REVIEW : The Edge, Uluwatu (Bali)

When we first pulled up to the reception area of The Edge, we weren’t immediately wowed. Other resorts around these parts tend to have either minimalist lobbies which frame the horizon, or enormous lobbies filled with fresh flowers, statues and fountains. The Edge is a lot more low key.

We were greeted by the duty manager and asked to take a seat whist he called a buggy for us. No towels or welcome drinks of any kind were offered. I was very taken aback, it seemed like we were putting him out and he really didn’t seem too interested in us at all. I was so excited to see the amazing facilities that I just kind of let it slide, I figured that we probably wouldn’t have much interaction with him during our stay anyway.

We sat and waited for a couple of minutes at which point the manager came to tell us that our buggy was ready and that our butler would bring us welcome drinks by the pool. It sounded like things were looking up! We were then driven the 30 metres or so to the main pool area, totally pointless using a buggy for this simple, straight line path but I guess it helped employ one more person in the local economy. As you can see, they’re big fans of the definite article around these parts.

As soon as we got out of the buggy, we all rushed to the wall to look down at the main pool. What a view.

The buggy driver, who we assumed was also our butler, showed us to the poolside bar and then disappeared.

We then spent ten minutes taking pictures and just enjoying the view. It felt almost like coming full circle, seeing a long natural wood table topped with flowers, ten days after being in the Pier F at HKG.

I absolutely love the design of this area, so relaxing.
The glass floor however, is not for the faint of heart!

There was still no sign of our butler (or towels or drinks), so I approached the bar staff and asked them what was going on. At this stage they had made no attempt to engage us in any way and were just keeping their heads down, wiping the bar, polishing glasses and playing with their phones. I thought that maybe I had misunderstood the manager and that we were supposed to order our own welcome drinks at the bar. The barman however asked us to keep waiting and assured us that our butler would be with us soon.

Ten minutes later (twenty minutes after our arrival at the bar), the butler introduced himself and offered us each a non-alcoholic lime and mint drink.

Despite it already being nearly 2pm, the butler said that our villa was not yet ready and suggested that we order some food whilst we waited. The menu at The Edge has quite a variety of menu options covering all corners of the globe. We split a few starters to begin with and then each ordered separate mains.

Beef carpaccio and deep filled potato skins.

Grilled scallops.

Definitely one of the best lunch views ever. It feels very special having this to yourself.

I ordered the lobster Tom Yum soup as my main course. It was delicious and very generous for the price.

The service really dragged on, despite us being the only customers. We got the distinct impression that the staff had been told to linger as our villa was not ready. Still, we didn’t mind too much given the setting.

After our dishes were cleared, there was still no sign of the butler and it was now 4pm. I decided to have a look at the rest of the resort and started to head towards this small relaxation area. I was quite surprised to see that on the right of this image was a large room with a water filled floor where a couple were receiving massages. There was no rope or sign of any kind to stop people heading this way, despite it being right next door to the bar. One of the therapists quickly hurried towards me and made an X shape with her arms. So I headed back to the bar and asked them to find out what was going on with our room.

It is all rather confusing with The Edge, as the resort is made up of a series of villas which are interconnected. Bedrooms can be added or subtracted to most of the villas, in order to accommodate groups of varying sizes. It wasn’t exactly clear which villa we were going to get as Agoda.com was showing pictures from all of the villas under our booking. Given that we booked a two bedroom villa for four people, we assumed we were getting the villa called The Mood (the only one listed as having 2 bedrooms). In the end, we were given two bedrooms within a villa called The Cliff, with the adjoining door to the third bedroom (a standalone villa called ‘The Villa’) kept closed.The entrance to our villa:

Not exactly a warm welcome, the butler could have moved this sign or put it further down by the main resort path…

Immediately upon entering we could see that the hard product was very impressive. The furniture looked very solid and well designed, plus it was nice to see little details like an umbrella stand with four umbrellas ready and waiting by the door.

At this point, I should mention one of the main reasons why our stay was at a reduced price. The Agoda.com website mentioned that there was some construction going on at the resort, but that this was being done in a way which would have a minimal impact on guests. That temporary bamboo railing was our privacy shield.

The shield unfortunately meant that our pool only saw the sun at midday.

Although Kamara quite liked the fact that there was no bright sunlight blowing out the exposure too much when shooting for her blog: www.euriental.com

The shade was also welcome during the early afternoon, whilst enjoying a glass of wine.
On the other side of the bamboo screen was a giant building site, easily doubling the size of the resort, replete with pneumatic drilling and constantly moving heavy goods vehicles.

Our butler showed us the bedroom nearest to the entrance first. I actually quite like the design here; it has a bit of a ‘W’ feel to it, not my personal taste in decor (that tends to veer a lot more towards Park Hyatt territory) but fun for a holiday destination. There is plenty of space and a pleasing contrast between the dark wood and the neutral walls, against the bold colours of the carpet and furniture.

The bed was giant and supremely comfortable. (Thankfully there was never any construction after 5pm.)

Plenty of sunlight in the afternoon.

We stayed two nights and I have to say that the turndown service was great both times. In addition to the water, our dressing gowns were folded up in a very cute way, on the bed.

We were also left a gift each evening. The first night we got sleeping masks filled with lavender (but no straps to attach them to our faces).

On the second evening we were given bookmarks, containing pressed flowers, that were purportedly handpicked by our very own butler.

Continuing on from the bedroom was a small hallway with a chest of drawers and a minibar (contents not included in the villa rate).

There were also two large wardrobes containing slippers and dressing gowns as well as some top quality hangers.

The bathroom was fantastic, a very light and open design with lots of nice little details.

Infinity bath with bedroom view.

Super high pressure rain shower.

Very fancy Lanvin toiletries.

First time I’ve ever seen infinity sinks in a bathroom (or anywhere for that matter).

More Lanvin amenities.

After showing us the first bedroom, the butler led us into the spectacular lounge. I took this shot at night, as the dynamic range of GoPros isn’t great and the sunlight in Bali is so strong.

Our jaws pretty much hit the floor as soon as we walked in.

Before we could get too excited, exploring the villa, our butler hit us with a pretty weird bombshell. We asked him why half the bags were still in the lounge. He said that the villa was only booked for two people so two people would have to sleep in the living room!

Taking some time out to enjoy the ocean view from our lawn, in front of the living room.

There was a lot of very cool artwork throughout the villa. These folders were our main source of info after we discovered that most of the staff were just winging it.

Our welcome fruit amenity.

The sound system in the villa was great, a bonus of being the only guests at the resort was that we could make all the noise we wanted!

More cool artwork.

The study.

The dining area.

Another member of staff came to supervise us whilst we waited for our butler to return. He poured us some water and made a perfunctory effort to answer questions.

We opened the drawers behind the bar and found a bunch of broken forks and a sticky mess left in one of them.

The second staff member disappeared around the corner into the service kitchen and then left the door wide open.

He said that if we wanted to make coffee we could use the Nespresso machine in the service kitchen, pointing to a boxed machine on top of one of the kitchen shelves, although he qualified this by saying, “maybe it’s broken though”.

The kitchen itself was pretty run down and grubby looking; we went in from time to time to grab ice from the freezer and not much else.

We came up through this expansive staircase, overseen by a very cool and enormous painting.

At the top of the stairs we had our second jaw dropping moment.

Either side of the living room were two identical pagodas with moats surrounding them, containing master bedrooms.

The outdoor space of this villa certainly didn’t suffer from the same lack of sunlight as The Cliff.

After returning from Rock Bar and the amazing meal that followed it, it did feel good to be back at our awesome villa with the curtains drawn, no construction noise and no service issues. Just us and the villa. The little area directly in front of the villa looked pretty great at night too.

We awoke the following morning to find the table already set. Having a leisurely breakfast, particularly one served in your room, has to be one of life’s greatest pleasures. The butler wished us a good morning and asked if we were ready to eat yet. I said we’d wait for our friends to wake up first.

Kamara couldn’t resist though and after a token wait of ten minutes, started gobbling handfuls of cereal. The butler must have taken this as his cue as he quickly disappeared and returned with our breakfasts.

Kamara opted for the Indonesian breakfast, which she really liked.

I thought I’d brave the American breakfast. A high fat, high carb, low protein horror show. Everything was limp and soggy, despite being fried. The bacon was similar in consistency to fruit leather.

On our second morning I opted instead for the Korean breakfast, which was fantastic.

Unfortunately Mr R didn’t join us for breakfast either day. By the time we finished our first drinks at Rock Bar, on evening number one, his stomach was already hurting. As I mentioned earlier, we didn’t share mains when we ordered our lunch whilst waiting for the rooms to be prepared (mainly because a couple of us ordered soups, which are pretty hard to share and only Mr R like the idea of the burger).

Everywhere else throughout this trip, the four of us either shared our food or ordered the exact same things.

The chances are very high indeed that the food at The Edge made Mr R sick, to the extent that he created (he was quite clear about wanting me to share this detail) a profoundly green poo. The guy was totally wiped out and missed out on the Uluwatu portion of the trip almost entirely (I’m glad to say that he managed to recuperate sufficiently to drink a bottle of Krug in Cathay First on the flight home though).

I personally found that first lunch to be really good in terms of taste, albeit unbearably slow in its delivery.

We had another late lunch at the villa, on day two, which again took forever to serve and was missing a main course. When I asked what was going on, the butler disappeared and returned 45 minutes later with a criminally overcooked piece of grilled tuna.

Two things:

One – if you’ve forgotten my dish entirely and everybody else has finished eating, the appropriate response is to admit to this and ask me if I mind waiting for the dish to be freshly made (most good places would offer to comp the dish too), whilst advising me of the estimated cooking time.

Two – if you take 45 minutes to cook and serve a piece of tuna steak, something is seriously effed up in your kitchen. If that tuna is fresh, you only need to grill it for a minute on each side, put some salad on the plate and get it from the kitchen to the villa. Given the fact that the villa is directly connected to the kitchens via tunnels, this shouldn’t be a problem. If it is, why not use one of those buggies to save some time?

So, the food was variable in quality, sometimes great, mostly below average, with terrible service and a high likelihood of making you sick.

Thankfully there are plenty more dining options in Uluwatu, many of them exceptional in terms of food quality, service and decor.

On the last morning, during breakfast, I asked our butler if we could hang out at The View, seeing as the construction was going on, The View was not being used and we only had a couple of hours to go until checkout.

There were a couple of staff members folding towels and generally tidying whilst K and I played in the pool and went exploring.

One of the master bedroom pavilions, next to the enormous living room.

Hell of a place to enjoy a coconut. The View is the furthest villa from all of the construction and whilst it was still slightly visible and audible, it was markedly less of a nuisance from here.

After a while our butler appeared and offered to give us the full tour, starting with the outlandish home cinema.

There were also a series of smaller bedrooms and a kids room, which weren’t too interesting. Then we came to the second living room.

Next to the second living room is a huge private garden where wedding receptions are usually held.

The garden gives a great view of The View as a whole.