It's the supreme experience!
The wheels of progress move fast in Bali. The Australian Financial Review revealed today that Kommune, the resort at Keramas on Bali’s east coast made infamous with its shoey-sculling Mad Huey’s WQS event, was adding twenty-two fabulous new villas.
How fabulous? Let’s read.
Essentially Komune was pitched at hard-core surfers. This was most obvious when it came to the original 56 rooms. They’re pleasant enough, but tucked away from the beach and the pool – designed for people anxious to spend every hour they can in the surf.
However, this summer Komune has been transformed with the unveiling of 22 luxurious ocean-view suites perched discretely on a steep artificial hill and each with a breathtaking panorama through a fringe of coconut trees across the Lombok strait.
Desperate to check the morning surf as the sunrise streams through your huge, eastward-facing window? No need to even get out of the king-size bed: you can see both beach and reef without rising from the pillow.
Want a little quiet time away from the other guests? Each suite has a large sundeck with its own section of refreshing splash pool – perfect for reading a book or sipping a sundowner.
These handsome, spacious suites add immeasurably to Komune’s wider appeal. But the new “Health Hub”, a secluded adults-only enclave hidden behind a lush curtain of tropical plants, is an equally important part of the resort’s reinvention.
Shall we examine the speed of change?
Eleven years ago the photographer Dustin Humphrey had to draw a map for me and my pal Sam to find the east coast righthander we’d heard about.
Humphrey, then a star photographer and not Bali’s Imperial King of Motorcycles, which he is now, drew a pencil diagram of the rice paddies we had to find and the exact rock track we had to turn down to get to the beach. We left at five am one cool morning and it took us almost six hours to find the wave that had suddenly started appearing in editorials and advertising shoots.
There were a few other surfers kicking around, a little warung on the beach, and black sand that absorbed so much heat even the fifty metres from water to warung was too much to bear. When the dry-season trades kicked in around midday, the few surfers left. We didn’t mind the light onshore and cooked ourselves for five hours surfing the joint by ourselves.
And then!
That anonymity ended in 2007 when a surfing magazine published helicopter shots of this “secret”, world-class surf break. Australian developer and keen surfer Tony Cannon read the article, flew to Bali, saw Keramas for himself, and dared to dream.
From the beginning, Cannon and de Leede realised Komune needed other facilities to keep non-surfers content while their partners were in the ocean. Apart from the elegant Beach Club restaurant and horizon pool, they arranged some yoga classes, massage facilities and horse-riding on the beach.
Want to try an eight-foot oop? This is the place.
