TEXT BY KRISTI ROSS, PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF HOTEL TUGU BALI

When the northwest monsoon licks along Bali's western coast, the candles at Tugu Bali's entrance flicker in their bowls. This is the wind that once blew ships from China and India to trade silks and patola cloths for spices and sandalwood. Later came Arab traders, the Portuguese, the Dutch, and more Chinese hungry for work. For thousands of years, civilisations have mingled along Indonesia's shores and seeped into indigenous cultures from Sumatera to Timur. This is the heritage Anhar Setjadibrata set out to record at Tugu Bali in Canggu. Above the candlelit walkway across the entrance pond, Boma, Hindu son of the earth, stares down. In rooms to each side, details catch the flickering light: a Javanese cabinet, intricately carved; a statue of Quan Yin, Buddhist Goddess of Mercy; plates from an ancient Chinese dynasty; a Dutch colonial table. Set against walls of contemporary crimson, white, gold and black, fine antiques and ancient artefacts create complexity, contradiction and surprise.

The man who created Tugu Bali is well placed to understand Indonesia's varied strands. His ancestors came south on the trade winds, married local women and became Peranakan, Chinese-Indonesians who've long forgotten their grandfathers' languages, yet retain traces of old China in their ceremonies and celebrations, their food and daily lives. But if Anhar grew up with cultural complexity, he had little early exposure to art.

'He came from a very simple family,' explains his daughter, Lucienne, who manages Tugu Bali. 'Other children used to tease him because he had only one pair of school shorts. Often they'd still be damp from washing when he had to put them on and as they dried out in the classroom, steam would rise around him.'

While studying medicine, Anhar travelled from island to island as a pharmaceutical rep. This was when he really began to appreciate Indonesia's history and art. Yet everywhere he travelled, he saw people clearing out the past, rushing to replace finely-crafted possessions with the mass-produced goods of the modern world. Gradually, he began to collect. 'He'd come back so excited,' says Lucienne, 'but in those early years, sometimes we'd discover that special piece wasn't authentic after all.' But Anhar persisted, sharpening his senses in books and museums, learning from craftsmen and artists. When he opened his first hotel, he was more interested in sharing what had become an extraordinary collection than thinking about the bottom line. He needn't have worried. The legacy on display at Hotel Tugu Park in Malang was soon drawing guests from around the world.

In 1994, Anhar bought the land at Canggu. 'He knew exactly what he wanted,' says Lucienne. 'There was no architect, no designer - he'd take a stick and draw in the dust and the craftsmen would look at the drawing and together they'd try to make it work.' Meanwhile, he was searching out art and artefacts - not only fine pieces made for aristocrats, but simple items from village houses that traced a modest past. Though most of the 22 guest rooms at Tugu Bali share the same configuration, it's the old doorways, windows and other architectural features Anhar incorporated into the structure that determine individual measurements and make every room unique.

One of Anhar's most special finds was the Bale Sutra, a three hundred year old temple built in Bali to store the ancestral tablets of a local Chinese family. When the family moved to Surabaya, the temple was dismantled, shipped and re-erected at their new home but, by the time Anhar discovered it, the whole compound was scheduled to be torn down. The demolition schedule gave him plenty of time, but the night he bought it, Anhar dreamed he had to rush. He rounded up craftsmen and set them to working night and day till all but the very last pillar had been safely taken off-site. That night the entire compound caught fire and burned to the ground. Tugu Bali is full of stories like these, of dreams and intuitions, artefacts discovered in hidden places or rescued in the nick of time, pieces that seemed to be following a destiny. Wander through and it's as if the rooms are whispering ancient secrets.

Dining, too, is very different from a standard hotel. Guests can eat in the open-sided Waroeng Tugu, sitting on rough-hewn benches next to Majapahit statues, enjoying traditional Javanese village food cooked in earthenware pots on a wood-fired hob. For more formal dining, there's the long table in the Bale Sutra -still missing that last pillar and now furnished with Chinese statues and porcelain - or the marble-topped table in the Bale Puputan, surrounded by relics of Bali's old aristocrats. There's also the Black Room with its Chinese art, or simple tables and chairs set in tiny pavilions in the gardens. There are no fixed times and no fixed place. 'If someone wants dinner on the beach at 3am, we can do that,' says Lucienne.

Like the rooms, the menu at Tugu Bali draws on diverse strands. It's also extensive, with nearly forty main course choices. Recipes collected from Balinese families include the festival favourite, bebek betutu (smoked duck) and kenus mebase, squid sauteed as it is in the fishermen's villages. Javanese families have passed on recipes for a dozen specialities such as Surakarta's nasi kuning komplit and nasi kare ayam. Beef rendang from Sumatra comes accompanied by krupuk rempeyka so thin they're translucent. Anhar's Peranakan roots show in crab cakes from the kitchens of Java's north coast, tim udang windu bungkus daun, (steamed prawns stuffed with sesame, ginger, lemongrass and coriander) and nearly a dozen more dishes where the techniques, tastes and textures of old China blend with Java's culinary traditions.

When there's a holiday, Tugu Bali gears up for celebration in a style of its own. At Christmas, events include a dance performance by its very own Barong. For New Year's Eve, the lobby and the gardens are being converted into a traditional Javanese night market where guests can wander from stall to stall, trying out delicacies from around the archipelago. Yet even on the most ordinary night of the year, Tugu Bali is an extraordinary place to spend a few hours.

Hotel Tugu Bali.
Jl.Pantai Batu Bolong, Br. Canggu - Desa Canggu.
Tel: (0361) 731 701