High Hopes…

After I had booked my air ticket to KL that day, I had to look for a decent hotel to stay in and after browsing through all the websites and weighing all the options and everything, I decided to stay here in Kelana Jaya…

I stayed at their sister hotel in Georgetown, Penang twice and I was quite pleased with it. For one thing, the room rates are more affordable. A standard single is only RM88 nett and a deluxe double, RM108 nett. I opted for the premium deluxe at RM128 nett per night…

…because it came with a mini fridge just in case I had something that I would need to chill.

The room was nice and clean, not very big but comfortable enough and bigger than some of the rooms at other hotels that I had stayed in before…

…but for one thing, I wish they had a mirror above the dressing/writing table, maybe one that is smaller than the full length one that they have to the left of the photograph. The hair dryer is in the right drawer, you see…and it would be virtually useless to have that when you cannot see what you’re doing while you’re trying to blow-dry your hair and make it look presentable. I had to resort to looking at my silhouette in the dark television screen!

The toilet was big enough…

…but unfortunately, they did not have any glass panels separating the shower area from the rest…

…so when  one takes a shower, the whole place may get a little bit too wet for one’s liking.

The service was good – I found the people to be very pleasant and friendly. The first night I was there, I noticed that the fridge was not working properly and was not cold at all so I informed them the next morning before I went out for breakfast and they called maintenance right away to get the problem resolved. By the time I got back after lunch that day, it was fixed already. If I’m not mistaken, the power sockets above the fridge were not quite compatible even though both of them were perfectly all right when I used them to recharge my hand phone or boil water. I noticed that they had connected the fridge to another one somewhere under the table but I did not bother to bend down to look and see if that one was any different from the rest. All that mattered to me at that point in time was that the fridge was usable should the need arise.

What got me pissed off, however, was that when I came back, it was already around 3.00 p.m. and they had not made and cleaned my room yet. I did ask the people at the reception counter…

…when I was telling them about the fridge and they told me that they would do that around 10.00 a.m. I called them and complained and they said that they would get housekeeping to do that right away.  I was hoping to have a nap before the big event that night and was not in a very good mood…so I did not have the patience to wait for them to show up in good time. I marched out of the room and went around the floor and when I found the Malay girl in one of the rooms, I gave her a piece of  my mind, insisting that she went to do my room right away.

She quickly did as she was told and while she was at it, I mentioned to her that I had asked at the reception counter before I went out and they had told me that they would start doing the rooms at around 10.00 a.m. She told me that she was not informed so she did the other rooms first (probably those that had checked out so they could rent out the rooms to other people). She did all that she had to do and when she had finished, feeling a bit sorry for scolding the poor girl, I gave her a RM10 tip and said that it was for her buka puasa (breaking of fast) later in the evening.

Other than that, my stay there was pleasant enough…

…but the location was a bit isolated. There was hardly anybody on the road outside the hotel at night except for one or two security guards keeping watch over the office block right next to the hotel.

Directly opposite the hotel is a big office building (Taragon) that has yet to be completed and if you look at the map here, you can see Giant Hypermart some 200 metres away – I did not go and check the place out so I do not know what they have there. There’s Old Town and Chayo and a small oriental restaurant plus a couple of shops at the Kelana Mall a stone’s throw away – nothing much that would be worth the effort of strolling over even though it is not far away. There is a lot of life on the other side of the whole area with lots of eating places but not around the hotel – except maybe the Thai restaurant at the back but there are a number of coffee shops around that open in the morning so getting something to eat in the daytime is definitely not a problem. The relatively new Paradigm Mall is directly opposite but on the opposite side of the highway so it will not be easy to get there from this side and I was not into any kind of shopping on this trip anyway so I did not bother to check the place yet. Another time, perhaps.

I stayed in this hotel for only two nights as the day after that, I went on the road trip to Seremban and then to Malacca and on the way back, checked into the airport hotel so that it would be easier and more convenient for me to hop over to KLIA the next morning to catch my flight home.