Arriving in the early evening after our drive from Sanur, we arrived in Paradise! All 6 villa staff were there to greet us, with frangipani garlands. The setting is glorious, as the villa itself is set a little way back from the beach, so is surrounded by padi fields. It is unique among the villas on this stretch of beach, and is very special and secluded. The gardens are literally bursting with verdant plants and flowers – the lily ponds leading down the path to the beach are gorgeous. The photos on the website, although stunning, don’t do the villa justice. The villa itself is beautifully designed, unusual in its style (with the lovely thatched roof and open plan living area upstairs to provide beautiful vistas), is spacious, modernly furnished, and very well maintained. The staff are wonderful – I know all reviews say that about Balinese staff at most villas, but here it was true (and we stayed at another where this wasn’t the case!). House “manager”, Ketut was a delight as was her assistant, Ita. Ketut’s cooking was outstanding; so much so that we didn’t eat out once in our 5 nights/6days there. Ketut asked us what we liked, we told her, and she bought the ingredients, cooked and served them to us each evening, and charged us just what she’d spent (something she recorded in meticulous detail in her notebook for us). She coped perfectly with the nut allergy of one of our party. Of particular note is the 18 metre long “lap” style swimming pool directly in front of the villa, which allows “proper” exercise swimming (one of our party did 120 lengths one day!). All in all Villa Shanti and the food we were served were incredibly good value, the more so by comparison with other places we stayed in Bali. Put simply, we can’t recommend the villa highly enough – it’s a delight and staying here was the highlight of our 12 night holiday. Ps. Ketut organised dolphin watching for us with Made, and our party (ranging in age from 18 to 57) thought this was “brilliant”.