JBR Part 1 – Palm River Villa.
Before I start, I'll get this out of the way. Yes I am travel agent and yes I do get the occasional cheap deals to Bali but on this occasion I traveled with a group of eight friends and stayed at Palm River Villa for the first five nights which was booked through Bali Villas.com (the hosts of this website) at the normal price shown on their website, there were no special favours done and my opinion of this property and company is not influenced by any special treatment or prices because none was received. I went there as a tourist and received the same treatment and prices anyone else could expect.
That said this was by far the best hotel experience I have had of the twenty plus hotels I have stayed in.
From the beginning, I won't bore you with details of flight, VOA, porters etc. Suffice to say the flight with Garuda was fine although we landed fifteen minutes late and took two hours to get through the VOA.
On arrival at the villa located in a village just north of Canggu, it was just on sunset, the buildings were all softly lit, the first impression of all my group (most of whom were first timers) was simply Wow. They could not get over the place, the luxurious rooms, and spacious gardens, attentive staff and the fact that this was all ours. The villa worked out at about $90.00 AUD each per night but if there were 10 of us it would only have been $72.00 and if we had stayed at least ten nights (believe me we all wished we had) it would have been even cheaper. This price included cook, maid, gardener, houseboy, security guards, driver and twelve seat minibus for 10 hours a day. In all we had nine staff members to look after eight guests. The staff were very attentive, always there when you needed them but not intrusive. Laundry returned washed and neatly folded the next day. The car was immaculate and always at our disposal. The food was unbelievable we ate breakfast there every morning and dinners most evenings, you ordered what you wanted from a list of suggested menus or a couple of recipe books. To give you an idea of costs, you only paid the cost of ingredients purchased, our first night there was the eight of us plus four guests. We literally had a banquet including soup, satays, grilled fish, vegetables, salads etc and for the twelve of us it cost 450,000 rp. That's about $5.85 AUD a head, needless to say we ate in whenever possible and fully tested Putu's culinary skills as we browsed the recipe books. We each put in 300,000 rp at the start of our stay for groceries and we got change from that. I won't describe the villa in detail as you can see it for your self at www.balivillas.com
The location was fantastic, a quiet village north of Seminyak about a kilometre from Canggu beach. You could take a relaxing stroll to the beach or to the rice paddies in the other direction. OK it is out in the sticks a bit but does it matter when you've got your own car and driver? It only took about 20 minutes or so to get into Legian and you're in Bali so what's the rush? We had our own pool to use any time of day or night, no curfews. One of my group stayed 'home' one day and they brought in a massage girl for her, this person was planning to go diving everyday or so preferred staying back to enjoy the villa.
I have watched many comment on Bali Villas product on this forum and have read many comments of 'it looks wonderful but its too expensive/out of my price range'. When you sit down and add up the value of the additional extras you receive, the cook, the laundry and the car and driver each day how could you afford not to consider one of their villas. If you are with a group looking at the mid to high range of hotels then a villa is exceptional value and an experience not to be missed. My group is already talking about next time and will not accept anything less than two weeks at Palm River Villa.
To be continued.....Candi Dasa and diving