Amandari

100   Recommended
Ayung Suite
October 20, 2014 by EXPERT

 Map | 6 Reviews | 67% Recommended
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Amandari
 Map | 6 Reviews | 67% Recommended

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Ayung Suite

Liked:
Location
Service
Food
Amenities
Room
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Room
Ayung Suite

The Ubud area of Bali has become so intensively touristed that I’m afraid it’s lost whatever magic it must once have had—and that played into our experience of Amandari, which has a certain evocative beauty, but was ultimately a less interesting destination than the less touristed, and much more gorgeous and culturally interesting East Bali, where Amankila is located. In a nutshell, we felt that Amankila had an even better cultural experience than Amandari, with the added benefit of the ocean, more pools, better food, and better service. That said, Amandari is still better than what you’d experience at most hotels and resorts worldwide—and is a beautiful resort.

Room

Ayung Suite, a duplex suite with a pool and a nice view. I’m not crazy about the duplex suite’s layout—the upstairs bedroom feeling a bit too rustic for my taste, so I’d recommend instead the one-level pool suite immediately next to the Ayung Suite, which has an infinity pool rather than the in-ground pool of the Ayung Suite.

As I mentioned before, there’s a lot of night-time noise here from the wildlife. We couldn’t identify a particular animal that was making the sound of a duck honking through a megaphone. We asked room service when they delivered our dinner, who indicated that it was from very tiny frogs in the lily ponds around the walls of the suite. Without our even asking (because who would think to make such a request!), they suggested sending someone to catch all of the frogs and move them to another location. And within a few minutes, all the frog noises had disappeared. Ah, Aman . . . But there’s of course nothing they can do about all the roosters in the surrounding village, though, so expect to sleep fitfully to the twice-a-minute crowing of roosters from 1 am to dawn.

Activities

The pool is as photogenic as it appears in publicity materials, although the service there was a bit slower and less anticipatory than what we experienced at the other Balinese Amans—and that’s in fact true of the resort overall—it was just a bit less anticipatory of one’s needs, a bit less polished, than the other two on Bali. We enjoyed the rafting excursion down the Ayung River quite a bit, managed through a separate company with which Aman contracts, and it ends just below Amandari, which is very convenient. And breakfast from the Bali on the far side of the Ayung Gorge, following a two hour, but mostly easy, hike, was superb. We also had a driver take us to some of the famous Hindu temples. A tip regarding the famous temple of Gunung Kawai Tampaksiring: it’s flooded by tourists, apparently, and to get there one must walk through a gauntlet of touts and hawkers shops. But we went one hour before dusk, at 5 pm, and it was entirely deserted—we were literally the only people there, and if you can time it that way, it’s a very good experience, since one descends past rice terraces to a valley where the temple is situated alongside some ancient funerary monuments.

Dining

We had their Balinese Feast one night. We loved the set-up (a private table set up inside the loggia where the girls practice dance, surrounded by candles, Balinese flags, rose petals, etc.), and 4 girls did a dance for us at the beginning of the feast—their skill is very impressive. We’re not very adventurous eaters, however, so the food itself made for the only really unfortunate meal of the trip.

Overall

The boutique and gallery at Amandari were my favorite of the trip, full of museum quality pieces—and I’m still very conflicted about not having purchased the antique Javanese wooden wedding couple there. Overall, there’s such a nice patina of maturity about the exteriors of Amandari—moss and lichen and verdant plant life sharing space with Hindu sculptures and shrines—it’s a very nice place to spend a few days.

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