Moon Gang opened in June 2026 among the rice fields on the northern outskirts of Ubud, a five-suite hotel that Sydney studio YSG built inside a derelict concrete bunker that once served as a private holiday house. Owner Kirsten Millbank of Firstbase Studio runs the place, and the brief she handed YSG director Yasmine Ghoniem mixed wellness, Indonesian music and outright play.
There’s no lobby and no car park. The hotel sits along an alleyway, reachable only by motorbike or on foot, and that constraint shaped everything built inside it.
Check in at a kiosk, then ride a scooter through the rice fields
Arrivals check in at Mini Moon Gang, a kiosk near Ubud’s town centre, then take a chauffeured scooter three minutes up the Sari Organic Walk, a winding car-free path past rice fields and coconut palms. Timber gates carved with moons open onto an L-shaped building wrapped around a courtyard pool, with suites and common areas enclosing the water on three sides.
The 512-square-metre building arrived in severe disrepair, with water damage, rotten wooden walls and failing concrete floors. YSG repaired the structure, replaced sections of roof and flooring, and designed every piece of joinery for on-site assembly, because every material and machine had to reach the site on foot or by motorbike.
Even the demolition waste stayed useful. Crushed terracotta tiles and breeze blocks went back into the ground as drainage fill.
Five suites, five different rooms
The suites were designed, in the hotel’s words, for dreamers, misfits and wanderers, and no two follow the same plan. Velvet Mood and Night Fever unfold over two levels, each with a separate lounge and two private patios, while Midnight Runners carries a large bath, a sitting area and its own record player with a vinyl selection.
Golden Shadow connects across a terrace to Sun Dust, and together they form a 101-square-metre option for families or small groups. Sun Dust is the rooftop suite YSG added during the conversion, built from bamboo, stained deep indigo after traditional Japanese huts, and lit by an enormous circular skylight for stargazing.
Walls throughout carry recycled earth-based finishes, and the cinnamon tones of the exterior run through the Midnight Runners and Golden Shadow interiors.
A listening lounge, a spa and a DJ station stocked with city pop
The Nongkrong Lounge holds a curated vinyl library and a DIY DJ station stacked with Indonesian and Japanese city pop records, curated by DJ Midnight Runners. The hotel describes its founding impulse as a feverish obsession with Indonesian music and culture, and the lounge is where that obsession becomes the entertainment rather than the background.
Wellness runs the other half of the day. An all-day spa sits behind sliding bamboo doors painted with lunar phases, and the cosmic thread continues through the design, from moon-carved gates to the black-and-white checkered tile at the pool’s edge, a nod to the Saput Poleng cloths wrapped around holy objects in local custom.
Music loud, spa quiet, pool between them.
Almost everything inside was made by Indonesian hands
YSG designed or commissioned nearly every object in the hotel from local makers, more than 15 Indonesian artisans and studios in all. Counters and stools are formed from recycled plastic bottle tops by Weedoo Plastics, pool loungers are handwoven from upcycled materials by BYO Living, and wall sconces pair local seseh wood with green resin from AA Practice.
Bedside cloud pendants are crafted from dyed banana leaf paper, suite curtains were hand-dyed by Pagi Motley with indigo, mango, coconut and ketapang leaf extracts, and the paintings and sculptures came from local art fairs and nearby galleries, sourced with Millbank herself.
Photography of the finished hotel is by Tommaso Riva, and the images show a building that kept its concrete bones while changing everything they hold.
Ubud has hundreds of wellness stays. A five-suite bunker conversion where guests arrive by scooter and DJ their own evenings is a different proposition entirely, and Moon Gang knows it.