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.
Paying too much money to share the lineup with hordes of japanese who don’t bother acknowledging your presence by even a simple gaze and drop in on you on every wave, protected by the local guides they pay to shut down any protest, mmmmmh not sure I’ll go for that one
Isn’t Luke Egan a partner?
depactus floppy brim hat on arrival for any booking over 3 nights
I hope all these fucks getting rich off of the Balinese are putting a portion of their profits back into the community (schools, health, etc).
All bali needs is a rubbish/waste managment policy that isnt corrupt, it will soon be buried in its own shit,
Fuckin pity. Scored Keramas all time n 04 when they called it “Golden Monkey”, or something like that. Then 08 all summer. Best backhand barrels of my life. When they had the search event at Ulus I scored 6-8 foot, flawless, turquoise pits with Taylor Knox and 2 other guys. But , for the most part the joint it had already been blown out in the four years since I’d first gone. I don’t really feel attracted to visit much these days, based on what I’ve heard. I just pray that that legend Agus got taken care of. He had a rad lil warung and he was always smiling. Greedy grubbeing exploiting bastards. Oh yeah, same with the hipsters (face-palm)
Which magazine published those helicopter shots?
TWS
I wonder whether the editor and photo editor and publisher and photographer and advertisers had any disagreements over which shots to use in the article. I guess whoever paid for the helicopter would have had a big say. A helicopter, crazy! You’d have to blow up all the drone operators in the neighbourhood to establish a free-fly zone before sending one up these days. Come to think of it blowing up drone operators would probably be a lot of fun.
wasnt it an andy and bruce shoot?
Yessir…even though they hired a bunch of brutes to shut down the beach for the exclusive shoot, it was still fuckin’ bad ass though!
america may have ruined the planet. but australians definitely ruined bali.
Historically, I’d like to point out that the Australian conquest of Bali was the only ever recorded invasion of a foreign land that no local girls were fucked in. Christian Fletcher is an outstanding anomaly.
Bali is blown-out like a pornstar with 10 kids born feet-first ! The only thing virgin there is the jailed for drugs aussie’s butthole, and that’s about to be popped just like this luxury villas clientele’s wallet!! Just less painful for the rich shithead who can pay some Balinese local to block waves for him , and then massage his testes with his “bottom turn” afterwards. Worth every penny!