Bali, Indonesia

Bisma Eight

Price per night from$181.24

Price information

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

Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (IDR2,957,280.00), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.

Bisma Eight Photos

Style

Industrial design, organic materials

Setting

Ubud jungle view

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Built from a mix of raw concrete and organic materials, Balinese Bisma Eight is an industrial-style retreat with an organic garden and modern restaurant helmed by chef Yuni Artha. Tropical, teak-accented suites smell of frangipani and incense, and serene standalone villas give guests a private pool and sun-kissed indoor-outdoor living spaces; guests can partake in cultural activities (Balinese cookery, jammu making, building floral sacred offerings) for free; and close by are the cheeky macaques of Ubud Monkey Forest. We’re plunging into the sultry jungle-view swimming pool first.

Smith Extra

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One special cocktail for each guest

Facilities

Photos Bisma Eight facilities

Need to know

Rooms

50, including 38 suites and 12 villas.

Check–Out

Noon, but flexible, subject to availability. Earliest check-in, 2pm. Guests can extend their through the day of check-out for an additional charge of 50 per cent of the standard room rate. Luggage storage is available too.

More details

Rates include à la carte breakfast, fresh fruit on arrival, free daily morning yoga class, and a variety of free daily activities.

Also

Unfortunately, the hotel’s layout makes it trickier for guests with mobility issues to move around.

At the hotel

Spa, gym, organic garden. In rooms: TV, DVD player, WiFi, air-conditioning, minibar, free bottled water, tea- and coffee-making kit and Republic of Soap bath products.

Our favourite rooms

We love that all rooms come with a Japanese soaking tub made from Canadian cedar wood and natural Balinese soaps. If you fancy stepping from bed directly out onto your private jungle-view balcony, go for a spacious Forest Suite: you’ll wake to the sun glimmering through your curtains and squirrels chasing each other among the trees. Forest Suites are also spacious, with a separate living area.

Poolside

Enjoy dips in the heated outdoor infinity pool from 7am to 9pm; we recommend swimming to the far corner for the best jungle views. The pool is flanked by a wooden deck with a dozen sunloungers and is steps from the Pavilion bar, which serves all-day dining and drinks.

Spa

Mandala Spa’s treatments are informed by centuries of Ayurvedic practice, so there’s a massage style to sort out any ills you might be feeling in restful wood-lined rooms. And, the scrub bar lets you build your own, starting with a rice base and adding natural exfoliants. Treatments can take place in your room too, and free sound-healing sessions are held every Wednesday (4.30pm to 5.30pm) at the Villas Rooftop Hall. For those who want to get their heart-rate a little up, there’s a gym and yoga sessions are held every day (8am to 9am, or 9.30am to 10.30am if you’re staying in a villa.

Packing tips

Pack classically beautiful swimsuits for the aesthetically pleasing pool and outdoor-worthy shoes for guided treks through the Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary.

Also

There’s a shrine to Ganesh in the lobby; at check-in, front desk staff will offer you a garland of flowers to lay at the altar. And if you spy a macaque onsite don’t feed it, just call staff who’ll return it to their habitat.

Children

Little Smiths are welcome, but not catered to; the grounds are not pram-friendly and the pool was designed with grown-ups in mind. Baby cots, highchairs and extra beds for children can be provided, and babysitting can be arranged with three hours' notice.

Sustainability efforts

Most of the ingredients used in the Copper Kitchen & Bar and Embers Restaurant come from the hotel’s organic garden.

Food and Drink

Photos Bisma Eight food and drink

Top Table

For a gentle breeze and a view with your meals, go for a table on the light and airy ‘bridge’ or the trellised rooftop.

Dress Code

For dinner, it’s relaxed rolled-up shirt sleeves for Mr Smith and a jewel-toned flowing dress for Mrs Smith. On trend cover-ups and sandals will suffice for earlier meals.

Hotel restaurant

From the lobby, a staircase leads up to Copper Kitchen & Bar, helmed by chef Yuni Artha. The menu is full of traditional and international dishes made from locally-sourced ingredients, including the hotel’s organic garden. For lunch, start with the Thai pomelo salad, with chilli, peanuts, watermelon and grilled prawns; or the seared tuna and sambal pizza. At dinner, go for the shrimp with sun-dried pineapple and coconut dressing, seared barramundi with lemon foam or Balinese-spiced duck leg, and end with the mango-mousse-topped meringue with lychee granita, dragonfruit, sugar bark and basil. Open-air Embers – where you can watch the organic garden’s seedlings grow – has a Mediterranean menu with the likes of braised chicken, bacon, artichoke and sumac yoghurt; butternut-squash risotto with sage and nutmeg, and panna cotta with orange blossom, crushed pistachio, mint and honey. You can take your breakfast anywhere you’d like; choose from waffles with yuzu parfait, ricotta dumplings, poached eggs, fresh pastries and more, with freshly squeezed juices, herbal teas and coffee to wash it down. 

Hotel bar

The Copper Kitchen’s bar cranks out some serious cocktails. Try the rose-infused vodka Pinky Malinky; tamarillo-based Tamariloco; rum, cherry and beet juice Le Purpinkle; or the refreshingly citrusy Lemongrass 75. There are cocktail-, mocktail- and jammu- (a traditional turmeric and ginger drink) making classes here too. And those creative fire keep burning at Embers where drinks are packed with flavour; say the Rosita with apple raki, dry vermouth, honey-and-lime cordial, and rose-and-wine tincture; or the Bara Bara: pineapple liqueur and agave cordial and hazelnut, garnished with pineapple charcoal. You can also order ice-cold drinks and after-swim cocktails and nibbles throughout the day at the Pool Pavilion, and the Library Café, where you can enjoy a cup of coffee (or cocktail) with a book from the hotel’s collection, is at the far end of the lobby. The cafe brews Kintamani-grown Arabica coffee from local Tetap Happy Coffee Roasters.

Last orders

Extend leisurely evening meals to 11pm in Copper Kitchen & Bar or Embers, and sip cocktails at the Pool Pavilion or in the Library Café until 7pm. The Pool Pavilion opens at 11am, Copper Kitchen & Bar at 7am and Library Café at 9am.

Room service

Order starters, satay platters, pizzas, steaks and desserts to your room, which also has a minibar stocked with crisps, chocolate, beer and soft drinks.

Location

Photos Bisma Eight location
Address
Bisma Eight
68 Jalan Bisma Kec. Gianyar
Ubud
80571
Indonesia

Bisma Eight is on the west side of Ubud, just down the road from the Sacred Monkey Forest and 700 metres from the front of Bisma Street.

Planes

Ngurah Rai International Airport, also known as Denpasar International Airport, is 80 minutes away by car; the hotel can arrange private transfers for a maximum of four people per car for IDR550,000 each way.

Automobiles

From Ubud, it’s a drive of six minutes to the hotel; hail a cab or park your own vehicle for free at the hotel. You’ll need a tourist driving licence to be street legal, but given the road conditions and somewhat casual attitude to the rules of the road, you might have a more enjoyable holiday if you leave the driving to the professionals.

Worth getting out of bed for

If you like to stay active on holiday, Bisma Eight may be your boutique-hotel soulmate. Daily yoga classes are held from 8am to 9am (or 9.30am to 10.30am at the Villas Rooftop Hall); or master the art of mocktail shaking on Tuesdays and Fridays at Copper Bar (3pm to 4pm) or Sundays at Embers (3pm to 4pm and 4pm to 5pm). Cocktail-making sessions are available for an extra charge). Learn some Balinese culinary magic at a cookery class, every Thursday from 11.30am to 12.30pm at Copper Rooftop Bar and 1pm to 2pm at Embers Rooftop Hall (vegetarian classes are held at the same times on a Monday). Or express yourself through the method of Balinese dance at Copper’s free class every Tuesday (1pm to 2pm); heal through sound on Wednesdays (30pm to 5.30pm) at the Villas Rooftop Hall; and learn how to make a beautiful Canangsari (floral sacred offering) on Fridays, from 11am to noon at the Copper Rooftop Bar. 

Bisma Eight is well positioned for Ubud adventures, too: the Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary is only one kilometre away. Ubud is full of boutiques if you fancy a spot of shopping: check out Kevala for covetable ceramics, Kou Cuisine for spices and homemade jams, Ikat Batik for gloriously patterned and coloured textiles, or the Threads of Life gallery which works directly with more than 1,000 female Balinese weavers, and Ubud Art Market for something to display on your mantel. Venture further afield to the mesmerising Tegalalang Ceking Rice Terraces in Jalan Raya Tegalalang; daredevils can go white-water rafting nearby, too.

Local restaurants

For fine dining Indonesian style, head to Blanco Par Mandif and order a seven-, nine- or 13-course tasting menu with paired drink. Vegetarians and meat-eaters alike will find plenty of choice at bijou eatery Locavore; the five-course sharing menu is an excellent way to taste as many local dishes as possible (and they have a casual sister eatery called Locavore To Go). To feel ridiculously healthy (and a little bit smug) check out the tasty offerings at vegan and raw Alchemy Restaurant; or try modern Indonesian dining at Liap Liap, where traditional exotic grilling and smoking techniques are employed for dishes such as tuna satay skewers with raw sambal, chicken taliwang (soaked in lime and coconut oil) with pickled green papaya, or lamb chops in a peanut sauce. And in the stylish jungle-green dining room of Hujan Locale, the grazing menu has small plates of grouper and garlic-chive dumplings with smoked dashi and ginger-shallot broth, rabbit and pork dumplings with charred kimchi and sweet soy sauce, and beef curry. And, Room 4 Dessert is one of those lasting dining experiences, set in the leafiest of patches atop a hill, where you’ll dine amid vast nursery and apothecary gardens, where there’s a whole lab for cooking up menu ideas. These change seasonally, but might include tiger prawns with chayote and coconut emulsion, or wagyu tartare with banana heart and aioli flavoured like a traditional rawon stew. And, well, do save room for dessert: panna cotta with snakefruit and sorghum; smoked-butter brioche with green-grass jelly and mascarpone flavoured with the bilimbi fruit; or pineapple with sourdough nougatine.

Local cafés

For brunch, order eggs many ways, freshly-baked breads, fruit-filled smoothies and lychee iced tea at Folk Pool and Gardens, where you can take a gentle swim too; it’s a little over a kilometre away from Bisma Eight on Jalan Monkey Forest Road. Café Lotus is the place for local dishes with a side of traditional Balinese dancing. Indonesian roastery Seniman Coffee has a wide selection of single-origin coffees from across the country, Central America and Africa. The knowledgeable baristas can brew your coffee pretty much any way, and you can watch the roasting workshop or even make your own blend. If you’re in need of sustenance, too, you can’t go wrong with a decadent moka-nut waffle. Rüsters has done much to percolate Ubud’s coffee culture, but it doubles, triples and quadruples up as a cocktail bar, pottery and furniture studio and concept store.

Local bars

On Friday afternoons, wine bar Divine hosts regionally themed tastings with canapé pairings and live acoustic music on the terrace. Reservations are recommended for the tasting masterclasses, held in the wine cellar at 5.30pm. And No Más Bar has a lively – if eclectic – soundtrack of rock, salsa and hip-hop, and a friendly crew who ‘take no responsibility for bad decision-making’, which means most punters probably do want – and have – más. For a late night in an intimate lounge, head to enigmatic Boliche, which was Ubud’s first bar back in the 1970s, and still hosts a great night today.

Reviews

Photos Bisma Eight reviews
Jess Henderson

Anonymous review

By Jess Henderson, Bali-loving blogger

The infinity pool. The rooftop terrace. The jungle views. The lobby shrine. The walking distance to a monkey sanctuary. The book-lined coffee shop. The garden that yields fresh produce for the kitchen. All of these are reasons enough to be drawn to Bisma Eight.

But they had me at ‘poolside peach smoothie’.

Tucked away down what feels like a residential road in Ubud, the entrance to this Balinese boutique hotel might confuse you. Its open-entry lobby could almost be mistaken for a modernist loading dock. But that quickly changes as you step inside.

Mr Smith and I are given a small offering to place in the shrine just past reception. Stepping into the raw industrial lobby it’s hard to miss the gently glowing chandelier that hangs above the entrance. The rest of the hotel stylishly follows suit, effortlessly blending modern industrial design with warm organic elements. Our bags are whisked away up a staircase and we weave our way down a tree-lined path to our room.

With each window is brushed up against the trees just outside, our room feels like it is suspended by branches (it turns out ‘canopy room’ means just that). It’s sleek and stylish, full of muted colors, wood and concrete.

The hotel generally is minimalist in the best kind of way; nothing more than you need but just enough attention to detail to make it special. 

A welcome basket of fruit (full disclosure: we had to Google many of its components), a living room to take a rest in during the hot afternoons, an extremely plush bed and a very tempting-looking goemon soaking tub in the bathroom entice us to stay inside... But we hear of rooftop terraces so cocktails beckon.

I wish it were a Saturday afternoon because, it turns out, you can take a turn behind the bar yourself in a mixology masterclass. Instead, we settle for a seat on the patio outside and sip our drinks as evening descends and white tea lights start to sparkle.

We get dolled up and head out to try the Copper Kitchen. While perched at a table on the restaurant’s breezy ‘bridge’ we meet executive chef (and Balinese local) Yuni Artha, an inventive mixer of flavours in the kitchen. His menu of modern Indonesian dishes is perfect for lingering over as darkness falls.

Bisma Eight sits perched over a vast jungle: a fact not fully grasped until the following day when walking to the very back of the property and discovering its hidden gem: the pool. It’s an almost-too-sultry infinity number looking out over the lush Ubud greenery. A small bar and restaurant, along with loungers for 12 couples, sits at the edge of the water. Our paths cross regularly with guests – we learn to nod at them with glances that say ‘We know: we're rather lucky to be here…’ This is where we want to spend all of our time, it’s agreed, with only our towels, our books and our peach smoothies for company. Later, we order cocktails from the pool pavilion and swim out to the edge for the very best views.

Bisma’s aquatic allure didn’t end at the pool, though. Mr Smith and I meander back to our suite, throw open the windows for that refreshing breeze, order some more of those peach smoothies and let our oversized soaking tub fill…

Add ‘its baths’ to the ever-increasing list of reasons to stay here.

 

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