Malaysian Memories

Lake Garden (Taman Tasik Perdana)

Attraction | "The Orchid Gardens of Lake Garden"

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Kuala Lumpur is a great city and one where visitors are spoilt for choice with so many and varied options for entertainment. Being a country girl, I find big cities drain the life out of me very quickly and I can easily get overwhelmed by the hustle and bustle. When that happens, I’ll try to find somewhere clean, quiet and peaceful to feed my need to escape. If it’s beautiful and interesting as well, then that’s a big bonus. Such escape might seem like a tall order in a full-on high-octane shopping-frenzy city like KL so the purpose of this review is to share my top tip for regaining your sanity. The answer is the Orchid Garden in KL Lake Gardens. KL Lake Gardens (or Taman Tasi...Read More

Member Rating 5 out of 5 on September 26, 2009

Lake Garden (Taman Tasik Perdana)
Jalan Perdana
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 50480
+60 3 2691 6011

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Airside Transit Hotel

Hotel | "How to Make a Long Flight Connection Less Awful"

Quote:

Airside Transit Hotel isn't the best name I've ever come across for a hotel but by the time you've been in the air for a while it will take on all the attraction of a 5-star luxury hotel. Why? Because it offers the things you crave the most when travelling without charging a fortune for the privilege.When you are travelling long haul it doesn't take very long sitting on a plane before you start to fantasize about how wonderful it would be to be able to lie down on a proper bed, watch a film on a real television, eat real food that doesn't come in tiny square plastic pots and best of all take a long hot shower or bath. Obviously most of these things are completely impossible to do on a plan...Read More

Airside Transit Hotel isn't the best name I've ever come across for a hotel but by the time you've been in the air for a while it will take on all the attraction of a 5-star luxury hotel. Why? Because it offers the things you crave the most when travelling without charging a fortune for the privilege.

When you are travelling long haul it doesn't take very long sitting on a plane before you start to fantasize about how wonderful it would be to be able to lie down on a proper bed, watch a film on a real television, eat real food that doesn't come in tiny square plastic pots and best of all take a long hot shower or bath. Obviously most of these things are completely impossible to do on a plane, but once you get off the plane they're all high on the list of things you most want to do. The Airside Transit Hotel at Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) felt like heaven on earth when we stayed there during a 10 hour flight connection between Vietnam and London.

KLIA is a famously lovely and interesting airport which goes to a lot of trouble to try to make itself a pleasant place to be. However we'd already spent a few hours there on the way out to Vietnam and there wasn't a lot left to see on the way back. One valuable discovery we'd made on that first visit was the Airside Transit Hotel. We'd not used it but we had learned of its existence, popped up to reception to see what it looked like and checked out what it would cost.

I know of very few airports who have airside hotels and even fewer who have inexpensive facilities. Normally if you wanted to have a hotel room at an airport you'd have to go through passport control, out to the hotel and then come back again later and go back through security and passport control all over again. The airside approach removes all that trouble.

The basic package offers a room for a six-hour block of time and costs around $40 dollars. If you want longer, you can extend by up to three extra hours for $6 per hour. Anything over 9 hours and they charge you for two six-hour blocks. We had about 10 hours between one flight arriving and our next departing and we knew that we'd probably be able to fill a few of those with dithering around, getting something to eat and actually boarding the plane so we opted for the simple 6 hour package. We didn't pre-book, we just walked in and got a room.

The hotel was astonishingly quiet. The corridors had deep carpets, the windows were all triple glazed and there was a real hushed aura about the place. People don't go there to party; they go to catch up on sleep and get clean. Our room was neat and tidy with a large double bed, a desk, a television with satellite channels, a tea and coffee tray, comfy chairs and a coffee table and not too much else. Nobody needs a massive wardrobe and lots of drawers in a hotel when their luggage is waiting elsewhere to be put on the next plane. The bathroom was bright and clean and had a bath with a shower over. I decided to take advantage of the spotlessly clean bath and have a good soak. I'd really not seen a bath in the previous two weeks that I'd have felt comfortable to do that in. After my bath, I slept for a few hours and watched football until our time was up. My husband managed to polish off all the teabags in the short time we were there.

Had we wanted to leave the room and let's be honest, why on earth would we? the hotel had a gym and a sauna as well as a bar/café that served light meals. There's also a business centre but again, it wasn't something we wanted or needed.

If you don't have 6 hours to spare or don't want to pay for a full block of time, you can use some of the hotel's facilities on an a la carte offer which starts at $6 for a shower and rises to $15 for shower, sauna and use of the gym. I think those are all very good value deals.

The hotel is on the Mezzanine level in the Satellite A Building of KLIA and in my opinion is worth every penny. I just wish more airports had places like this.
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Member Rating 4 out of 5 on September 26, 2009

Airside Transit Hotel
Mezzanine Level, Satellite A Building, KLIA
Selangor

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A Short Break on Tioman Island

Story/Tip

Quote:

In the late 1990s I was in Kuala Lumpur for a trade show just before Easter. I'd learned to dive about 6 months earlier and, having gone all the way to Malaysia, I wanted to get my fins wet again.The Easter break meant I could get about 5 days on the island without using much of my holiday allowance.I did my research on good dive destinations and found Tioman Island. It's perhaps not the BEST dive destination - the Perhentians have a better reputation - but the good thing is you can get there by air. If you are back-packing on a really tight budget you can also go by bus and ferry but if you are going to all that trouble, you might be better with the Perhentians.~Where is it an...Read More

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Mandarin Oriental Kuala Lumpur

Hotel | "Absolutely Out of this World"

Quote:

Kuala Lumpur is a city of fantastic hotels with exceptional service at great value prices. I've been three times and always come away completely amazed by how good the service ethic is in the hotel sector. However, even my high expectations were exceeded on my most recent visit when I stayed at the Mandarin Oriental. I was in the city for a trade fair and very glad that the colleague who'd organised the trip had decided that we'd not perform well at the fair if we had to stay in a nasty cheap hotel. So she had booked us all into executive club rooms way up on the higher floors. I'm not sure how much of the service we had was due to the status of the rooms and how much was standard so keep ...Read More

Kuala Lumpur is a city of fantastic hotels with exceptional service at great value prices. I've been three times and always come away completely amazed by how good the service ethic is in the hotel sector. However, even my high expectations were exceeded on my most recent visit when I stayed at the Mandarin Oriental.

I was in the city for a trade fair and very glad that the colleague who'd organised the trip had decided that we'd not perform well at the fair if we had to stay in a nasty cheap hotel. So she had booked us all into executive club rooms way up on the higher floors. I'm not sure how much of the service we had was due to the status of the rooms and how much was standard so keep in mind that not everything might be on offer if you book a more basic room.

We'd flown in overnight and were picked up by a driver at the airport. It's quite a long trek into town these days so by the time we arrived we were glad to see the hotel and shocked at just how close it was to the famous Petronas Towers. It really is literally next door. We were greeted at the car by a hostess who took our details and then we were taken through the marble lobby, directly to the lifts and straight up to our rooms. Check in was carried out in the room without any need to queue or wait. Everything was very courteous and pleasant.

My room was very nice. Sadly I didn't have a view of the Petronas Towers but I could look out over the lake, the KLCC conference centre and the aquarium through the floor to ceiling windows. The bed was large and very comfortable with luxurious linens. There was a seating area with table and chairs and a bowl of fruit which was topped up daily. I could make coffee if I wanted to, there was a fridge, a good sized work desk and chair and free wi-fi (always a bonus). The bathroom was glorious lots of marble and twinkly lighting with a separate shower and bath and some very nice toiletries. One of the benefits of our executive room plan was a dry cleaning or laundry allowance. This is not unusual in KL hotels and since it's such a hot and sweaty city, you do tend to get through a lot more clothes than normal. I took full advantage of my allowance each day, even hunting out things in the bottom of my suitcase just to get them pressed or freshened.

We kicked off the visit with a briefing for all the trade fair attendees in one of the hotel's meeting rooms and followed it with a Chinese banquet in a nearby room. As a non-meat eater I had plenty of choice but found some of the food a bit over the top. It's hard to say no when you're given soup and don't realise that it's sharks fin and you'd really rather the shark had kept his fin for himself.

We had access to the Executive Club which was beautiful and had fantastic views of the towers. The club was large, filled with comfy armchairs and sofas and offered plenty of free snacks and drinks in the late afternoon and evening as well as breakfast in the mornings. We tried out several of the hotel's many restaurants and considering the five-star status of the hotel, didn't think that the food prices were outrageous. One of my rather traditional 'meat and two veg' colleagues struggled a bit with the sophistication of the menu but I really enjoyed the international options on offer. We didn't always get the restaurant we wanted because the place was so busy that even as a resident you couldn't guarantee a table.

The hotel has a gym, spa and pool but I'm ashamed to say that sipping cold white wine in the club lounge was all I was fit for most evenings after a day at the trade fair. We had a bit of free time and took advantage of the really nice shopping centre that's just next to the hotel as well as dropping into the Aquarium which has some beautiful displays. I also dragged my colleague off to the Orchid Gardens which are my favourite place in the city.
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Member Rating 5 out of 5 on September 26, 2009

Mandarin Oriental Kuala Lumpur
Kuala Lumpur City Centre
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 50088
60 (3) 2179 8818

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Hilton Kuala Lumpur

Hotel | "The Hilton for Lumpy Koalas"

Quote:

I spent one night at the Hilton in Kuala Lumpur in December 2004 but one night was enough to make me want to sell my house and all my possessions and go and live at this fantastic hotel. One night was enough for Hilton's Asia-region 'flagship' hotel to burn itself into my mind when many other hotels had long been pushed aside in my goldfish-like memory. My visit was at the end of the first week of a three-week business trip. One week into a trip like that with another two weeks still to go, hot and sweaty, very alien environments, not to mention the hard-drinking boss and colleagues with whom I was travelling, I was starting to get a tad 'jaded'. This hotel put a spring back in my step. ...Read More

Member Rating 5 out of 5 on September 26, 2009

Hilton Kuala Lumpur
3 Jalan Stesen Sentral
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 50470
+60 (3) 2264 2264

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Malaysia Journals

Malaysian Memories

Lake Garden (Taman Tasik Perdana)

Airside Transit Hotel

A Short Break on Tioman Island

Mandarin Oriental Kuala Lumpur

Hilton Kuala Lumpur

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