Kuala Lumpur 2013 Day 1 – Pavilion Shopping

The Airasia flight to KL was at 1210pm which I mistakenly thought it to be 1240pm and realized a little late. As we waited for a frustratingly long time for a cab and when it did finally arrive, the cab somehow went to the customers waiting behind us when we were standing in front begin the earliest people there. Didn’t make a fuss over it since it was their Deepavali after all and quickly made a call to book a cab after fumbling with the app unsuccessfully. The cab arrived soon after at about 1050am and by the time we reached row 13 for Airasia check in at about 1115am, there weren’t any queues and luckily, it wasn’t closed. Hoped things get better.

Went to look for disposable underwear since I didn’t bring any, and managed to find a packet at Watsons that costed me Sgd5, more expensive that what it would cost in town. After a some window shopping, boarded the plane amongst the earliest in order to secure luggage storage space (since usually people bring carryon luggages). Flight was smooth and arrived earlier than planned.

It was my first time flying Airasia and it landed at LCCT International Airport instead of the more familiar KLIA which I mistakenly thought to be. The airport looked like a bigger size bus terminal where people gotten walk pretty long distance to the immigration counters, in non-air-conditioned sheltered walkways. There were many passengers trudging their luggages along the way and as expected, queues were long. Took almost an hour to clear immigration, with the occasional inefficiencies due to officers chatting and ignoring the passengers.

Once out, we booked the taxi to town at the counter just before exiting the arrivals. Pleasantly surprised that there were any queues, unlike the previous time I visited KL where booking a taxi required queuing too. Took the budget option for about Sgd30 that was ok when I took it at KLIA.

Our buying and eating trip started just outside the airport where we had our lunch at Oldtown cafe. Made and paid the order at the cashier and soon the yummy Malaysian cuisine was served to us in the non-air-conditioned eating area. I had dry Mee Siam and my wife had Curry Mee. Portion was ok and tasted ok too. Coffee was good as expected.

 

After lunch, walked further away towards Coffee Bean for the taxi. Had to cross the road towards a “Budget Taxi” signage and gave the ticket to the dispatcher and we got into a red coloured vintage looking taxi. We realized this was not a good idea then about taking the budget option because the aircon wasn’t cold enough and the heat was coming in thru the windows, making the taxi felt like a sauna. It only got better when we were about to reach town, some 1hr from the airport.

Our hotel Royale Bintang sits on the extremely busy, usually jam packed street of Jalan Bukit Bintang. The Indian taxi driver then started his complaints about the jam and such and we had a amusing conversation for a while till we got off the taxi, after some squeezing thru traffic with more cars-then-lanes experience.

Check in took awhile as there was already a guest before us. We had booked the Deluxe Club room due to the 30% discounts with an additional 7% with Maybank Agoda deal and on top of the points we had, the price was shaved to about Sgd90 per night. The room was at 17th floor   just 1 floor below the Club Lounge where breakfast was to be served for Club room guests.

Our first impression of the room wasn’t good, there was a salted fish smell once we stepped in and we saw an opened bottle of water and a hand towel on the sink. It seemed like either someone has used the room or it wasn’t made up before our arrival. Then we saw the water in the toilet bowl was yellowish and flushed it, that’s when the smell subsidied. To think that we paid more for a better room, what about the rest of the normal deluxe rooms we wondered.

Furthermore, we were promised a combined bed rather than a separated twin beds and this was not given in the room, which said so much about their service. There was however complimentary wifi with login and password required and so we surfed awhile and charged up the handphone for a while before heading out to Pavilion Mall, 10mins walk away.

It was a huge ass of a mall (thought it was comparable our Singapore Ion) with lotsa variety of shops from luxury goods to popular clothing labels to departmental stores. Difference was the space and although there were many people, it wasn’t squeezy like Ion. After window shopping, we sat down for some desserts at Taiwanese style cafe.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Continued to window shop around. It wasn’t sale season so there weren’t great offers for purchase. And then it was dinner time. We were meeting up with friends whom had moved back to KL for dinner and were introduced to Grandmama’s for some good Malaysian cuisine. Ate and caught up what’s going on around till it was 9ish that we decided to call it a day. They offered to fetch us back to our hotel and there we experienced the jam again. By the time we arrived, it was already 10pm. We probably could have reached earlier if we walked.

The lingering smell of saltiness was still there and again the water looked abit yellowish. I guess the toilet system was the culprit for this smell. Saturday night was football night, and luckily there was Fox Sports and I had managed to catch my team’s match and retire for the night.