Indonesia

We send guests inland first. Ubud at dawn is a different village: the market before the tour buses, a walk through the rice terraces at Tegalalang while the mist is still in the valley, coffee on a veranda above the Ayung.

Only then the south coast, and a house on a black-sand beach with eleven rooms and no beach club. The island's great luxury is not a villa with a pool — it is an hour in which nothing is scheduled, and a guide who knows which temple is empty on a Thursday.