Sanur, where Bali’s hotels began: the story of the Tandjung Sari

Long before the clifftop villas of Uluwatu and the pool villas of Ubud, Bali’s idea of a beautiful hotel was born on the beach at Sanur, in a family’s handful of bungalows. The story of the Tandjung Sari, in the hotel’s own telling, and where to stay on the sunrise coast today.

Picture Sanur in the early 1960s. The beach was nearly deserted by day, the Tandjung Sari recalls, save for fishermen coming and going in their bright little boats and, at low tide, villagers gathering coral from the lagoon inside the reef. That quiet, east-facing shore, sheltered by its reef and lit by the sunrise, is where the Bali hotel as the world now imagines it began.

A quiet beach

Tourism on the island had begun under Dutch colonial rule, between 1908 and 1942, and Sanur grew into a destination with the Segara Beach Hotel and, later, the much larger Bali Beach Hotel. But the hotel that set the tone was smaller, and almost an accident.

The bungalows

The Tandjung Sari began as a place for its owner, Wija Wawo-Runtu, and his family to stay when they came to Bali from Jakarta on buying trips for their antiques business. Friends followed, and by 1962 there were four small bungalows for them. It did not set out, in the hotel’s words, to become the seminal boutique hotel of tropical Asia, yet within a few years it was the place to stay, if you could get in.

Wija understood that visitors wanted to be close to Bali, to feel its air on their skin and to live, more comfortably, the way they imagined the Balinese lived. So the architecture stayed simple, built of local materials with Balinese techniques, on a prime piece of beachfront with fine gardens, the rooms furnished with Balinese antiques and the welcome warm. It is a formula the island’s great hotels still follow.

Sanur’s golden years

The airport was expanded and inaugurated as Bali International Airport Ngurah Rai in August 1969, and as visitors grew in number Sanur became the most prestigious address on the island. The expanded Tandjung Sari, with sixteen new bungalows usually full, drew guests to its restaurant too: the American food writer Craig Claiborne devoted a chapter to Tatie Wawo-Runtu’s recipe for soto ayam.

Its guest book, as the hotel tells it, ran from Margaret Mead and Ingrid Bergman to David Bowie and Mick Jagger. Wija’s success persuaded him that the idea could work on a larger scale, and it inspired the Batujimbar Estate.

It did not set out to be the model for a tropical hotel; it set out to be a family’s place by the sea.

Dance on Saturday nights

Performance was always part of the legend. The Tandjung Sari Foundation, set up in September 1987, keeps classical Balinese dance alive: children from the local banjar take lessons on Friday and Sunday afternoons, and perform on stage on the first and third Saturday evenings of each month. Ask at the hotel whether you can watch.

The hotel was first renovated in 2005, rejuvenated at fifty in 2012, when it marked its golden anniversary with the book Tandjung Sari: A Magical Door to Bali, and celebrated 55 years with a documentary film in 2017.

Sanur today

Sanur keeps much of that gentler pace. Its beachfront path runs for several kilometres past fishing boats, small temples, cafés and hotel gardens, and it is the place on the island to watch the sun come up over the Badung Strait. Fast boats for the Nusa islands leave from here too.

For somewhere newer, Maya Sanur Resort & Spa, at Jalan Danau Tamblingan 89M, steps from tropical gardens on to the sand and the boardwalk of the old fishing village; its lagoon-pool suites open straight into the water. Bali International Hospital, on the edge of Sanur, has added a modern hospital to the neighbourhood.

Our advice: stay at the Tandjung Sari for the gardens, the antiques and the Saturday dance; walk the seafront path at dawn, before breakfast; and plan an island day by fast boat from Sanur, as the neighbourhood was made for slow mornings.