Bali, Indonesia

Alila Manggis

Price per night from$119.00

Price information

If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (including tax) available in the next 60 days.

Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (USD119.00), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.

Style

Traditional thatched tranquillity

Setting

Soothing seas, soaring peaks

Sumptuous yet unassuming, this ocean-fronted retreat lies in the shade of Mount Agung, held up as sacred by Balians, though you’ll be glad to hear that it does get plenty of sun. Surrounded by opulent coconut groves, Alila Manggis boasts an award-winning cookery school, a beautiful natural spa and some superb snorkelling along the unspoilt East Bali coast.

Smith Extra

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One cocktail each, for up to two guests

Facilities

Photos Alila Manggis facilities

Need to know

Rooms

55, divided into Superiors, Deluxes and Suites.

Check–Out

Noon, although a 3pm check-out can be arranged, subject to availability.

Prices

Double rooms from £113.08 ($144), including tax at 21 per cent.

More details

Rates include a daily à la carte breakfast at Seasalt, shuttle service to Candidasa, afternoon yoga classes (Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays) and morning Tai Chi sessions (Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays).

Also

Mount Agung, Bali’s most sacred mountain, looms over the hotel. Why not unleash your inner pilgrim and join in one of Alila Manggis’ organised treks up to Besakih temple?

Hotel closed

No check-ins or check-outs are allowed on 7 March 2019, when Bali observes Nyepi Day (Day of Silence), although stays are still possible. Bali’s airport also closes for the day.

At the hotel

Spa, cookery classes, organic garden, dive school, free WiFi, valet parking, laundry, leisure concierge, boutique, car rental (subject to international driver's license) and free use of bikes around the resort. In rooms: TV, minibar, safe, premium toiletries, day-beds.

Our favourite rooms

If you want to maximise your privacy, go for the Seaside Corner Suites, numbers 222 and 225, which come with wraparound balconies, littered with chairs and daybeds for relaxing in the balmy Balian air.

Poolside

The unique inverted pyramid-style pool, which ensures shallow edges and a deep centre, is set beneath coconut palms in the landscaped gardens, and offers wonderful views out over the ocean beyond – best enjoyed over the daily poolside afternoon tea. Mini-massages are offered around the pool on Mondays and Thursdays – something you might want to plan into your sunbathing schedule, and every Monday you can try an introductory dive lesson if you've always fancied taking the plunge.

Spa

There are two outdoor spa bales nestled into the Pandan Forest facing the sea. Treatments include stress-soothing Balinese massage and reflexology; we're rather enamoured with the cream hair bath, with coconut, cocoa butter and natural clays. Budding yogis can participate in a weekly schedule of yoga and tai chi classes.

Packing tips

Bring some good hand-moisturising cream, you’ll want to soothe your palms after digging around in the organic garden.

Also

Take part in a hands-on class at the cooking school, where East Balinese cuisine is a specialty. There's a free shuttle service to the nearby seaside village of Candidasa.

Children

Though the hotel doesn’t have any children’s facilities, kids are welcome. Extra beds or cots are available for US$35 a night plus tax, including breakfast, and babysitters can be booked a day in advance for around US$5 an hour.

Sustainability efforts

Alila Manggis is an environmentally aware hotel, and is justly proud of its own organic vegetable garden and all-natural spa products.

Food and Drink

Photos Alila Manggis food and drink

Top Table

Confirmed romantics (and those not afraid of a mosquito bite or two) should ask for a table to be set up in the coconut grove.

Dress Code

Informal, but why not accessorise with a hibiscus flower in your sea-salt curled hair?

Hotel restaurant

Chef Santika dishes up gorgeous Modern Asian cuisine – organic Kusamba salt-crusted snapper, ginger flower salad with coconut and nam njihm dressing – in Seasalt, housed in a traditional Balinese pavilion over a lotus pond.

Hotel bar

Alila Manggis doesn’t have a proper bar, but wine and cocktails are available in the lobby. Try the watermelon mojito.

Last orders

11pm.

Room service

Available 24 hours a day.

Location

Photos Alila Manggis location
Address
Alila Manggis
Desa Buitan, Manggis
Bali
80871
Indonesia

Planes

The drive from Ngurah Rai International Airport will take around an hour and a half along the coast.

Trains

The capital, Denpasar, is a 45-minute drive away. The hotel has free parking and a valet service.

Automobiles

Lombok and other nearby islands can take the ferry from Padang Bai Harbour, 10 minutes from the hotel.

Worth getting out of bed for

Local restaurants

For the low-down on eating, drinking, exploration and entertainment around Alila Manggis, check out our detailed destination guide to Bali.

Reviews

Photos Alila Manggis reviews
Ben Keith

Anonymous review

By Ben Keith, Modern Renaissance man

The expression on Mr Smith’s face is somewhat stormy. Horribly spoiled when it comes to this hotel-reviewing game, he finds the dimensions of the room we’ve been shown to more suitcase than suite. OK, I have to agree, it’s a little on the compact side. A jaunty slump on the bed thickens the lines wrinkling his brow, as he exclaims at the Knoop hardness of the mattress (a boon for this other firmness-preferring sleeper). All is forgiven, however, when we venture out to the balcony, take in the palm-fringed beach and pool area, and eye the aircraft-hangar-sized day-bed beckoning invitingly under a mosquito net.

Tummies rumbling after the morning’s travel efforts, we decide to hold off reclining and instead head to Seasalt. Our greatest discovery on this trip is that everything about Bali somehow accelerates one’s ability to relax, and Alila Manggis’s restaurant is no exception. There’s something about feasting on simple, incredibly fresh food under a thatched bale to the aural accompaniment of gently crashing waves that hits the spot. The menu at this particular slice of heaven is a good mix of Balinese fodder with some Western options for the more gustatorily challenged or those just wanting a taste of home. For Mr Smith and me, nasi goreng, grilled local fish and a couple of bottles of chilly Bintang beer equates to bliss.

Relocating poolside, our recliners are covered with crisp, white towels by the pool boy and iced water is supplied to stop the Smiths becoming too parched. After languorous reading of the guest directory – an extensive spa menu, as well as information on snorkelling and diving in the beautiful waters off the coast (an underwater hotspot for the aquatic adventurer), trekking Bali’s astounding volcanoes, visits to the local villages, bicycling, shopping trips and a whole cooking school fandango – we opt for that other staple of the Balinese wind-down: a long afternoon snooze. Is it 4pm already? Time for the complimentary afternoon tea, complete with tiny local delicacies, served to the guests in the garden. Balinese cake, it transpires, is not so much cake as a gelatinous ball/slice/mound/lump/polygon of squishy, syrupy, coconuty stuff. Delicious as it is, Mr Smith is a little challenged by the texture, but after some gentle bullying manages to get over it.

By now the time of day for small children to invade the pool has arrived. The air is filled with delighted, if slightly discordant, peals and squeals, so we retire to our expansive day-bed and its come-hither cushions with the self-righteous air of the childless. Settling down for a late afternoon read, our quiet, empty room now seems cosy and comforting.

The day is complete when we indulge in delicious local curries – and just a few more Bintangs – back at Seasalt, before taking a torch-lit stroll across the grassed lawns and around the sea wall. Alila Manggis is beginning to get under our skin.

As, it seems, is the sun. I wake to a forehead of post-apocalyptic flakiness after what must have been less than adequate and therefore typically English sunscreen application. Get thee to the spa, says Mr Smith, and I don’t demur. Beginning with a nice herbal tea – heal from within, as they say – the therapist then progresses to a calming neck and shoulder massage and my first-ever facial. Never have I been so tenderly cleansed, scrubbed, buffed, toned, masked and moisturised, all for a full 90 minutes. The only downside is Mr Smith, who has uncharacteristically opted for a pedicure on the veranda outside the treatment room, answering his mobile phone and babbling on for 10 minutes about boring work-related issues. Note to self: ensure said Smith is nowhere to be heard at next facial. Despite this short-lived irritant, I emerge with a glowing face happily free from catastrophe. A miracle, exclaims the chastised Mr Smith.

And so it is that our Balinese relaxation therapy hits warp speed. Blissed out, beached up and calmed down, we spend the rest of the day reading by the pool. All the kids have been dragged off on an edifying cultural tour and we have the place to ourselves, save for a lithe German couple who play badminton for hours over a net strung between two palm trees. The only interruption is tea and cakes. Nightfall comes quickly, the understated Deco-ish kampong blocks are romantically lit, and it’s time for our last barbecue and Bintang.

Alila Manggis may best suit Junior Smiths and their parents, and the rooms may just be rooms, but the overall package is hard to fault. Our two days at this wonderful beachside bolthole have felt like two weeks. This, after all, is Bali, where relaxation is a state best accelerated.


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Price per night from $119.00