Kamandalu is a luxury five star resort situated in a lush valley in Ubud. It’s on a quiet, but large property, and with well-rounded staff on site, you can’t help but to feel incredible relaxed and secluded during your stay here. From the outside you won’t believe that such a luxury resort could be situated in Ubud, but after a right turn from the main road, you will come across this grand entrance and sprawling rice terrace to the left. Service at this resort is friendly and top-notch and everyone knows your name. Located just 1.5h drive away from Depensar International Airport. I’d definitely recommend booking this place for couples or honeymoon destination.
If you are staying at one of their villas, a butler will help you arrange all of your off site activities, including a driver, which I’d highly recommend taking advantage of. Of course, a private driver means an extra fee, but the prices are the same as if you had taken Grab (the equivalent of Uber in bali).
On arrival at the resort, you’ll be greeted with a cold towel and a flower. If you’ve booked a pool villa stay, you will be directed to the Village Club where an attendant will take care of your check-in. A special welcome lemongrass drink will be offered to you, and this is one of my favorite drinks in all of Bali. I kept on coming back for it numerous times throughout my trip (free cocktails in the Village Club for pool villa bookings). Once you are ready to head to your room, an attendant will bring you to the room and introduce all the amenities. Your suitcase will be brought to you afterwards to the room.
Also on the property you will find a public pool (with a pool bar in the middle), Awana public pool & lounge, spa, rice paddies with Vedika houses, small lagoon, and a small suspension bridge. There are two restaurants for all meals of the day, Petulu Restaurant and Arira Cafe or you can book other dining options such as picnic lunch, floating breakfast, in-villa barbecue, or candlelight dinner. Activities can also be booked on the property as well. I will create a separate post for the resort’s other amenities.
Price: I received a lot of questions regarding the prices for Kamandalu and the villas I stayed at. I paid 12, 543NT (406 USD) for a Pool Villa booking and 16, 137 NT (522 USD) for a Deluxe Pool Villa (also known as Valley Pool Villa) including taxes and service charge as of Nov 2018. When I made the bookings, I compared prices prices on booking.com, hotels.com, agoda.com and also Kamandalu’s own booking engine, I found the prices on agoda to be lower than other sites. Hotels.com adds their own taxes (I don’t know why) which makes their prices slightly higher than the other sites. I would recommend you to use a third party booking to book Kamandalu’s rooms. However, if you are staying 3 nights or above, Kamandalu offers an advance booking offer: book 3 nights, get a complimentary 60 min spa for 2 people; book 5 nights get a complimentary airport transfer. Their Experience Package or Honeymoon Package is great as well if you book during their off season. If you take advantage of their offers, then you need to book through their own booking engine. My Pool Villa was booked through their booking engine (I received a complimentary 60 min spa for 2 people) and the Valley Pool Villa was booked through agoda.com.
Getting Here: Kamandalu Ubud is a 1h30 min drive from Depensar International Airport. An airport transfer to Kamandalu Ubud should cost around 250,000 IDR (with a little tip ranging from 20,000-30,000 IDR). I found my own driver and did not pay for the airport shuttle offered by Kamandalu. I found their airport transfer to be a bit ridiculously expensive. Agoda offered airport shuttles for about 950 NT (30.72 USD), but I found my own driver for 250,000 IDR (540 NT, 17 USD).
How To Get Around: Kamandalu Ubud offers complimentary shuttle service to and from Ubud Palace once every hour. It takes about 15 minutes by car if you scooter there yourself. If you miss the shuttle, you can take advantage of Kamandalu’s private car, 50,000 IDR for one way to Ubud Palace, 60,000 IDR one way to Monkey Forest, 80,000 IDR to Tegalalang Rice Terrace.
Insects: This gets its own separate section because this was a major concern of mine right from the beginning. I went online to search and didn’t find too many answers so I decided to address this issue to all those people who are scared of bugs like me! I am a person who always gets bitten (by mosquitoes) in Asia. I traveled in April which is still considered a rainy transiting to sunny season. Rainy season means mosquitoes are still hiding everyday due to the copious amount of rain that falls. Kamandalu Ubud is located right in the middle of a valley so there are bugs and insects. In the villa, I kept the doors ALWAYS closed and still some bugs (the ones that crawl) were able to get in. The funny thing about this was in the Pool Villa (cheaper villa) there were small bugs noticeable on my bed (even with the bug net!) and I had to squash them before I went to bed. In the Deluxe Pool Villa there were no bugs on the bed (hmmmmm). In the Pool Villa we had some ants crawl on the bathroom sink and some got into my luggage which was quite annoying. In the Deluxe Pool Villa, no ants were in our bathroom sink. In the villa, Kamandalu uses an insect/mosquito repellant spell plugged into the socket which emits a smell which mosquitoes don’t like which helped a lot. I was mostly bitten outside the villa, not inside. In total, I was bitten around 6 times, half inside Kamandalu the other half just being around Ubud area. No mosquitoes if you are in the pool of course. Oh right, ants in Ubud are humongous. They will crawl outside the villa and near the pool so be careful where you step!
Pool Villa Review
Recently renovated, their pool villa (Villa 205) boasts a 180m² pool overlooking a wide valley, two sun chairs with two day beds to rest in, a spacious four poster bed, marbled sunken bath, with an indoor & outdoor shower. I’ve been told that some villas only have a garden view, but ours came with a valley view which was perfect. We were able to rest on our sun chairs overlooking our pool (to the front), the luscious valley (to the right) and then our private villa (to the left).
We stayed in their gorgeous pool villa for only three nights, but really felt like we could’ve stayed much longer! I wish we didn’t go out exploring and had more time to stay in the villa and actually enjoy its features. The villa sleeps two people with a spacious bathroom. With a spacious sofa right in front of the 40″ LED TV, you could watch a movie on the bed or on the sofa before a good nights sleep. I did find their swimming pool was difficult to take photos.
Extra benefits
Here is a list of extra benefits for all pool villa bookings. Actually, the only difference between pool villa bookings and garden suite booking is the access to Village Club. But it makes a great difference! Smoothless check-in, all day snacks & cocktail drinks (alcoholic, non-alcoholic, cocktails, and smoothies included!), canapes included as well. Also, their matcha cake was superb! I chanced upon it one day (their desserts change every day!) and it was a great highlight.
- Benefit and access to Village Club for pool villa bookings (worth it!)
- 1 time stock mini bar (their mini-bar was so so)
- Fruit basket upon arrival (some apples and bananas)
- Bottled mineral water (more than plenty)
- Coffee and tea maker (didn’t use this)
- Scheduled shuttle service to Ubud center (quite useful, one shuttle every hour)
Valley Pool Villa Review
Recently renovated, their pool villa (Villa 127) boasts a 300 m² pool overlooking a wide valley, two sun chairs with two day beds to rest in, a spacious four poster bed, marbled sunken bath, with an indoor & outdoor shower. I’ve been told that some villas only have a garden view, but ours came with a valley view which is perfect. We were able to rest on our sun chairs overlooking our pool (to the front), the luscious valley (to the right) and then our private villa (to the left).
The Deluxe Pool Villa (a.k.a. Valley Pool Villa) is a bigger version of the Pool Villa, which includes a living room with a second TV, extra bathroom sink, table with seats by the pool, and of course a larger pool size. Those were the more notable differences, the welcome fruits and mini-bar were exactly the same. The villa I stayed in consisted of two levels, one level was the pool, the other was the actual villa, so I had to climb a small set of stairs to get to the pool. Due to this design, I had a balcony, where I could walk and lean against to look at the picturesque valley below. The balcony is narrow, not enough to put seats there, just enough to take photos.
Lighting: We forced ourselves to wake up super early (6:30AM) to take photos of the sunrise. If you are facing the pool and the valley below, the sun will seep in from the left and cast yellow lighting on the villa & balcony great for photos. Not so the swimming pool below because it is covered in shadows. We got a few photos of the sun before it was covered by clouds later soon afterwards.
Does the room come with breakfast?
Hi Alice,
Yes breakfast is included in most room bookings unless otherwise stated. I would recommend their breakfasts as their waffles are quite delicious and they have a wide variety of freshly squeezed juices available!