2 stays during December 2010. Excellent 3 star quality hotel.
Excellent price/value offer, mainly catering local Indonesian tourists (thats why just few English TV channels). 2 swimming pools, one even having 4m depth for scuba diving training at one end. Magnificent gardens, not too many rooms occupied: what else can you wish for relaxing time?
The hotel is located outside Sanur, so you will need to either hire taxi (app 3 USD one way and 15 minutes drive) or use free transfer provided by hotel.
Nice and well trained staff, excellent restaurant and overall pleasant environment. An excellent option as to explore the island for the daytrips and return back in the evening for quite meal in the restaurant.
Only suggestion-why internet is for a fee?

We reserved the room directly with the hotel via email and got a reasonable price. Excellent customer service, very responsive. The hotel also provided inexpensive airport pickup. Room is very clean and comfortable. Breakfast is good with selection of Indonesian food which I like. The hotel ground is clean and lovely. We tried to walk around the hotel, but there is nothing touristy. This will be a good base if your intention is to do sightseeing by car to other locations in Bali since it is situated in the central area. Overall, it is a good value and we enjoyed our stay.

We stayed at this hotel to acclimatise before our liveaboard diving trip around the Komodo National Park.

We had arranged pickups and drop offs at the airport with Bali Discovery Tours and these all worked fine. We stayed at the Graha Cakra on the way back too, as our flights didn't work out for the return journey back to the UK.

The room was lovely, clean and spacious with two large single beds. I am 6' 4" and the bed was plenty big enough for me! The room has a bathroom with a shower. It also has a mini bar, colour TV with local channels and BBC World News and a free digital combination safe.

The first room we had the water wasn't very hot, especially from the wash basin tap, but the second room we had on our return trip had lovely hot water. I believe each room has its own water heater outside.

The food couldn't be faulted with a huge choice of local and international dishes. There was always plenty of it and it was all cooked very well and was extreamly tasty. Neither of us had upset stomachs during our stay on Bali.

We had a wander round the hotel and it is very clean - we saw staff sweeping the paths 3, 4 or even more times a day. There did appear to be only 3 rooms taken in the hotel on our first stay which may account for the time available to the staff to sweep up so much, but I may be doing them a disservice.

The tennis court however looked like it hadn't been touched for a couple of years. The net was hanging off of its wire and there were leaves all over the court. Although who would want to play tennis is such temperatures and humidity is anyones guess.

The 107m long pool was very nice. My buddy swam its entire length a few times, although he nearly hit his head on the bridges that cross it down its length. Again here there are signs that the hotel has seen better days with broken tiles around the edge of the pool & the waterfall wasn't working. The conference centre next to this pool was closed and it had render clearly missing from some of its metal framework.

The hotel is situated on the Jalan by-pass, so you need some sort of transport to the local town of Sanur or to go to the beach. We had a wander along the by-pass one evening (a bit risky with the way they drive!) but couldn't find anything of interest for tourists.

If you want this as a base, as we did, to use to go diving (we used Crystal Divers in Sanur) or to go on the numerous tours around Bali then I would highly recommend it. If you are looking for a beach holiday or are after the nightlife then you need to look more in the town centres/beachfronts.

I really enjoyed staying at the Graha Cakra Bali Hotel and I would definitely go back to stay there again! The hotel grounds were immaculate and well maintained with very friendly hotel staff that would make you feel so welcome, relaxed and go out of their way to help when needed. The food and service there were great also with so many choices of food (both Western and Indonesian). There were so many different places within the peaceful hotel grounds where I could spend time relaxing at any time of day or weather conditions. The level of cleanliness at the hotel was high (and I have high standards) so I was very impressed! I would definitely go back there to stay again and would recommend it to anyone, whether it for business or holiday! :)