Villa Hopping in Bali with Friends from Home

After 9 months of travelling on our Asian adventure, it’s no surprise that we’re starting to miss home. It’s our family and friends that we miss the most, so we were so excited to hear that four of our good friends from home had decided to spend their next vacation in Bali! In all our travels around the world, for the past 10 or more years, this would be the first time we’d have visitors from home.

To make this occasion extra special, we decided to rent a couple of luxury villas on the south coast of Bali. Bali is well known for its incredible amount of beautiful villas, many of which are available to rent on a short term vacation basis. The six of us decided on two villas (Villa Origami & Beautiful Bali Villas) in the area of Seminyak and Legian. Both are popular beach areas full of great eating/drinking options and beautiful sunsets.

Villa Origami

For the first two days of our Bali reunion, we stayed at the lovely Villa Origami. The villa is managed by Nagisa Bali and on arrival, we were welcomed by a friendly member of their team with a much needed cold drink and face towel to wipe the disgusting amount of sweat from our faces. Our villa host went through the facilities and services of the house before giving us a tour of the beautiful property.

The first thing we noticed was how quiet it was. If you haven’t been to Seminyak, let us tell you that it’s turned into a busy place with a high amount of traffic on the roads. But inside the grounds of Villa Origami, it was totally silent. This is due to its off-main-road location and design.

The awesome pool and garden are surrounded by the two villa buildings and outdoor lounge area. The main house ground level includes a large kitchen, dining area and sitting room, with the impressive master bedroom above which overlooks the pool from its balcony. On the other side of the pool are the two remaining bedrooms. The bedroom doors open right out to the pool so you could almost dive from the bed into the water!

Our favourite part of Villa Origami is the outdoor sitting room. Housed in a tall wooden structure with no walls, the area was left open to the balmy Indonesian air. It was a great space for chilling, drinking and catching up with the gang.

The Service at Villa Origami

This was our first time we had hired a villa with included in-house staff. There was always someone around to clean up after us, to cook us breakfast ($5) or any other meal, do our grocery shopping…….whatever we needed. Not being used to having our own in-house staff, they had a pretty easy couple of days because instructing them to do all the things we’re used to doing ourselves felt a bit uncomfortable. But when we needed something, they were always very attentive and happy.

We did have breakfast cooked for us one morning and it was a treat to not have to do the washing up 🙂

We really enjoyed our stay at Villa Origami. The huge amount of space at the villa meant we could spend a lot of time in the property without the need to constantly go out for entertainment. And being just around the corner from a street full of restaurants and bars, the location was perfect if we fancied it.

Beautiful Bali Villas

To mix things up, we moved on to Beautiful Bali Villas which is located a little further south in the Legian area. Because of availability, we had to split the group into two villas. Beautiful Bali Villas consists of a number of villas inside a large compound. Each villa felt very private with high external walls and included a small pool and garden. Even though the villas are close together, we heard no noise from anyone.

The villas are furnished with retro Scandinavian furniture and we loved the huge sliding doors which opened up to the poolside. The villas are much smaller than Villa Origami but with those sliding doors wide open, there was enough space for the 6 of us to chill out together at one villa. However, there isn’t much garden space around the pool so if sunbathing is your thing, you’ll struggle to find the room to do so.

The bedrooms and bathrooms were huge considering the overall size of the property, and if you’re lucky enough to stay in the ground level bedroom, you can take a bath overlooking the pool through additional huge sliding doors. This is a great design touch for Beautiful Bali Villas.

The Service at Beautiful Bali Villas

There is no in-house staff at Beautiful Bali Villa like there was at Villa Origami. This did not bother us at all as there were of course still people to call upon for cleaning etc. The reception staff were exceptionally friendly and always helpful while constantly smiling.

Overall, we enjoyed our stay at Beautiful Bali Villas but felt that Villa Origami was at a higher level of standard. Not taking the in-house staff into account, Villa Origami is still built to a greater standard, better maintained, in a more desirable area and a much larger property. But this is to be expected with the prices at Villa Origami at around 1/3 higher than the equivalent 3 bedroom property at Beautiful Bali Villas.

Both properties were perfect for our needs of catching up with friends after not seeing them for over 9 months. We enjoyed beers in the pool, listening to music through the provided sound systems and even watched movies on the widescreen TVs. For a brief few days, it almost felt like we were back home again.

This post contains sponsored links from Nagisa Bali.