than sun worshippers. The village itself is tiny – one street of Balinese compounds, the usual temple and village meeting place and one rather scruffy little shop, with chickens everywhere and rice laid out to dry in the sun.
The shop had water but everything else was crawling in ants so at least I wasn’t tempted by the chocolate.... The nearest resort area is Seminyak a newer development since I was last here and the most fashionable one. I’ll go in and have a look one day. But in the meantime I will relax into my villa, take a dip in the pool and be waited on by the staff of eight.... In this luxury and privacy, I feel a bit like a footballer’s wife, (without the footballer of course), but do you think if I kiss the frog that was resident in my open air bath this morning, it may turn into a prince?
