We had spent the days in Uluwatu. The cliffs. The surfers. The white dust. Bali at its most raw and open.
Then we packed and drove north. Coco did not ask where we were going. She gave that up some time ago. It gets said when it is ready to be said.
It became clear as the minibus swung into the Keliki Valley and parked at the end of a narrow path leading into the rainforest. A calm man stood waiting with two bamboo staffs over his shoulder.
“Welcome to Capella Ubud. This is your walking staff.”
He handed over a slender bamboo rod, cut to exactly my height. Coco received hers. And in that moment — staff in hand, the sounds of the jungle all around, nothing visible ahead but green — something clicked. That feeling. Indiana Jones, finally taking a week off.
Coco laughed. Loud and genuine.
“It’s Bill Bensley, isn’t it?”
I did not need to answer. She already knew. Coco has followed Bensley for years — an architect who uses hotels as the film sets he always wanted to build.
Keliki Valley — the arrival
Bensley, Bensley, Bensley
Bill Bensley started with a brief: the owner wanted a hundred-room hotel. Bensley convinced him to build twenty-two tents instead — and not to fell a single tree. Each tent tells the story of a character who might have made camp here in the nineteenth century. The soldier. The merchant. Dutch aristocracy.
The restaurant is named after Mads Lange — a Danish trader who arrived in Bali around 1840 and became known as “the white rajah” for brokering peace between the colonial powers and the Balinese kings. Bensley retrieved him from obscurity and put him on the menu.
Bill Bensley’s world
Coco stopped before every tent we passed. Photographed the details. Hammered copper. Antique trunks repurposed as minibars. Freestanding bathtubs. A wall map of Indonesia’s islands from 1847.
“I’ve seen the photographs a hundred times. It’s still better in person.”
It is the most considered hotel I have ever walked into. And I have walked into many.
Bill Bensley’s world
Bensley said it himself: “If we design a hotel for everyone, it will appeal to no one.” Capella Ubud appeals to some. The right ones.
The Anniversary
We did not know when we arrived — but the hotel was celebrating its first anniversary. And as tends to happen with us: we walked straight into the celebration dinner.
A long table had been laid in The Officers Tent — a room that is a visual overload of Dutch heritage and Balinese craft, packed with antiques, trophies and every Bensley eccentricity imaginable. The leadership of the Capella Hotels group was present. A calm man in an elegant suit introduced himself: the CEO.
We sat there, Coco and I, two guests who had arrived from Uluwatu knowing nothing about the occasion — and were treated as if we had been on the guest list for months. Between the fourth and fifth course, a magician appeared. He performed two tricks directly in front of Coco. She was genuinely surprised. I have photographic evidence.
These things cannot be planned. They simply happen, when you are in the right place.
Mads Lange — Chef’s Counter
Our tent — end of the evening
The Tent at Night
Each tent at Capella Ubud has its own copper bath. Freestanding. Hand-hammered. Placed so that when you lie back in the water, the only thing you see through the canvas panels is the jungle.
After the anniversary dinner, after the magician and the CEO and the dishes with no names in any language I spoke, Coco ran the bath. I sat outside on the deck. The jungle was completely dark and completely alive.
There is a particular kind of silence you only find in places that have been left alone long enough. Capella Ubud has it. It is the silence of something older than the hotel itself.
Bali has a thousand hotels. Capella Ubud is not a hotel. It is a theatre piece you live inside — and suddenly find yourself one of the characters.
— Mr. Kim
Capella Ubud
Ubud, Bali · A Velour Pick