Bali lockdown loophole at Desa Potato Head Studios
Most activities have been curbed during Bali’s lockdown – masks are on, dining-in is mostly off, beaches are closed, travel is not allowed.
Writer Penny Watson and her family, enjoying one of Bali's newest hotels.
But curiously, there’s a loophole of sorts whereby hotel and resort staycations fly under the radar. For a travel writer, this is obviously like offering thick, delicious, gloopy honey to a bee. It’s especially so when Bali’s newest and much-anticipated Desa Potato Head Studios opens a 15-minute drive away from my digs. Get in the car Thelma, we’ve got a job to do.
Anyone who has been to Bali will have either been to Potato Head Beach Club, or wished they had, such is its cool. Plonked on Petitenget Beach, Seminyak, with a phenomenal façade comprising 6600 antique shutters, this is a beats and babes haven, a poolside festival where peeps sporting bikinis, showy tats and pretty bling lounge on daybeds, order from a zero-waste menu and sip cocktails from coconuts.
Given the current lockdown, the beach club is closed and this once crazy-popular stretch of beach is tellingly quiet – turtles are literally hatching in the sand out the front of the club, the security guards charged with getting them into the ocean before the local dogs sniff them out. But next door, Desa Potato Head Studios, a 168-room hotel, has quietly and confidently opened at 50 per cent capacity with assurances of giving their guests a Covid-safe stay.
It hasn’t been an easy ride for Desa. The Indonesian-owned hotel officially opened at the start of last year but summarily closed two months later after being pounded by the first Covid shockwave. To say that management has had to pivot since then is an understatement. It’s more like a pirouette. Masks, hand san and temperature checks on arrival are the new front-of-house normal. Behind the scenes there’s raft of checks and compliance going on including daily Covid swabs for staff, 24-hour room vacancies between guests, in-room emergency kits and WHO-standard sanitisation and housecleaning practices.
The new Desa Potato Head Studios has opened in Seminyak. Picture: Penny Watson
As a guest in one of the beautiful oceanfront studios, the vibe is cleverly and intentionally more about having everything at your fingertips, rather than being contactless or low touch. Designed for longer-term digital nomad residents as much as short-term guests, the suites are open-plan with cleverly demarcated ‘rooms’ that ensure an uber-cool stay-at-home (if you have to) experience.
Guests can immerse in the wooden Japanese style hot tub before sauntering over to the lounge chairs where the modular coffee table opens with a fully equipped cocktail bar. They can hit an office deadline at the desk perched behind the double bed, then settle onto the couch to watch Headstream, Potato Head’s own streaming station. Even the narrow balcony with pool and garden views, functions as two ‘rooms’ with a lazy blue-striped hammock on one side and seats for sunset drinking on the other.
When guests do decide to hear the call of the waves and venture outside, space is at a socially distanced premium. The fastidiously constructed four-storey building is elevated leaving a huge open-air expanse at ground level for check-ins, al fresco breakfasts, art installations and quiet meanderings. Along the beachfront, the pool stretches 95 metres – the number of cabanas here has been halved so that there’s at least two or three metres between your snoozing self and the next posse of sunbathers.
The gorgeous new Desa Potato Head Suites. Picture: Penny Watson.
A second swimming pool, located on the rooftop, will open in the near future, possibly to in-house guests only. Up here there’s also Sunset Bar, which promises to be Seminyak’s go-to drinking venue when the lockdown eases. For me, the morning rooftop yoga classes were entirely suited to a Covid world – lots of space, few people, blue skies and the sound of rolling waves. Masks not required.