Hotel Review
Visesa Ubud Review
Ubud, Bali · Indonesia ★★★★★
Our Visesa Ubud review: three nights among working rice fields north of the town, with a Jungle Suite over the river valley, an organic farm, a Balinese cooking class and dinner at Lumbung.
In this review 13 sections
Most of Ubud’s best-known resorts look down on the jungle from a ridge. Visesa Ubud sits in the middle of the rice instead. Its 5.2 hectares in Bentuyung Sakti, three kilometres north of the town centre, are still farmed: flooded paddies, subak water channels, ducks working the mud, and an organic farm the kitchen actually cooks from. The resort is laid out like a Balinese village around all of that, with its own temple and a kulkul drum tower, and the rice fields are what you see from most of the paths.
We stayed three nights in a Jungle Suite. What follows covers the suite, the grounds and the rice fields, breakfast at Lesung, the Visesa Spa, a morning on the organic farm that ended in a Balinese cooking class, dinner at Lumbung, the pool, the temple and a look at the pool villas. Every photograph here is our own, taken during the stay, and the full video tour sits at the top of this page.
Arrival and the Grounds
The drive up from Ngurah Rai is around 39 kilometres, and in Bali traffic that means well over an hour. The resort is on Jalan Suweta, a quiet road running north out of Ubud, and the last part of the approach is a bridge lined with pots of bougainvillea, which crosses the river valley before the lobby comes into view.
The grounds are the reason to come. Paths wind between rice terraces, lily and lotus ponds and open-sided bale pavilions standing in the fields. The suite buildings sit along the edge of the valley and the pool villas behind their own walls, so neither crowds the paddies. Early morning is the time to walk it: the light is low, the ducks are already out in the flooded fields, and there is hardly anyone else on the paths.
None of this is decoration. The paddies are fed by subak, the communal irrigation system that has run Bali’s rice terraces for about a thousand years and that UNESCO inscribed as a World Heritage cultural landscape in 2012. A channel runs right beside the path, and the resort runs a 90-minute guided walk through the growing stages of the rice for guests who want the detail.
The Lobby and Check-in
Buggies meet you under a stone porte-cochère and hand you over to the lobby, a tall pavilion under a timber roof, open to the air on every side. It is furnished like a Balinese great hall: teak daybeds, carved screens, parasols, a gamelan and, at the centre, a Barong, the lion-like protector figure from Balinese dance. Check-in is done seated, with a welcome drink.
The resort is big enough that you will use the buggies. The ride from the lobby to the suites takes you past the rice fields and the pool.
The Jungle Suite
Visesa has 106 keys: 40 suites and 66 one- and two-bedroom pool villas. The Jungle Suite with Private Balcony is the entry point, 53 square metres in a low building on the valley side of the resort. You reach it along a stone colonnade planted down one side, through a carved timber doorway.
The carved timber doorway into the suite building · The colonnaded walkway to the suites
Inside, the suite is one long room. The bed is at the balcony end, the bathroom at the other, and a freestanding bathtub stands out in the middle of the floor with nothing to screen it off. It is a romantic layout rather than a practical one: lovely for a couple, less so for two friends sharing. The bed is a four-poster with a white canopy, and the rest of the furniture is dark timber against pale walls.
The balcony is the best part of the room. It opens straight off the bedroom, with a cushioned daybed and a low table, and looks out over the forested river valley and nothing else: no other buildings, no road, only palms and canopy. Plan your afternoons around it.
The balcony, straight off the bedroom · The balcony daybed
The bathroom end holds the wardrobe, twin vessel basins on a timber vanity and a rain shower behind frosted glass. Tea, coffee and bottled water are laid out on a tray. The finishes are comfortable and well kept rather than memorable. This is a room for sleeping in and looking out from, and the design is saved for the grounds.
If you want more space, the River Valley Suite is 90 square metres and has its own jacuzzi. The pool villas run from 110 square metres for a one-bedroom up to 252 for the two-bedroom Lagoon Infinity Pool Villa.
Breakfast at Lesung
Lesung is the all-day restaurant, a long timber pavilion open on the garden side, looking over the pool and the rice fields. It serves Balinese and international food, and breakfast runs from 6:30 to 10:30. The buffet covers far more than an Ubud resort of this size needs to: pancakes and French toast under heat lamps, steamed buns and dim sum, an Indian corner with curries and chutneys, a glass case of pastries, cut tropical fruit, cereals and a row of fresh juices, with eggs cooked to order.
Take a table at the edge of the terrace. Ours looked across a lily pond and the lawn to the rice fields. For an occasion, the resort also sets up a floating breakfast in your villa pool, at IDR 350,000++ per person, booked in advance.
The open-sided terrace, looking out over the rice fields · Breakfast on the terrace, with the villas across the lawn
The Swimming Pool
The main pool sits beside Lesung, a free-form lagoon that curves around a planted island and against a wall of river stone, with a timber deck, white parasols and frangipani trees along one side. At night festoon lights come on over the deck. The pool is open from 7:00 to 19:30, and in the morning we had it almost to ourselves. Villa guests have their own pools, which keeps this one quiet.
Festoon lights strung over the deck · The pool from the restaurant end
The Fitness Centre
The gym is a bamboo pavilion at the edge of the paddies, with glass on three sides so the treadmill faces the rice fields. It is small: a couple of cardio machines, a cable station, dumbbells and exercise balls. But it is air-conditioned, well kept and beautiful to train in. There is also a free yoga class on Saturday mornings at 7:00.
Visesa Spa
The spa is built in the same bamboo as the gym, and its reception lounge has glass walls on two sides, open to the gardens and the rice fields. Treatments follow Bali Usada, the traditional Balinese healing system, and use local herbs, spices, coconut and chocolate. The spa is open from 9:00 to 21:00.
Spa reception · Glass on two sides, and the garden beyond
The couples’ treatment room is lined in woven bamboo, with two beds facing garden doors, and one treatment suite has a stone bathtub and carved stone basin for bathing rituals. Afterwards you are brought ginger tea and biscuits in the lounge. When we checked, 90-minute massages, including the Balinese Rejang massage, were listed from around IDR 730,000, and the menu also includes a Rice Farmer Massage, a nice nod to the fields outside.
A carved stone bath and basin in the treatment suite · Ginger tea and biscuits, after the treatment
The Organic Farm
More than two hectares of the property are farmed organically, and this is the part of Visesa that no other resort in Ubud really matches. The farm runs in long beds between the palms: leafy greens, herbs, beans on bamboo trellises, chillies and aubergines. Guests can go out with the gardeners to harvest, which is how our cooking class began. We walked the rows with a gardener in a conical hat, picked what we would be cooking, and washed it at a sink beside the beds.
The Balinese Cooking Class
The class is held in a thatched, open-sided pavilion at the head of the farm lawn. Each cook gets a station with a board, a knife, a stone mortar and a clay stove, and the ingredients arrive portioned on banana leaves: tomatoes, chillies, shallots, turmeric, palm sugar and grated coconut.
Everything starts with base genep, the Balinese spice paste of turmeric, galangal, chilli and shallot, pounded in the stone mortar. It goes into minced chicken for sate lilit, the Balinese satay that is wrapped around a stick instead of skewered, and into pepes, fish or chicken grilled in a banana-leaf parcel. There is sambal matah, raw shallot, chilli and lime finished with oil, and urab, vegetables tossed with spiced coconut. Dessert was dadar gulung: pandan crêpes, rolled around coconut sweetened with palm sugar.
Then you eat it, back at the table: rice, sate lilit, pepes, urab and sambal on one plate. Of everything we did at Visesa, this is the experience we would book again. It connects the farm, the kitchen and the fields you have been looking at all week.
Dinner at Lumbung
Lumbung is the resort’s Indonesian restaurant, open from 15:00 to 23:00. You enter through a tall shingle-roofed gate shaped like a lumbung, the traditional Balinese rice barn the restaurant is named after. The restaurant sits beneath the resort’s bridge, looking out onto the jungle and a waterfall that is lit after dark. Inside, it is dark timber and slatted screens under a geometric ceiling, with a backlit bar at the far end. It is the most polished room at the resort.
Tables set for dinner · The waterfall below the restaurant, lit at night
The menu draws on recipes from across the archipelago, not only Bali. We had grilled beef ribs with sambal and rice, a mie goreng, and sate with lontong rice cakes, then dessert and pisang bakar, grilled banana with grated cheese and chocolate, a favourite Indonesian street dessert.
The Temple and the Pool Villas
The resort has its own temple, entered through a candi bentar, the split gate found at the entrance to every Balinese temple, with carved guardians flanking the steps. Offerings are made there every day. The grounds also have a kulkul tower, the raised pavilion that in a Balinese village holds the wooden slit drum used to call people together.
The pool villas sit in their own quarter, along quiet lanes between high walls. We did not stay in one, so we can only say that the lanes are the most private part of the resort, and that the villas’ 110 to 252 square metres, each with its own pool, are the obvious choice for a honeymoon or a family.
Location and Getting There
Visesa is on Jalan Suweta in Bentuyung Sakti, three kilometres north of central Ubud. Ubud Palace is about seven minutes by car. That is close enough for dinner in town but too far to walk comfortably on Bali’s roads, and the resort runs a shuttle into the centre. Ngurah Rai International Airport is around 39 kilometres away. Being out of the centre is the price of the rice fields, and we would pay it again.
The Verdict
Visesa Ubud’s rice fields are real, farmed and all around you, and the resort builds its whole stay around them: the walks, the farm, the cooking class, the temple and breakfast looking over the paddies. Few hotels in Ubud give you the working countryside rather than a view of it, and the organic farm and cooking class are the best things we did here.
The Jungle Suite itself is comfortable and good value. Its balcony over the river valley is the highlight, and the bathtub in the middle of the room will suit couples more than friends. Lumbung is a very good Indonesian restaurant, and the spa and gym make the most of their bamboo pavilions. If you want your Ubud stay to feel like the Balinese countryside rather than a hilltop view of it, this is the place.
The basics, done right
- A 53 sqm suite with a private balcony over the river valley
- A four-poster bed, freestanding bathtub and rain shower
- A breakfast buffet at Lesung far broader than the resort’s size suggests
- Buggies on call across 5.2 hectares
- A shuttle into central Ubud, three kilometres away
The luxuries worth noting
- Working rice fields and subak channels right through the grounds
- More than two hectares of organic farm you can harvest from
- A Balinese cooking class that starts in the farm beds
- Lumbung’s Indonesian menu, with a waterfall lit after dark
- A bamboo spa and gym looking out over the paddies
- The resort’s own temple and kulkul tower
The Verdict
Recommended
Good value for a five-star resort, and best for travellers who want to stay among Ubud’s working rice fields, with the farm, cooking class and temple on the grounds. The free shuttle into the centre, about seven minutes away by car, also makes it an easy base for Ubud Palace, the market and the rest of the town’s sights.