Find the best of both worlds at COMO Uma Ubud: a private five-star sanctuary tucked away in the heart of the city.

I see the ghost-white form of a leg and arm, contorted into an odd, twisted shape poking out from under a giant canvas sheet. Scaffolding surrounds the unfinished form. The arm alone is the size of the van I’m travelling in. We rush past before I have time to make sense of it. I realise later it’s the makings of a building-sized idol – one of the many Hindu gods most Balinese people worship. For now, it only adds to my growing sense of delirium.

It’s two in the morning back home in Sydney and I intentionally stayed awake on the overnight Virgin Australia flight to Denpasar to beat the jetlag. Now, as my driver calmly navigates the narrow roads through an endless sea of locals on motorbikes, I feel my limbs grow clumsy and my tummy start to turn; I realise it was a mistake not to get a few hours’ sleep. Admittedly, I’m out of practice. It’s my first time on foreign soil in three years and I’m more than a little excited to arrive at my destination.

It’s close to midnight when we suddenly take a left-hand turn off the main street and arrive at COMO Uma Ubud. It’s the first of two COMO properties in Bali (read about my stay at COMO Shambhala Estate). I get to experience over the next five nights with wellness being the focus of the trip – the first order of business; a good night’s sleep.

COMO Uma Ubud

Ubud is full of contrasts: luxe spas, hipster barbershops and warehouse-sized gyms sit beside stone-carved Hindu temples; the streets clapback a chaotic melody of motorbikes, horns, and trucks, yet you can turn a corner and enter fields of brilliant green terraced rice paddies to find the sounds of the street replaced with birdsong. COMO Uma Ubud is no exception. It manages to feel like a remote jungle hideaway while sitting right in the centre of Ubud town.

The rooms

A tune oddly reminiscent of the White Lotus theme song plays in my pool villa – one of 46 rooms, suites, and villas onsite all designed by Koichiro Ikebuchi.

Rattan and lush cream furnishings fill the space, a sunken living area rises to meet the open-plan bedroom with a walkthrough wardrobe that leads to an oversized bathroom complete with a freestanding bath and outdoor shower.

Uma is Sanskrit for “home" or “house," and – while it’s very different from my own home – I immediately feel at ease in this place of comfort and beauty. I pull back the curtain to find a sundeck with infinity-edge plunge pool bathed in soft morning light overlooking the Tjampuhan Valley; a feature I missed in last night’s late arrival. I sit and sip a warming cup of ginger tea and snack on a plate of fruit before slipping in for a morning dip.

Food and drink

Deprivation isn’t on the menu at here. Expect to find a broad range of nutrition-rich cuisine in all Uma’s onsite restaurants. It’s an ethos I quickly embrace as I sit in the openair terrace restaurant Kemiri for breakfast. After a cold-pressed juice and chia mango pudding I order the French toast with fresh mango, passionfruit curd and roast coconut.

I’m torn between this and the zucchini and halloumi fritters with smoked salmon, tomato salsa, shaved zucchini, and garlic labneh but resolve to save this for tomorrow. There are also daily breakfast specials – think Indonesian curries, laksa, and dumpling soups.

Lunch is reserved for Uma Pool Bar. I arrive just before the rain and order my first nasi goreng of the trip. Indonesian cuisine is served for dinner at Kemiri, but I opt for the Italian-inspired cuisine of Uma Cucina at the front of the property overlooking the main street.

The burrata served with toasted sourdough, oven-baked sweet and sour tamarillos, fire-roast peppers, basil and almonds is the perfect starter to the bucatini – a Bologna-style slow-cooked beef short rib ragu. I skip the wine – but it’s on offer.

Amenities and facilities

A 25-metre jade green pool sits at the heart of the resort, bordered by sunlounges, and connected to the Uma Pool Bar.

The COMO Shambhala Retreat features an open-air yoga pavilion and studio, a gym and four treatment rooms.

Activities and cultural experiences

In addition to the onsite activities, there’s a roster full of hyperlocal experiences to choose from at COMO Uma Ubud. They range from sunrise mountain treks, water rafting and ATV tours to temple visits and water purification ceremonies. My first taste of Ubud begins with the resort’s walking tour.

Ubud Morning Walk

I’m side-by-side with 11 other travellers from various countries. We’re handed long wooden tongs and follow our local guide Made into the street and turn down a concrete path of interconnecting trails that border the town’s rice terraces.

It’s like pulling back a curtain and stepping into another region of Bali; a rooster trumpets its morning call, incense wafts from family temples and cascading fields of vibrant green rice paddies stretch out in front of us.

Made gives us a crash course in growing rice as we walk. Our tongs are quickly put to work: a Bintang can, a pink plastic cup, a wedged plastic bag – all this and more is plucked from the irrigation system that runs alongside the paths as we walk.

It’s part of the resort’s daily roster of activities, curated to experience the key elements of Balinese culture – this one has the added benefit of supporting Trash Hero World, a global organisation operating at a local level to bring communities together to clean and reduce waste. At the tour’s end we hand Made two full bags of rubbish, he is genuinely grateful.

Mount Batur Freewheel Tour

I pick up the pace on day two, rising before dawn to join the Mount Batur Freewheeling Bike Tour. Bikes are piled into one van as I join the tour group and climb into another. The streets are whisper-quiet at this time of day.

We arrive at the Mount Batur lookout as the sun starts to rise – not that we can see it, the view is completely obscured by fog. I do a quick google to see what I’m missing; the results confirm it would have been a beautiful view. But the real highlight of the tour still awaits.

The bikes are lined up and waiting for us, Made is our guide again today. We take off down the mountain, following his lead. It’s early still, so the roads remain quiet. A couple of puppies are sparring on the street, rolling and tugging at each other. A sea of orange and green appears to our left, we pull off the road to get a closer look, walking through rows of marigolds – the flower is grown all over Bali to use in the daily offerings to their gods. Made points out a crop of coffee arabica and picks its berries to give us a closer look at the bean that jolts most of us awake each morning.

Back on the bike, the winding road takes us through one village after another, the morning commute has begun and the rumble of motorbikes cut through the silence. The cycle isn’t challenging. I hardly need to work my legs – we freewheel our way down for the most part. We come to an open field full of women dressed in brightly-coloured sarongs sweeping the area as we cycle past them into the Taro Forest – a sacred place to the local Balinese people.

Our final stop is an art school, The Wayan Gama Painter Group and School. Students are sat around a lowered table on the floor pouring over their artworks. Wayan shows us around the school, holding up his half-finished hand-drawn artwork. He describes the painstaking process of sketching in pencil then pen, followed by shading and lastly adding colour. He started the metre-long work in 2021; it will be several more years before it is complete. If you’re after a genuine Balinese artwork, this is the place to go. The school is about a 10-minute cycle away from the cars that will drive us the rest of the way back to the hotel.

I’ve barely scratched the surface of what Ubud has to offer, but there is one thing I’m sure of, COMO Uma Ubud strikes the perfect balance between lush jungle hideaway and ease of access to the many charms and cultural riches of Ubud. I can’t think of a better place to call Uma.

Travel Details

Getting there

During peak travel periods, Virgin Australia operates twice daily return flights per week from Melbourne, and daily return services from Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide and the Gold Coast to Denpasar (Bali). From $635 Economy and $2155 Business Class return. All Virgin Australia fares include Velocity Frequent Flyer Points and offers.

Room and rates

Room rates start from AUD 437 at COMO Uma Ubud (all rates are subject to 21% government tax and service charge).

Tours and activities

You can view the resort’s full list of experiences here.