Worshipping at Bali's temples of divine luxury

Worshipping at Bali's temples of divine luxury

Jill Hartley, Observer News Service, London

Before you decide whether you can take a hefty clout at your credit card to stay in Bali's five-star finest resorts, ask yourself: Am I a sensual being?

I know it sounds like one of those awful women's magazine surveys, but this is important. Would you describe yourself as decadent? A sybarite? A worshiper at the shrine of hedonism? Do you long to be massaged with scented oils, to bathe in petal- strewn baths, dine off spicy morsels by the light of a gauzy moon?

If the answer is "Don't be daft", then I would suggest that you do not come here. But at the risk of sounding like the tourist board, if the answer is yes, all this -- and more -- can be yours, so start saving.

Quite why Bali, one of more than 13,000 islands in the Indonesian archipelago, should have become the zenith of aspirational tourism, is part mystery and part economic necessity. It is helped by its unique brand of benign exoticism and tropical brochure-cover landscapes made flesh: emerald volcanic slopes, white sand beaches, rice paddies, curvaceous pagodas and pomegranate red sunsets.

In 1967 the new Soeharto government held a summit with the World Bank in an attempt to rescue Indonesia's crippling balance of payments deficit. The result was a tourism master plan, initially concentrated in the southern villages of Sanur and Nusa Dua, now both glitzy beach resorts. Apart from a few Australian surfers, tourism had been a mere trickle. Today, the island has well over a million visitors each year.

Somehow Bali has managed to keep both ends of the tourist market sweet. It has hundreds of small losmen (guesthouses) where backpackers can still get a clean bed and breakfast for US$7.35 or less. And, at the same time, it sustains an astounding number of luxury hotels for an island its size (about twice as big as Luxembourg). Among the five-star, big-name chains it has two Hyatts, a Ritz-Carlton, an Inter-Continental and an Oberoi.

Turn up another couple of ratchets on the dollar scale and it boasts two Four Seasons resorts, three Amans -- the luxury Far Eastern chain which reinvented the hotel as a lifestyle statement -- and Begawan Giri, now rated as the world's most luxurious property.

All have rooms starting from between $425 and $575 a night, plus spas with two-hour treatments for around $102. All are known for their idiosyncratic architecture, decadent bathrooms, fusion cuisine and impeccable service.

So what do you get for your money? At our first stop, Four Seasons Jimbaran Bay, the answer was lots of space, more of it even than in my friend's London flat. We each had private plunge pools with sundecks and recliners for two, plus two separate thatched pavilions -- one for outdoor living with a bar, a table set for four (in case we made friends) and a daybed piled high with squishy cushions; the other for sleeping and bathing.

As well as an oversized bath, there were two showers, both inside and outdoors, and a private garden. Everything small, including a torch and disposable water bottles, had been slipped into its own rattan cover, and all the bathroom potions had been decanted into green ceramic pots. Naturally most of the couples who are guests find it hard to tear themselves away from such perfection, so they don't.

But we had a mission to test the spa and opted for a mandi lulur, or royal wedding treatment, promising "120 minutes of sybaritic body massage, exfoliation and deeply perfumed bathing". We giggled like ticklish schoolgirls as we were pummeled in the buff on adjacent beds and scrubbed down with a spicy, aromatic paste like a pair of tandoori chickens.

After being smeared in yogurt, then hosed down by our spa attendants, we were left to share an "intimate" 15 minutes in a petal-strewn bath to get rid of that oven-ready smell.

After about six days touring the island's top properties, I became blase. I started to expect a frangipani blossom on my pillow, a chilled towel at the flick of a wrist, a flunky to carry anything heavier than sunglasses and starched white napkins as big as the island's ubiquitous sarongs.

But only a prince, or a fool, could be blase about Begawan Giri. Rooms here are called residences. From a distance it sounds pretentious, but close up it makes sense. Owners Debbie and Bradley Gardner made their seemingly bottomless fortune from costume jewelry and took a decade to build what is hardly a hotel, more a series of architectural fantasies.

For 20 years the Gardners, a pair of self-confessed perfectionists and "design junkies", have shopped the world, filling the five residences with oriental antiques -- carpets from China and Iran, rugs from Mongolia and Tibet, Dutch colonial beds and giant Ali Baba pots from Burma.

Their limitless imagination stretches to outdoor poolside fireplaces, a six-ton stone bath that seemingly floats in a Japanese water garden, and a dinner-plate sized shower head backed by a reproduction erotic stone frieze from India's famed temple in Khajuraho.

Our residence was called Wanakasa, which translates as Forest in the Mist. Its five suites (you can't really call them rooms) are like grown-up luxury tree houses, linked to a vast semi-open dining and living area by wooden walkways made from lovingly polished 150-year-old teak. The view from my hard-to-leave muslin-draped four-poster was of huge ferns and rampant tropical blooms in lipstick pinks and reds.

That night, over dinner, we asked Bradley why they had chosen Bali to build such dream houses. "Can't you feel the magic?" he asked. "This island has more magic than anywhere else in the East. It's so much more than a sea, sand and coconut island."

Yes, I had felt the island's spell, but if I'm honest I was bewitched more by its hedonistic charms than by its gods, temples, customs and ritual dances. Take our last night at Amankila, where we each had a suite linked by a private pool. After our final dinner, we arrived back, woozy with wine, to find the pool lit by candles and thick with floating flowers. I will never forget that final skinny dip under the moon and stars, gathering up armfuls of scented petals. It was the nearest I had ever come to a sense of bliss.

How could I ever repeat it at home? If I suggested to my husband that we cut the roses and sprinkle the petals in the bath, he'd think I was daft.