Why we built a court before a second pool.

Most hotels in Bali answer the same question the same way: where do we put another sunbed? We asked a different one — what would actually make someone stay an extra day?

The answer, it turned out, was a game. Padel had arrived in Bali quietly and then all at once — glass-walled courts appearing behind cafés and beach clubs, a sport easy enough to start in an afternoon and hard enough to keep you coming back. When we drew the plans for the property, the choice came down to a familiar one: more water, or something no one else had at the door.

We chose the court. Two of them, in fact, set at the heart of the property rather than tucked behind it — because the point of padel here isn't to hide it away as an amenity. It's the thing you plan the morning around.

The game that travels well.

Padel is social in a way tennis never quite manages. The court is smaller, the walls are in play, and the rallies last — which means four people of wildly different ability can share a match and all enjoy it. For a property that hosts honeymooners, families, and groups of friends in equal measure, that matters. The grandparents can play. The children can play. Nobody sits out.

And then there's what comes after. Step off the court, and a few paces away sits the part of the ritual we're quietly proudest of: a sauna, and beside it, an ice bath.

The heat, then the cold.

There's a logic to finishing a match this way. The heat opens everything up; the cold closes it down sharply, and the body answers with a rush of clarity that's hard to describe until you've felt it. It's communal, it's open to everyone, and it turns the end of a game into something closer to a practice.

The communal sauna and ice bath, a few steps from the courts.

We could have built a second pool. It would have photographed well and asked nothing of anyone. Instead we built the court, and the heat, and the cold — and the morning that now has a shape to it. That, more than another stretch of water, is the reason people book the extra night.