Bali, when held well, can carry a year·From Uluwatu to Ubud, wherever the family fits·Five international schools within fifteen minutes·The Indian Ocean to the south, the rice terraces to the north·A surf coast for the parents, a garden for the children·A village whose ceremonies the family is invited to·Six months of preparation, before the flight lands·An archipelago, understood from the inside·A year, intentionally lived·By introduction·Bali, when held well, can carry a year·From Uluwatu to Ubud, wherever the family fits·Five international schools within fifteen minutes·The Indian Ocean to the south, the rice terraces to the north·A surf coast for the parents, a garden for the children·A village whose ceremonies the family is invited to·Six months of preparation, before the flight lands·An archipelago, understood from the inside·A year, intentionally lived·By introduction·
I — A letterAn invitation
A curated family year in Bali — held in full, from your first decision to your last.
If you've been to Bali, the conversation has probably already happened — what if we did this for a year, as a family? Schools looked at on a weekend. A villa or two saved. The question raised at dinner with friends who've also been. Then come the visas, the household, the healthcare, the banking, the unwinding of a life at home — and most families park the idea before they've really worked it through.
The Annum exists for exactly this. A curated three- to twelve-month experience for your family, held by a single team, end to end. From the moment you sign on — six months before arrival — every decision is made before your flight lands. International school research and placement. The right visa pathway sorted in advance — no visa runs, free to come and go through the year. The villa selected, inspected and held. Household staff hired and vetted. Healthcare arranged, family insurance in place. A car and scooters secured for the year. Local banking opened. The hundred smaller details — sim cards, school uniforms, deliveries, household setup — handled before they become questions. An introduction to another cohort family, when you're settled and ready for it.
For the year that follows, your family lives. The children settle into school. You work, or rest, or write, or train. A daily concierge line answers from seven in the morning to nine at night. Once a month, we host an Annum dinner for the families currently in residence — welcome to join, never expected. Quarterly, your point of contact calls to ask what is and isn't working. Twice a year, a trip somewhere remarkable in South East Asia, included — planned with you, arranged for you. More can be added through the year, each curated to your family's preferences: longer trips deeper into the region, shorter getaways to Singapore or Kuala Lumpur. When something goes wrong — a fever, a missing document, a cancelled flight — we handle it, so you don't have to.
Underneath the year, something quieter. You're not only in paradise — you're in Indonesia, one of the most layered places on earth: a million-year human story still being lived in the language, the food, the temples, the ceremonies. If you want it, the year here goes deeper — Bahasa lessons for the family, introductions to the people and places that explain modern Indonesia, regional trips threaded with the history. Children who live this come home with a different sense of the world. So do their parents.
And the relationships. Years cultivating introductions across the archipelago — temple keepers and conservationists, weavers and silversmiths, the cooks who learned from their grandmothers, the families who'll welcome yours into a Galungan ceremony, the boatmen who know which corner of Komodo the manta rays still gather at. Not things you can book. Not things most visitors could assemble in a decade. Your family steps into them in the first months. Over a year, they compound — and become a large part of what you remember.
Around all of it, a small team. A Director of Family Experience leads your cohort, hosts the dinners, and stays your point of contact across the year. Behind her, an Operations Manager and a vetted network — nannies, drivers, language teachers, doctors, craftspeople — plus trusted relationships at the schools, hospitals and visa offices you'll need. You meet one face. The rest is held quietly.
When the year ends, the exit is held with the same care. The villa returned. School records forwarded ahead. A final dinner. A keepsake photograph book. The same person who collected you at the airport drives you back.
The Annum is built for families who could organise this themselves, given enough time. You'd be paying us not to.
Plate IA bedroom in a traditional Bali villa · 06:24
II — Three movementsYear · Reset · Atelier
Three ways to come to us.
A year, a season, or a single occasion — depending on the shape of what you have in mind. Three things, kept small.
I
The Yeartwelve months
Twelve months · timed to your school year
The flagship. Twelve months in Bali, the full programme. Start dates flex to the school calendar — February (most), September, January, mid-year — and we slot you in where the academic year and your family's window meet. For children too young for school, daycare arranged. If the year stretches into two, or settles into something longer, we continue on a time basis: your point of contact, the concierge line, the network, all kept in place. For career sabbaticals, school years abroad, deliberate resets — the shape is yours; the work of arranging it is ours.
A small cohort each year. By introduction.
II
The Resetthree months
A season, before the year
Three months in Bali, before you commit to a year. The same care, foreshortened. A villa held for you, a short-term visa, household staff, healthcare. Curated learning days where school doesn't make sense; partial school placement where it does. One Annum dinner, hosted. One South East Asia trip, curated.
If you want to test the shape of a longer stay before signing on. Most families who arrive on the Reset return for the Year — but the Reset stands on its own.
A small group each season. By introduction.
III
The Atelierevents & gatherings
By project · in Bali, or beyond
The Annum's events arm. A small wedding you want held in Bali. A milestone birthday. A retreat for a circle of friends. A keepsake photograph book to mark the year. Drawn from the same network of craftspeople, musicians, cooks and rooms we already trust.
Most often for a family already in residence. Occasionally for a friend of one. Rarely for anyone else.
By project. By introduction.
A note on commitment
The Annum is a substantial undertaking — for our team and yours. Fees are quoted privately on the first call. The total annual investment, across our role, the villa, schooling, household and travel, sits well into the six figures (USD). It is expensive — and, for the right family, exceptional value. You get a year of ease, where everything has been taken care of before you land; the quiet safety of knowing nothing has been left to chance; and access to people, places and experiences across the archipelago that most visitors couldn't assemble in a decade. Where it isn't the right fit, we'll say so kindly on the first call, and point you toward others who may serve you better.
III — By the numbersThe shape of the offer, in figures
The offer, in plain figures.
No. 01
2
long calls before the year begins
No. 02
12
months, held end to end
No. 03
6
months of preparation, before your flight lands
No. 04
5
international schools within a fifteen-minute drive
No. 05
1
face you'll meet, day to day
No. 06
0
things you need to organise yourself
The numbers are small on purpose. The smaller the cohort, the better the year.
"Twelve months in Bali, properly held, will change your family in ways you didn't plan for."
IV — On placeBali, Indonesia · 8.34° S
Bali, held well, can carry a year for your family. Most places can't.
The Annum is based on Bali's south-west coast, but the work is island-wide. Whether your year sits in the surf villages of Uluwatu, the design-led streets of Seminyak, the jungle and rice terraces around Ubud, the quieter corridors of Cemagi and Canggu, or somewhere we haven't named — we place you where the fit is best, and run the year from there.
What Bali offers, across the island: five established international schools within easy reach of the south-west — Canggu Community School, Sunrise, Green School, ProEd, BIS — with others in Ubud and Sanur. International-grade hospitals on the island; Singapore Mount Elizabeth in two and a half hours. Surf coasts, rice terraces, volcanoes, villages, ceremonies — each region with its own feel. We help you choose the one that suits the family you are.
Bali isn't perfect. It rains heavily for three months. The traffic in some places is genuinely difficult. The bureaucracy is its own discipline. We know all of that. The Annum exists because, when those things are held by someone else, what's left is one of the most extraordinary years you can give your family.
Plate IIA rice paddy at sunrise · 06:00
The regions families consider, in their real relative positions — Ubud inland to the north, the south-west coast at Seseh, Cemagi, Canggu and Seminyak, Sanur on the south-east coast, and Uluwatu at the tip of the Bukit peninsula.
V — Why we built thisAbout the founders
We've done this ourselves — and we wish we'd had The Annum.
We're Oscar and Lydia. A few years ago we moved to Bali with our two children, Wyatt and Cecelia, without anyone to hold the year for us. We researched the schools ourselves, found a villa from the other side of the world, chased visas in the wrong language, and hired a household without knowing who to trust. The first months were harder than they needed to be — and we had every advantage going in.
Oscar's background spans finance, technology startups, property development, and luxury apparel manufacturing and retail — twenty years of building and running operations where the details matter. Lydia began her career as a bridal designer and moved into weddings and events — a decade and a half of producing experiences for people who care as much about how something feels as what it contains.
What drew us first was the obvious — the climate, the beauty, the way life slows. What's kept us is the country itself. Indonesia is one of the most layered places we have ever lived. A thousand years of trade brought Chinese merchants, Indian and Middle Eastern Islam, African seafarers; then the Spice Trade and the Dutch, the Japanese occupation, and the hard-won independence of 1945. Every layer is still visible — in the language, the food, the architecture, the ceremonies. We fell in love with the place, and then with the depth beneath it.
The Annum is the version of our move we wish had existed when we made it. A single, considered team holding the year, so you arrive to something already underway. We started it because the next family shouldn't have to muddle through what we did — and because Bali, when held well, deserves better than a year built on Pinterest boards and WhatsApp groups.
Oscar & LydiaFounders · The Annum · Bali
VI — Beneath the yearAn education, quietly
A year here is the holiday. What sits beneath it is the real point.
You're not only in paradise — you're in Indonesia, where one of the deepest human stories on earth is still being lived. Java Man — Homo erectus — walked these islands for more than a million years, the longest continuous chapter of human habitation anywhere on the planet. Modern humans have been here for sixty thousand. The Austronesians, sailing south from Taiwan in what became the greatest maritime expansion in human history, settled this archipelago and pushed on to populate half the world — from Madagascar in the west to Easter Island in the east. The Hindu and Buddhist kingdoms came in the first millennium, leaving Borobudur and Prambanan still standing in Java. Then the Islamic sultanates, the spice trade that pulled Portugal, the Netherlands and Britain east, three hundred and fifty years of Dutch colonisation, the Japanese occupation, and a hard-won independence in 1945. Every layer is still visible — in the language, the food, the temples, the ceremonies, the architecture, the daily rhythm of the village.
Bahasa lessons run through the year for the whole family. Bahasa Indonesia is the lingua franca of seventeen thousand islands — born of trade, shared across an archipelago that spans three time zones, surprisingly approachable for English speakers: no tones, no grammatical gender, no irregular conjugations. Children take to it quickly. By month six, they're ordering at warungs and chatting with the school staff in their own language.
And we open you up to the people who keep this history alive. The silversmiths of Celuk whose grandfathers worked the same metals. The weavers of Sidemen whose looms have been in their families for generations. The priests at Tanah Lot and Uluwatu. The conservationists working to protect what's left of the coral. The family who tends the village temple, who'll teach your children how a ceremony is laid out before it begins. None of it is performed for tourists. All of it is real.
Your South East Asia trips can go wherever you'd like, but where you're open to it, we thread them with the history that ties back to where you're living. Borobudur — the world's largest Buddhist monument, ninth century, rediscovered under jungle in the 1800s and now standing across rice paddies in central Java. Prambanan, just down the road — the great Hindu temple complex from the same era. The spice fortresses of Ternate and Tidore in Maluku, where the world's nutmeg and cloves came from, and where Portuguese, Dutch and British traders fought for control of a trade once worth more by weight than gold. The old Strait of Malacca ports — Singapore, Malacca, Penang — through which the spice and porcelain trade moved for centuries. Angkor, if you go further: the largest religious monument on earth at its peak, the seat of an empire that touched what is now Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and Thailand.
This is why a year, not a month. A month is a beautiful holiday. A year, with depth in it, changes how a family thinks about home, history and the world. The Annum is built to deliver the obvious year — the villa, the schools, the dinners. It is also built, quietly, to deliver this.
"You can leave Bali with a tan — or you can leave with an understanding of one of the most extraordinary archipelagos on earth. We try to send families home with both."
VII — A photo essay
And then, the world. Six plates, in their own light.
Plate IIIA jukung on the beach at Pererenan · 17:42
A photo essaySix plates · Bali
The year in pictures. Six photographs from the first season.
Plate IVThe west-facing bedroom of the villa, the morning before the family arrives. Held with deposit since November.Plate VBreakfast laid out on the kitchen counter, before the household wakes. The note is from the cook.Plate VIThe Bali coast, looking south-west. Where the year ends, on a Sunday in November.Plate VIIThe rice in, by April. Farmers from the village walk past most mornings.Plate VIIIFrangipani in a bowl by the entrance, placed early — the family will pass it on the way to school.Plate IXGalungan, in the third week of April — the village's biggest festival. Families tend to be welcomed in once the year has settled.
VIII — Notes from the fieldA small publication · Three or four notes a season
Practical notes, if you're considering a year, or a season, in Bali. New entries every six to eight weeks.
IX — Letters from alumniWritten, with permission, anonymised kindly
Two short letters from the families who came before — and what their year actually felt like.
"The thing we didn't expect was how little we had to think about. The year felt like a gift we'd given ourselves — but the actual giving had been done by someone else."
A family from Bondi · Cohort II · Twelve months
"It was the schools we worried about most, and the schools they got most right. Two children, two very different needs, two very different placements — and a quiet hand on the rudder when each of us, in turn, lost ours."
A family from Auckland · Cohort I · The Reset, then The Year
Begin the conversationCohort III · Opens September 2026
If a year, or a season, in Bali is the conversation you keep having at the kitchen table — write to us.
There is no obligation in it. Each note is read personally and answered within five working days. If it feels like a fit on both sides, we propose a first call — an hour over Zoom, no pitch. If it doesn't, we say so kindly and point you elsewhere.
Thank you.
Your note is with us. We'll read it personally and reply within five working days. The conversation begins from there — quietly, and at your pace.
What happens nextThree quiet steps
01
Your note is read.
Each enquiry is read personally within five working days. No automated reply. We use the time to assess whether we can serve your family well.
02
We propose a first call.
Where it feels like a fit on both sides, we suggest an hour over Zoom. We talk through schools, the kids, the shape of the year, and the fees — openly. No pitch, no slides. We listen, and you ask whatever you need to.
03
The year begins to take shape.
If you continue, we begin the work — schools, visas, villa, household. Six months before your flight lands, every decision is already in motion.