I'm an idiot. My Malaysia group members arrive on the 13
th at night, and since I'm here in Kuala-Lumpur starting October 10
th, I needed to book three nights for myself. Somebody recommended me a hotel called
Citrus, saying it's a 4-star nice quiet place in the center of the city; nothing spectacular but good enough for a couple of days. And stupidly, I just went for it without ANY checking reviews on
www.tripadvisor.com (or asking Tatyana to do her usual hotel magic for me). NEVER STAY IN THIS HOTEL! First of all, officially it's not 4, but 3 stars. I'm not against 3-star hotels in general and I stayed in many myself, but in reality this one should be rated at less than 2*!!! It would have been enough for me just to see the lobby, but I decided to give it a chance still and popped my head into one of the rooms. What horror: it looks disgusting – shabby and dirty rooms with horrible views on some poor quarters (not that there's anything wrong with it, but not a pleasant view), dirty and noisy cafeteria. Yuk. Anyway, instead of checking in, I cancelled my reservation (got charged one night penalty – fair enough, you always pay for your stupidity), and went to a different hotel.
Speaking of TripAdvisor though, just checked Citrus rating on it, and it's 68% good; hmmm…Hilton DoubleTree is a real 4-star. The level of service leaves much to be desired, but I have a sneaking suspicion that this has to do with the whole country and not this specific hotel. For my review of this place (including but not limited to the rant about service), please click here.
All in all I ended up paying for my stupidity in money - one night stay penalty at Citrus - and time - arrived to the K.L. airport at 6AM and was in my room only at 1PM after all the motions). But at least now I'm in a place I like. All is well that ends well.
On the bright side, now I have full 4 days all to myself! Halleluiah! Our group in South Africa was a lot of fun, but I didn't have any time for myself at all: the program was so full that every time I got to my room at night I couldn't even read a book, just fell fast asleep in complete emotional and physical exhaustion. I guess I've already gotten used to spending quite a few hours a day with my-beloved-self over the past several months of traveling, and not being able to do so has taken somewhat of a toll on me, and I'm very happy now that I have the opportunity to be alone for the next few days.
First impressions of K.L. from a hotel room
I haven't left the hotel today. From my room the city looks big and scary. Beautiful at night though with all the sky-scrapers.
I just roamed around, ate, took a nap, read. For lunch, I had Italian pasta and a cosmoJ. For dinner – high tea. My internal clock is screwed up, but I don't care.
Tomorrow I will start exploring the city. And for now I was happy in the "neutral grounds" of an international hotel to make a nice transition from South Africa to Malaysia.
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