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Pamela Hayes

Dear Pamela and Made, I would like to congratulate and thank you and your wonderful team for maki ....

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Pamela Hayes

Dear Pamela and Made, I would like to congratulate and thank you and your wonderful team for making my stay at Villa Sungai so enjoyable. There is definitely a magical energy occurring at Sungai which is partly the natural beauty of the village, its people and surroundings, partly coming from your amazing team and partly from the environment that you have created with your design and focussed attention to detail. I spent 20 years as a flight attendant/cabin manager which included appraisals of team members and designing and implementing new in-flight services. I have stayed in many 5 star hotels around the world especially in Asia. None have seemed to get the combination of natural beauty, comfort and friendly professional service together as well as you and your team. I know Atsushi has already mentioned Wayan’s amazing culinary skills which exceeded our expectations at every meal. The professional and gentle manner with which we were served by Krisna and Illuh was lovely and only added to our dining enjoyment. Right from the moment when Kadek picked us up in Ubud until Made dropped us off at the airport our Sungai experience was exceptional. Always cold water waiting for us in the car after our little excursions, little fairies seeing to all our needs at the villa without even knowing that they were around, magical mornings swimming after a delicious breakfast, quiet balmy evenings sipping champagne or wine with award winning meals and service plus music of our choice playing in the background are only some of the wonderful memories I will hold dearly from my holiday. Being able to hear the music and chanting gently coming from the local temples was an added bonus. On arrival we were met with warm smiling faces and cold margaritas, as we were leaving we were farewelled with the same warm smiling faces and a surprise farewell gift of a beautiful sarong. I will happily recommend Villa Sungai to my friends and family as a perfect place to holiday. Once again I thank you and your team from the bottom of my heart for such a memorable experience. Kind Regards Wendy Nagel Sydney, Australia
Updated on OwnersRentals.com

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Pamela Hayes

Dear Pamela We have just arrived home today and I wanted to write straight away to thank you for ....

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Pamela Hayes

Dear Pamela We have just arrived home today and I wanted to write straight away to thank you for a fabulous time while it's all still fresh in my mind. Villa Sungai is a magical place that we feel lucky to have ever had the chance to visit. It offers what (in my experience as a travel agent) so many people want on holiday but few manage to find - a place of absolute luxury with a warm and genuine feel, yet away from the tourists and surrounded by the local way of life. Made and his team at the villa, whom he affectionately calls his friends, stood by smiling as we took a long time to take in the beauty of the villa and it's surroundings. It is impossible to adequately describe the jungle setting - the trees overhanging the river present more shades of green than we thought existed. The rustling of these oversized leaves and the soft animal sounds (cows, pigs, roosters, geckos, cicadas, birds and Trisna's goat!) create a magical ambience. When the evening sunlight filters through the lush jungle foliage and illuminates the ripples in the pool you just can't believe how beautiful it is. The hardest decision each night was whether to leave this perfect scene untouched, or to follow temptation and dive into the cool water at sunset while Eluh organised a fresh banana daiquiri. Made is quite simply amazing. He told us the story of how he started work on the villa as a labourer and eventually ended up the manager. We could all see why - he knew our names off by heart from the minute we arrived, he knew what we needed before we even asked, and he remembered even the smallest detail. (My friend Amanda loved the fresh local chillies - after she'd asked once they would always appear in a small side dish for her with every meal). It's these things that make the villa so special. And of course the day trips with Made - he showed us some special places on the island, and always took us to the perfect spots - whether it be to sample a local Indonesian dish or to buy some handcrafted furniture. As my friend Ben said, "Made just gets it right every time". The last night was an experience we'll never forget - when we arranged to have a local dance and orchestra at the villa we didn't know the whole village would arrive! Everyone from the priest, who blessed the offerings, to the smallest child, who peeped through the curtains while the dancers were performing - they were all there just for us. We felt so privileged to be shown the local music and dance, but most especially to witness the great community spirit in Cepaka. How kind of the village to make us feel an important part of that. And how refreshing to see that the drink prices were very reasonable and the local food ingredients were wonderfully cheap. The food was so fresh and aromatic and tasty at every meal - at the end of the week we had to ask shy Wuyan to venture out of the kitchen so we could give him a standing ovation! I hope Eluh and Trisna realised how much we appreciated their exemplary service - they were incredibly gracious and always smiled at us in that warm Balinese way which made such a difference. Thank you too to Nyoman, Made and Katut who treated us to incredible relaxing massages nearly every day under the shade of the umbrella (what an indulgence!) And Bumi probably didn't realise that his wonderful soft singing was a pleasure to listen to as he tended to the garden each morning! I have been to Bali before but this was so different. This experience was unbeatable and I can't imagine staying anywhere else in Bali again - no doubt we're not the first guests to leave with tears in our eyes. Made told us one family came for a week and then booked to come back a few months later for a 20-day stay. No wonder. Thank you so very much Pamela, Anna Sydney 4-10 September 2005

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Pamela Hayes

Hi Pam We loved Villa Sungai and we loved Bali. Thank you so much for all your style, energy and ....

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Pamela Hayes

Hi Pam We loved Villa Sungai and we loved Bali. Thank you so much for all your style, energy and obvious care and attention behind the scenes. She tells me that there will be a feature in Lux magazine next month. Best regards Toby Sungai is World Class. It is the perfect combination of a top 5 star hotel, and no other quests. It is very difficult to adequately describe Sungai without stringing together a list of superlatives, although I can now report that the photographs on the web site are very accurate. In these brief notes I would divide my description of Sungai into three parts. The first is the style and the design of the Villa. It really is stunning. It is perched on the banks of a river (Sungai means river in Balinese) and the two main features are an 18 meter turquoise infinity lap pool that dog legs at one end to form the steps. This is without doubt the most stylish pool I have ever seen and it is the central feature of Sungai, even in the evening, when it is often covered with flower petals and floating tea lights. The second main feature is the Great Room that runs along side the pool and contains the main dining area, a large seating area and a day bed. It is a traditional Balinese Great Room, rising to about twenty feel at the full height of the ceiling, in a construction of white wood and thatch. All the furniture is locally produced and beautifully made. The overall effect is one of cool serenity, perfectly captured by the centrally positioned Buda. Beyond these two features there are three incredibly stylish en suite bedrooms with outside showers; there is a second dining area, which is used for breakfast or candle lit dinners under the stars and there is a small thatched bar at the end of the pool, which serves as a perfect vantage point for both the river and the villa. The second aspect of Sungai is in the detail. Everything I have described above could exist without the need for the extraordinary attention to detail. The beds are as comfortable as being at home. The towels, that never run out, are all beautifully scented. In the bathrooms the toiletries are by Bvlgari. The overall effect is to make you feel immediately at home, to relax and recover from the jet lag in uncompromising comfort. The third, and really the most important, are the people at Sungai. In a country of very nice people, the people of Sungai stand out as being the nicest. You are pampered by eight of the nicest people on the planet. They cook beautiful food from an extensive menu, which includes yummy little snacks with cocktails - oh, and the cocktails would put the Dorchester to shame. But at the centre of all this is a person of rare serenity, intelligence and sensitivity - Made, pronounced Maday, who is in charge of Sungai and all the staff. He is also in charge of your daily itinerary and he will arrange whatever you want, from massages at the villa to booking restaurants. He will also drive you where ever you need to go and, with perfect discretion, he will suggest detours to visit places of special interest. He is very proud of his beautiful country and was clearly delighted that we so obviously loved Bali. The truth is that Made was one of the main reasons we loved Bali so much. The overall effect of Sungai is of a World Class tropical retreat, at which you could not fail to relax and shed whatever stresses you arrived with. Toby Marchant Regional President UK, Ireland & South Africa PaperlinX Huntsman House Mansion Close Moulton Park Northampton NN3 6LA 16-23 December

Review Updated July 2019

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Pamela Hayes

Situated in Tabanan Bali this spectacular 3 bedroom villa is a luxurious oasis you can't afford t ....

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Pamela Hayes

Situated in Tabanan Bali this spectacular 3 bedroom villa is a luxurious oasis you can't afford to miss. Tabanan is located in west Bali and is the unspoilt part of Bali. The attractions in Tabanan include the Subak museum, Tanah Lot Temple, Mount Batukaru and Jatiluwih. The activities include jungle trekking, horse riding, and cycling. Tabanan is the widest area in Bali and is also known for its rice terrace fields as you drive around Bali, you will see very old trees dressed with a black & white checkered skirt. Usually, these trees are very sacred and a place of worship will be set up at the base of the trunk. The black and white checkered poleng cloth symbolizes good and evil. In the center highland of Bali is the serene mountain area of Bedugul. Here vegetables, fruits, and flowers thrive in the alpine climate , and a colorful little market at Bukit Mungsu offers a wide selection of produce including exotic wild orchids, roses, and colorful birds. There is a large botanical garden nearby. At Pancasari, an 18 - hole championship golf course has been developed, with all the facilities to suit golfing lovers. At Lake Beratan, the area's climate is refreshing after being in the heat of the lowlands. Bratan Lake, approximately 60 kilometers from Denpasar ( to the north ), also provides exciting surrounding, with figures carved out of the landscape by tides, wind, and rain , the huge offshore sentinel rock of Tanah Lot supports a small picturesque sea temple which can be reached by a scramble over the wet rocks. These are reputed to be several large caves just below the water line, at the base of the rock , which shelter large sea snakes, who are the guardians Approximately 20 kilometers from Tabanan, the road climbs up high into the hills to a small village named Jatiluwih. With a height of 850 meters above sea level, the view here is one of the finest imaginable. Bali's terraced paddy fields stretch into endless contours over the hills and valleys as far as the eye can see with fresh mountain air it's so pretty you won't want to leave

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Pamela Hayes

The river house Susan Kurosawa | September 12, 2009 Article from: The Australian IF one were to d ....

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Pamela Hayes

The river house Susan Kurosawa | September 12, 2009 Article from: The Australian IF one were to draw a picture of the idealised Balinese holiday villa, sketching in the pitch-roofed pavilions, the wet-edge pool and the almost mandatory frangipani trees, then it would look like Sungai Gold. Sungai Gold is set in a more traditional tropical environment than those along Bali\'s busy beaches. What such an illustration could not convey, however, would be the level of service and style to be found at this diminutive hideaway in the village of Cepaka in southwest Bali, about 40 minutes by road from Denpasar\'s Ngurah Rai airport and 20 minutes from the fashionable beach haunts of Seminyak. And no drawing could impart the sweet scent of stems of tuberose in tall vases and scattered frangipani petals. There are just the two of us for this sojourn in Bali. Earlier in this holiday, and for a memorable getaway two years ago, we travelled as a house-party pack, renting big villas and all pitching in for meals and rather making fools of ourselves playing games in uniformly delightful pools. Once at the Alu Bali villas in Seminyak, a member of our party turned 50 and to cheer him up we swam in a garden pool filled with rose petals and made water bombs from plastic shopping bags. We thought we were ever so clever, until the following morning\'s headaches. At Sungai Gold, the staff outnumber us and we have roosters for company each dawn, cock-a-doodling for all their worth. The first morning we curse the roosters in fruity language and get up for an early dip in our private pool; by the end of the week, we find the reveille comforting and resume sleeping with a smile. Sungai Gold is a one-bedroom retreat adjacent to the original, and much larger, Villa Sungai. Both are airy and open-sided with vaulted alang-alang grass roofs and are set down a gorge in an embrasure of bamboo and palms over a bend in the Penet River. They are reached from the road via fairly steep stone steps. Enter through ceremonial double wooden doors to a retreat of celadon-coloured pool, linked pavilions, statues and myriad cushioned places to sit, lie down, sleep. There is a clutch of other villa rentals perched along the ridges of Cepaka and the location is proving popular with holidaymakers who want a more traditional setting away from Bali\'s busy beaches. Sungai Gold has a cliff-walled bathroom with orchids and feathery ferns sprouting through rocky cracks, an outdoor shower and tub, and luxuries such as Bulgari toiletries and hillocks of bath and pool towels. Every conceivable detail has been considered, from reading spotlights by the netted four-poster bed to a choice of pillows, the softest bedding, high-spec tableware and provision of magazines, DVDs and CDs. There are sarongs and slippers in the wardrobe and petals in the bath; vodka cocktails stirred with lime and palm sugar appear as the sun goes down. The palette is almost French provincial - whitewashed walls, fabrics in creamy white and caramel, and furniture streaked with milky lime paint - and presents a light, summery take on the more classic teak-and-batik villa dressing. There are cool terrazzo floors and a daybed at almost every turn. The Australian owner, Pamela Hayes, has been wise, and very fortunate, with her choice of staff here. In charge is Little Made and he speaks excellent English peppered with the Australian colloquialisms that he has collected from guests. The advantage of staying in what amounts to a serviced holiday house is the daily contact with the Balinese staff. Unlike hotel employees, they have time to stop and chat, to explain the ways of village life and invite guests to festival events, to their nearby homes or for a walk through rice fields. Every day we talk to Putu, Iluh, Trisna and Wayan as well as Little Made but otherwise we stay tucked away in our river house, reading and, at night, watching on our bedroom\'s plasma-screen television the stash of DVDs we have been saving for months. A dog fight breaks out in the village high up the ridge during Gran Torino; we take an intermission midway through The Reader and go for a midnight swim, the pool\'s tiled edge lined with rows of tealights. I feel seasick reading Redmond O\'Hanlon\'s Trawler, a completely unhinged adventure full of swaying and surging in the North Atlantic and nets full of things called snotfish and sea bats. Another afternoon, Miss Marple joins me for a swim when I drop her in the water midway through The Body in the Library while balancing a Bintang beer. Breakfast is included at Villa Sungai and Sungai Gold and each morning we eat in a garden pavilion, with Vegemite provided for toast, eggs every which way and a half-pig pile of bacon. The juice is freshly squeezed and the coffee just right. Other meals are provided at the cost of the ingredients and there\'s plenty of choice; the French and Australian wines are cheaper than the norm in Bali where there is a high import duty. Two chefs are on standby and Hayes estimates that most Sungai guests eat in for 75 per cent of their stay. We dine very well on such fresh, crunchy fare as vegetarian rice-paper rolls with tamarind dipping sauce, lime and chilli prawns with green mango salad, and spicy beef salad with soy and chilli pepper. There\'s the fragrance of ginger, the tang of spice, and we become addicted to kacang polong manis, the local sweet green peas. Some of the dishes are made from recipes used at the simple Bumbu Bali restaurant near the Conrad Bali Resort&Spa at Tanjung Benoa (close to Nusa Dua). Bumbu Bali\'s owner, Swiss-born Heinz von Holzen, is to Balinese cuisine what David Thompson is to Thai: a custodian of traditional recipes and evangelist for the preservation of culinary culture. A sortie there is highly recommended if you can be bothered to change out of a sarong. We are happy as a twosome, but families and parties would do well to book Villa Sungai next door with its three double ensuite bedrooms (and extra convertible daybed and king singles as needed), 17m-long lap pool and huge marble-floored living spaces. We earmark it for a future houseparty and spend hours concocting the perfect guest list, then crossing out everyone\'s name. Later we join friends for a stay at Karma Kandara at Uluwatu on the Bukit Peninsula, a fun resort with a beach club and spa shacks all but hanging off the cliff. They are full of talk about shopping in Kuta and Legian and ask what we have been doing at Sungai Gold. Did we play golf (Le Meridien Nirwana Golf and Spa Resort at Tanah Lot is near Cepaka; somehow they know this) or venture to the hill station of Ubud with its galleries and antiques shops, 30 minutes into the hills? It\'s hard for us to answer adequately. There has been the distraction of sunsets, I explain, with the sky streaked as pink and gold as a length of sari silk. There\'s been an orchestra to entertain us. An orchestra? Yes, the tinkle-tonkle of a gamelan group playing on our favourite CD. And, of course, the symphony of the surrounding forest and the village, from the screech of cicadas, the snuffle of rootling pigs and those demanding dawn calls of roosters to the bass-croak of frogs and the uh-oh of geckoes chirruping in mock surprise. We have bobbed in the pool, arms outstretched along the edge, peering into the dense vegetation on the opposite side of the slender river. Little Made showed us the bunut bolong trees, a kind of banyan, one evening as clouds of rice sparrows whirled about our heads and orange and brown butterflies settled on branches. It is the wet season but the rain is soft and unhurried and we tell our underwhelmed friends how dragonflies skim the river and squirrels scamper from tree to tree seeking shelter under the canopy of leaves. It takes commitment to do nothing, Iconfess. Our friends seem sceptical but cannot argue that we look as if we have just emerged from a very satisfactory convalescence. And indeed we have. Checklist Villa Sungai (four doubles plus king singles, as required) and Sungai Gold (for couples) come with 24-hour service and chauffeured vehicle on call. Priority airport arrival service at a small extra cost (and worth it to speed through the formalities, including visa purchase). Tariff includes cooked breakfasts, airport transfers, laundry and pressing, and unlimited tea, coffee and bottled water. The Sungai vehicles (which seat eight) are included for up to eight hours a day; thereafter, $30 for four hours or part thereof; petrol refills extra. Massages and spa therapies on request in a double treatment room.

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