Alila resorts, Bali: From low-key and relaxing to stupidly luxurious

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This was published 5 years ago

Alila resorts, Bali: From low-key and relaxing to stupidly luxurious

By Keith Austin

It is my firm belief that there is a factory hidden in the verdant, jungly interior of Bali that knocks out tiny but incredibly strong human beings, mostly female, for use in the plethora of spas and "wellness" centres that cover, like lantana, this much-loved and much-maligned island.

At first glance these simulacra look like any other person but it's when they ask "how is the pressure, Mr Keith?" that you begin to realise they have hands of steel. Yes, beneath those beautifully shaped and infinitely soft little hands is the sort of robotic arm that Arnold Schwarzenegger revealed in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Trust me, this is the very embodiment of the iron fist in the velvet glove.

At the secluded Alila Manggis hotel, on Bali's south-east coast, this uber-human is called Ainu and the particular form of ecstatic torture she practises takes place on the edge of the ocean with the rhythmic swish of the waves not quite drowning out the sound of the knots in my back being crushed out of existence by Ainu's ministrations.

Alila Manggis is a low-key, relaxing destination.

Alila Manggis is a low-key, relaxing destination.Credit: Pete Seaward

I arrived the previous night at about midnight, after a 90-minute drive from Denpasar international airport, to be greeted by a staff member proffering a cold, scented hand towel and herbal tea. In the morning I hung about by the swimming pool before lobbing up at the nearby spa for my Balinese massage.

Before we begin, however, there is more tea; ginger this time with a lemon grass stick and a slice of lime (which is pretty much what's in the water when Ainu begins the treatment by washing my feet). She laughs obligingly when I ask if we get to drink it afterwards.

I have asked for a medium-strength massage and Ainu duly obliges, though I get the feeling that she could squeeze the pips out of pips if she so chose. Afterwards, I trip over two tiny tree roots on the way back to my room.

Alila Seminyak has its own beach frontage and boasts 240 rooms.

Alila Seminyak has its own beach frontage and boasts 240 rooms.

Alila Manggis began life in 1994 as Balina Serai and was part of the GHM Hotels group (it joined the Alila family in 2000). Built in a coconut grove not far from the village of Candidasa, the resort was designed by Australian architect Kerry Hill, who had died, aged 75, just a few weeks before our visit.

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In resort terms this means Alila Manggis is approaching late middle age and showing some signs of wear. There's no gym, for instance, and the free bicycles available for guests have seen better days, but overall Kerry Hill's design has more than weathered the test of time.

This is not a thumping beach club for the young, the trendy and the slightly deaf. It's a low-key, relaxing destination perfect for families with children and holidaymakers who don't want to battle to the touts and the tourists in Seminyak.

The modern Alila Seminyak is a step up from the more rustic aesthetic at Alila Manggis.

The modern Alila Seminyak is a step up from the more rustic aesthetic at Alila Manggis.

The brief for the original project stipulated that the coconut trees should be retained as much as possible, and that every one of the 55 rooms should have a view of the ocean. Hill's design married modern elements with traditional Balinese thatched roofs on two-storey buildings that look out onto a large lush lawn and a swimming pool. There's a small bar down by the pebble beach and a restaurant surrounded by water features. It is, as Hill himself said, "restrained, uncluttered and simple ... a contemplative place for people to go".

Much the same could be said of this relatively undeveloped corner of Bali. In the afternoon, I take one of the resort's bikes and cycle into Candidasa along the well-maintained coastal road. It's an easy 20-minute ride that's gloriously free of the traffic that mars Denpasar and Seminyak, and that wends its way past rice paddies strewn with plastic-sheet scarecrows and plunges through plush jungle landscapes punctuated by waves of bright bougainvillea. It's a road dotted with well-worn warungs, restaurants, coffee shops, roadside shrines, temples and factories knocking out the many god statues the Balinese love so much.

Candidasa sits right on the coast and, while it has its fair share of souvenir shops, wood-fired pizza ovens, happy hours, budget accommodation, cottages and beachside shacks, it still has an "undiscovered" feel that the more popular areas of the island lack.

One of Alila Manggis' boasts is that much of its food comes from its own organic garden, and it's here we find ourselves for a morning of cooking. Just a 10-minute drive through the backblocks of the area, the garden and its traditional open-air kitchen sit surrounded by rice fields at the foothills of the Mount Agung range.

Here, Wayan Sandiasa, the executive chef, hands out a sheaf of the recipes we'll be working on today. We will, it seems, be making nasi sele (sweet potato rice), bumbu Bali spice, pork sate on lemongrass, spiced chicken parcels, Balinese salsa, a mixed vegetable salad and lak lak (rice cakes cooked in terracotta) – and stuffing ourselves with it on the raised pavilion in the middle of the garden.

It's great fun, even if our manual labour doesn't amount to much more than pounding and grinding the spices for the bumbu Bali and discovering that trying to make spiced ground pork stick to a length of lemongrass is like nailing jelly to a wall. It tastes wonderful, though.

Alila Seminyak, Alila Manggis' sister property, is another cup of ginger tea entirely. Sitting in the heart of brash, bustling, boozy, neon-lit, traffic-clogged Seminyak it's bigger and brighter than Manggis but, despite having its own beach frontage right next to the throbbing Mrs Sippy and Potato Head clubs, it still manages to exude a serene charm.

A much more modern design than Manggis, it boasts 240 rooms, a stupidly luxurious penthouse suite that looks across the bay, three public pools, a beach bar, the popular Seasalt restaurant, a lovely 17th-century temple and, of course, a spa.

This modern spa is a step up from the more rustic aesthetic at Alila Manggis. For a start, it's so big I begin to think I'll need to drop breadcrumbs to find my way back to reception after my three-hour treatment.

The masseuse is Wahu, another brightly smiling graduate of the robo-masseuse factory. She is, if anything, even smaller than Ainu, with hands that look as if they'd fit in my ear canal but that prove to be just as effective in the massage department.

There is no reason to leave Alila Seminyak to be perfectly honest but if you're after a more robust holiday then the bright lights, sights and sounds of Seminyak are at the end of the driveway.

For more spiritual needs you can always, as we did, spend a morning with a staff member in the old Hindu temple in the middle of the Alila complex. Here we learn how to make canang sari, the little palm leaf baskets which, filled with colourful flowers and other oddments such as cigarettes and biscuits, the Balinese offer to supreme god Sang Hyang Widhi Wasa each morning.

Pinned together with short bamboo twigs, it's harder than it looks and I suspect Sang Hyang Widhi Wasa was doing a bit of tut-tutting that morning at the state of the workmanship on offer.

TRIP NOTES

Keith Austin was a guest of Alila Hotels & Resorts.

MORE

traveller.com.au/bali

indonesia.travel

STAY

Alila Manggis is on Bali's south-east coast, a 90-minute drive from Denpasar airport. It has 53 rooms and two suites, all with views across the coconut grove and swimming pool to the sea. See alilahotels.com/manggis

Alila Seminyak sits right on the beach in the bustling, booming heart of Seminyak. It has three pools, 99 rooms, 140 suites and one penthouse. See alilahotels.com/seminyak

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