Villa Gembira

Nice and quiet, garden beautiful, pool great, staff lovely.

Wow. Villa Gambira is a fabulous place. And excellent value. The walled gardens are expansive and delightful. We wandered around trying to identify plants and admiring the landscaping skills. The Villa is well designed with spacious garden areas and large rooms. The two master en-suite bedrooms are either side of the central living area – consisting of lounge, dining and kitchen – overlooking the koi pond. We started naming each koi! There were just the two of us. So we occupied only one of the two bedroom suites. But, both were complete in themselves: each having a king size bed, walk-in wardrobe and en-suite. A wonderful touch was the 3 water coolers. It saved us lugging large water bottles from the local supermarket and was a more sustainable solution. The staff were delightful and such fun and maintained the Villa daily. There was a linen change every 3 days. American breakfast was included in our daily fee. Given neither of us is American – and we like to embrace the local food – we asked for mie goreng and special nasi goreng respectively instead. No problem. And no extra charge. In fact, John can eat Nasi Goreng for breakfast, lunch or dinner. Not joking! We had lots of fun in the pool which has a lanai. It is a good size. We have few niggles. So minor it would not deter us from going to the Villa again. Indeed. We intend to do so: It would be preferable to have a door bell to the villa. This would help with privacy a bit to forewarn guests when the cleaners and gardeners want to do things. OK, strangely, John and I are cooks. So sometimes, we preferred to cook ourselves steak, seafood and/ or prepare a salad for dinner. While the kitchen was well equipped with full size fridge, gas cooktop, microwave and utensils, there were no spotlights over the kitchen sink nor stove top, making it difficult to see. I am not very good with stairs. So, John had to help me in and out of the open air bath tub which had two stairs up and down into the covered tub with shower. Also, although there were shallow stairs into the pool, the pool itself was a uniform 5 feet deep. We would have preferred it to be at least graded in depth. I think that would be better for kids and games in the pool. Although there was not an abundance of restaurants along the nearest main street – Julan Batu Belig only a 2 minute walk away up our Gang – there were sufficient. Warung Sabot being our favourite. Watercress is more of a hip burger place that does breakfast until 4pm – no lunch menu – and dinner. Strawberry Fields, about a 10 minute walk east made great breakfasts and brill smoothies. There were many local convenience stores in easy walk. But if you wish a more extensive range, Supermarket popular ( a Pepito brand) was only a 7,000 rupiah (flag fall) taxi drive away. We’d always tip to 20,000 rupiah anyway. There were plenty of taxis plying up and down Jalan Batu Belig. The Villa is about a 30-40 minutes’ drive to Ngurah Rai airport. About 90,000 rupiah by taxi. There is an authorised money changer just across our gang from Julan Batu Belig. We advise not to use the unauthorised ones. They offer a slightly better exchange rate but are usually dodgy. If you are not familiar with Bali, we also advise catching the Bluebird range of taxis. They must turn on their meter. There are independent taxis ( often painted blue and with similar logo on the roof) who want to argy bargy with you. If you want to do that, then by all means!