Amankila Review: The Three-Tiered Pool and the Aman Invention

Adrian Zecha opened Amankila in 1992 on a hillside above Manggis in East Bali, and the three-tiered infinity pool that descends from the reception terrace toward the Lombok Strait below — each tier visible from the tier above, the pools cascading from the resort’s highest point to the lowest terrace above the coconut grove before the black sand beach — became, in the subsequent three decades, one of the most reproduced images in the history of resort architecture. The pools are still there.

They are still as good as the photographs suggest. The specific quality of swimming in the highest tier and looking east across the Lombok Strait toward the volcanic peak of Rinjani on the horizon — the mountain visible in clear morning air before the heat haze builds — is the experience that justifies the journey to East Bali rather than the more accessible south.

East Bali is not the Bali of the guidebooks. Kuta’s surf, Seminyak’s beach clubs, Ubud’s rice terraces — these are in the south and the centre, where the tourist infrastructure has been accumulating since the 1970s and where the visitor who arrives from any international airport has a forty-five-minute taxi to a resort strip. Amankila is in the Karangasem regency — the traditional east, the district of ancient royal courts and sea temples and the Pura Besakih temple complex on the slopes of Mount Agung, where the Balinese Hindu tradition is most intact and where the landscape’s relationship to the island’s volcanic geology is most visible. The drive from Ngurah Rai Airport to Amankila is two hours along the coast road. The two hours are the price of being somewhere that the tour buses do not also reach by lunchtime.

The Suites

Thirty-four suites across the hillside above the strait, arranged in the coconut-thatch pavilion style that the Aman brand established at this property and its sibling Amandari in Ubud before any other resort designer was working in this architectural language in Indonesia. The suite’s thatched roof and the rattan furniture and the specific smell of the coconut-oil lamp burning in the open-air sitting area are the sensory vocabulary of Bali rather than the vocabulary of the international luxury hotel, and the thirty years that Amankila has spent maintaining this vocabulary — against the pressure to modernise, to air-condition the verandah, to replace the thatched roof with the engineered material that maintenance costs less — is the most specific evidence that the Aman brand understands what it is doing and why.

The private plunge pools available in the villa categories are the correct upgrade for the couple whose holiday will be organised substantially around the pool — the private pool allows the unhurried morning tea above the strait before the heat of the day begins, without the social management that the shared pool requires even at this scale. The honeymoon suites on the highest terrace have the most unobstructed Lombok Strait view; request these specifically at booking.

The Beach Club

The beach below Amankila — reached by a path through the coconut grove from the resort’s lowest terrace — is black volcanic sand, as the beaches of East Bali consistently are. The specific beauty of the black sand against the blue of the strait, and the particular contrast with the white sand beaches of the south and west that the visitor who arrived at Ngurah Rai has been seeing in the photographs, is either startling or expected depending on whether the research was thorough. The black sand is genuinely beautiful. It is different from the white. The Lombok Strait water is clear, warm, and swimmable from the beach; the current at the strait’s centre is not negligible, and the flags at the beach club indicate the day’s swimming conditions. Follow them.

The Cultural Context

The Karangasem regency’s cultural life — the Pura Besakih complex thirty minutes into the Agung slopes, the traditional royal water palace at Tirtagangga forty-five minutes north, the Pura Lempuyang temple at the island’s eastern tip with its Gates of Heaven above the rice terraces — is the reason that the Aman brand chose this specific location for Bali’s first Aman property rather than the more accessible south. The cultural depth of East Bali is most accessible from this base, and the excursion programme that Amankila’s concierge maintains — the temple ceremonies, the kecak performances in the village courtyard at dusk rather than the tourist stage, the early morning market in Klungkung — provides the specific encounters with Balinese Hindu culture that the Ubud ubiquity has made more processed and the East’s distance from the tour bus circuit has kept more genuine.

The Honest Criticism

Amankila is two hours from the airport — which in the context of a one-week Bali visit means four hours of transfer time that the south Bali properties do not require. For the guest whose Bali week includes a mixture of the cultural sites, the surf, and the beach resort, the centrality of the south or the cultural access of the Ubud area may outweigh the specific quality of the East’s landscape. For the couple or honeymooner whose week is specifically about the Aman experience, the three-tiered pool, and the cultural depth of the Karangasem regency — who came to East Bali because East Bali is where they wanted to be — the two-hour drive is the correct trade. Two hours is also beautiful, along the coast road through Candidasa and the rice terraces of the Karangasem hills.

Practical Details

34 suites and villas. Room-only and meal plan rates. Rates from approximately $700-$1,000 per night in low season. Ngurah Rai Airport Denpasar is approximately 2 hours by road. The resort’s private driver service can be arranged at booking for both the transfer and the cultural excursions. The beach club requires the path down the hillside — comfortable footwear for the descent.