This review is for a short stay in The Royal Pita Maha in May 2012.
Having gone through weeks and weeks of searching for a suitable pool villa that would give my partner and myself the much needed vacation to recharge, we stumbled upon some excellent reviews for The Royal Pita Maha on Tripadvisor and decided to make a reservation for a pool villa. The email responses from the reservation desk were prompt and queries were taken quickly and answered to our satisfaction.
Upon arrival at the airport in Denpasar, we were met by the resort's driver who kindly had us wait in the shelter of the airport while he went back out in the sweltering heat to the carpark to pick up his vehicle and come back for us. Once in the vehicle, we were given cool, refreshing bottled water to enjoy while sitting back to take in the sights and sounds of the Balinese city. The journey to the resort was about half an hour or so depending on traffic. Along the way, you get to see several rice fields and scenes from the everyday life of the Balinese people.
As we approached the resort entrance, there is a turn off down a small secluded path. In my opinion, the resort is not readily accessible. We could have easily missed the side road if we were making our way there on our own. However, this is probably part of the reason why the resort enjoys its peace and quiet at the same time. Nevertheless, this was no issue given the airport transfers that we had. Once at the lobby, we were ushered to a sitting area and check-in was done very quickly. We were then escorted to our pool villa. Once in the villa, we knew that our choice was right. The views across to the hills opposite and overlooking the river was amazing. It was serene and calming. The villa was spacious and well-equipped. We spent our mornings having breakfast in the villa (the breakfast spread was pretty good), followed by sun tanning out by the private pool, hearing people do white water rafting (by that, I meant hearing their screams as they go by. It was all great fun though, nothing too noisy for our liking.). The pool was pretty huge and you could really swim laps in there. There was also a sunken bathtub that you could enjoy a dip in and we made full use of all the amenities available. In fact, we enjoyed the villa so much that we could barely tear ourselves away from the room.
The staff in the resort were very friendly and helpful. They were always all smiles while delivering your meals or when answering to any requests that were made. One morning, we awoke to a huge spider in our bathroom and had to contact housekeeping to come and remove it (and I mean really huge to the extent that the housekeeping staff themselves exclaimed that they had never seen one this size before!). They arrived promptly and were really professional about it. Maybe they are used to such requests as this place is afterall, set amongst lots of foilage and greenery, therefore, insects are common place.
The resort also had a complimentary shuttle service that took guests out to the Ubud market area. This was a nice touch as it allowed guests to venture out for shopping and dining and some free and easy sight-seeing should they choose to do so.
All in all, The Royal Pita Maha was a good stay and we enjoyed ourselves thoroughly. Only things to consider apart from the insects are what the other reviewers have mentioned about --- presence of many, many steps, which, may or may not be a good thing depending on individual preferences.