One Eleven

A refined, tranquil little spa-hotel as soothing as One Eleven, a collection of nine outsized but pared-down private villas with lap pools and lawns and plenty of space for sprawling out in the sun, is hardly a revolutionary hotel concept in Bali. And yet to find a genuine bastion of quietude and calm in Seminyak, one of Bali’s favorite beachside party towns, where DJs and dance parties are as easy to find as surf and sand — well, it’s not the easiest thing in the world.

If you were to translate the Japanese ryokan concept into Balinese, it would look a lot like One Eleven. Each of the villas is like a fantasy of a simpler life, one with plenty of space for contemplation and nothing to clutter the eye or the mind — where all you’ve got to do is soak in the big tub next to a wall of glass, sunbathe by the pool, maybe relax in the big sunny living room with a book before walking across your lawn to your private, glassed-in gazebo for a spa treatment. (Why share a hotel spa when you have your own?)

Same goes for the restaurant. It’s a sushi and sake bar, necessarily intimate given the size of the hotel. The chef is from Osaka, the gorgeous woodwork traditional in (Japanese) style. It’s a familiar trick at One Eleven; they’ve exercised all the restraint so you don’t have to. Instead, you can sit back and indulge without feeling like a glutton.

Of course, for all the seclusion, you are still in Seminyak. It’s more than possible to hole up in the room, but when you’ve gotten your muscle-melting fill of massages and explored every last corner of your private pool, the shops, restaurants, bars and — lest they be forgotten — the beaches that started all this commotion in the first place are all just down the road.

How to get there:
Guests at One Eleven enjoy complimentary airport transfers to/from Denpasar International Airport.