A little piece of paradise
I’ve always had a soft spot for family-owned hotels, and AYANA is exactly that kind of place: a resort built and still run by an Indonesian family, which you feel the moment you arrive. It’s there in the carved wooden screens, the batik-inspired textiles, the motifs repeated in the tilework and the temple-like stone details tucked into every corner: not decoration for decoration’s sake, but a reflection of the culture it sits in. Staying at AYANA Villas Bali, the resort’s private-pool enclave on the Jimbaran clifftops, made that clear from the moment we arrived.
The Villa
We stayed in one of the cliffside villas, and the view was uninterrupted: nothing between our terrace and the Indian Ocean but air. What I didn’t expect was the garden. Most pool villas give you four walls and a plunge pool; ours had a proper garden running along the back of the property, dense and well-tended and cool even at midday, which is a rare thing for a villa perched this close to the edge of a cliff. It made the whole space feel less like a hotel room and more like a home that happened to have the best view in Bali. The villas were refreshed in 2025 by SPIN Design, and it shows in the details: a contemporary layer laid gently over the Balinese bones of the place, so nothing feels dated but nothing feels like it’s trying too hard either.
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Dining
We kept our dining simple and deliberate, and each of the four experiences earned its place. Our first dinner was at Kampoeng Bali, over at RIMBA by AYANA Bali (part of the wider AYANA estate, a short shuttle from the villas). It’s a theatre-style outdoor restaurant set among rice-field scenery and ponds, serving a proper Indonesian and Balinese buffet alongside traditional dance performances. The show opened with a Kecak dance and kept building from there, more dancers, more drama, until it was properly intense to watch. I’ll admit I had no idea what story was actually being told; I wish someone had handed us a programme beforehand, because whatever was unfolding clearly meant something.
Breakfast was at DAVA Steak & Seafood, just off the AYANA Villas lobby. By night it turns into a modern Argentine parrilla grill, all wagyu and ceviche and South American wine, but by morning it’s an exclusive, à la carte breakfast venue reserved for AYANA Villas guests, with ocean views doing most of the talking. The kimchi pork belly was the standout, and not something I expected to see on a breakfast menu; it’s since become the one dish I keep bringing up when people ask about the trip.
Rock Bar was, without question, the highlight. We got a table in the middle of the Round Deck, the resort’s cliffside amphitheatre of a bar built into the rock face above the Indian Ocean, and watched the sky do its thing over cocktails. Seating on the Round Deck is prioritized for AYANA Resort villa guests during peak sunset hours, which meant we didn’t have to fight the crowd for the best spot. Even if you’re not a hotel guest, the elevator descent down the cliff and the sunset alone are worth the visit. I understand now why it’s the one experience every AYANA guest, and half of Bali’s visitors, seem to make a pilgrimage for.
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And then there was the floating brunch, one of AYANA Villas’ signature experiences, and worth every bit of its reputation. The meal arrived in a floating basket set directly into our villa’s pool: pastries, fresh fruit, nothing we needed to rush through. It was a little indulgent, a little theatrical, and exactly the kind of send-off we wanted on our last morning.
Verdict
AYANA Villas Bali does something a lot of luxury resorts talk about but few actually deliver: it makes you feel the place you’re in, rather than just a polished, placeless version of luxury. Between the cliffside garden, the quiet mornings at DAVA, sunset at Rock Bar and a floating brunch to close things out, it’s a stay built around a handful of memorable moments rather than an overstuffed itinerary. If you have to pick one place to stay in Jimbaran, this is it.
Image credit: Pearl Yan
A journalist by trade, Pearl has over a decade of experience leading food and travel publications in Asia and the Middle East. She held Editor positions at Tatler Hong Kong and the MICHELIN Guide Hong Kong Macau, and led the editorial team of Lifestyle Asia Bangkok as the Managing Editor. She moved to Dubai in 2022 to launch the MICHELIN Guide in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. She was part of the launching team of the Condé Nast Traveller Middle East in 2024 and the emcee for Top Table Gulfood 2024, hosting world-class chefs from around the world. In 2024-2025, she worked at the Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi for as Content Specialist.
