what can i say about kuala lumpur...

nothing.

i find the place worse than manila.

genting, on the other hand, is okay.  i love the weather.  i like our rooms at theme park hotel.  literally no need for an aircon.

SG-KL-SG itinerary:


SG to KL - we left SG via Aeroline coach bus.  the bus was a first-class bus, with lazy boy-like seats and all.  it even had a toilet and a small pantry inside!  the food was okay.  you wouldn't get bored of the trip because their video collection is aplenty.  they even had BBC's planet earth documentary!

the trip was, surprisingly, fast.  we left at 8pm (their terminal was at Harbourfront Centre), and i was expecting to arrive at KL around 2 or 3am (as per kim's advise).  but we arrived at corus hotel (drop-off point of aeroline for KL) a little past 1am.

Photos from MalaysiaCentral.com

 Corus Hotel - omg.  this hotel is old.  it looks old.  it smells old.  the room we got, which was a suite by the way, smelled older than my grandma's bedroom.  the hallway and the lobby smelled like a smoking area.  not the hotel to stay in.  perhaps the only consolation we got from it was that it was near the MRT station, Suria KLCC mall and the Petronas Towers.

Photo from hotel's website

actually, we only stayed in here because we had no other choice.  it was 1am, and it was our first time in KL.  i didn't book a KL hotel because, again, as per kim's advise, we can just stay and wait for the Petronas Towers queue, which starts about 5 or 5.30am.  since we didn't want to roam around the city looking for better hotels, my cousin decided to book us a room just so we can have a place to leave our bags with.

Petronas Towers - i was hoping there was more to it than just looking from hundreds of feet above ground.  but there wasn't any.  yeah, it was nice being at the Sky Bridge just so we can say that "yeah, we've been there."

Photo from The Petronas Towers

we went to the tower around 7am, just in time that the guards started allowing people to go in.  or so we thought.  the queue was very long.  and we had to wait in line for more than three hours.  on their tv display, it flashed "Issuing Package A Tickets for 1:30 p.m."  i panicked.  1.30pm, and we were like three or four lines away from the ticket booth.  OMG.  don't tell me we lined up three hours for nothing?  good thing, the ticket lady were able to squeeze us in and allowed us to go with the current batch of visitors.

so, the Sky Bridge was airconditioned and the view was not breath-taking as movies claimed it to be.  probably because when you look down, you see a construction site and a few buildings with good architecture, but that's all.  i remembered going up Sears Towers (when it was still called Sears Towers; according to Wiki it's called Willis Tower now), now that was fun and interesting.  i didn't only see the city and its surroundings, i learned something about the tower.  it had historical and interactive exhibits.  i think petronas lacked that.  yes, there was a short video before you go up, but that was it. 

Suria KLCC - this was the mall connected to the towers, so naturally this was where we had our lunch.  omg.  lunch was bad, maybe except for the satay ross ordered.  and to think we even ordered western food from one of the food stalls.  we wanted to eat at nando's, but they were serving breakfast meals only at the time we arrived, and we were really really hungry.

Photo from Wiki

we walked around the mall for a while, then went back to the hotel to rest.  we also needed to get going for our check-in at Genting.

Go Genting Bus - to get to genting, we rode the Go Genting Bus.  for 10RM, inclusive of bus ride and Genting Skyway (Cable Car), it was worth it. 

Photo from Go Genting site

it took about one hour from KL to Genting.  the bus ride was smooth and fast.  kim also told me that we could get or hire a cab to go to Genting, but it would have been expensive (150RM he said).  good thing i found this.  yes, my research paid off :)

the Go Genting Bus can only go as far as the bus terminal in Genting.  so after dropping us off, we took the Genting Skyway Cable Car.

Photo from Genting site

the distance from the terminal to the Genting Hotel was about 3.4 kilometers long!  imagine that!  scary and exciting at the same time :)


Theme Park Hotel - the hotel's facade looks old, probably because of the weather.  but the rooms, omg.  i love the rooms.  the rooms were not decorated at all, just the staple stuff you see at any hotel room.  but for me, it had that homey feel like Baguio.

Photo from Genting site

i booked our hotel rooms through Hotels.com.  they gave us three adjacent rooms, with one queen size bed and a single bed in EACH room.  the rooms were so spacious, and each one had a door that can be opened from the other room.  so yeah, we could go through each room without using the main door.

this is the room that we got:

Photo from the website

this is a deluxe room, the only choice i had when i was doing the booking.  the actual room is so much more spacious and bigger than the picture.  the bathroom was spacious and clean as well.  i didn't know that the rooms were that big so i booked three rooms for the six of us.  had i known, i would have gotten two rooms only.  but it was okay, it was worth the cost actually.

well, maybe except for the buffet breakfast.  they served local food along with the usual cereals and bread and juice.  in short, tolerable for those who are used to malay and indian and chinese and singaporean food.

something about hotels.com, i'm starting to love this site.  i signed up because i wanted to have more options when it comes to hotel rates since my family would be spending a week here in singapore.  my friends suggested zuji and agoda, but hotels.com, so far, had the cheapest rates.  a few weeks after i signed up, they even gave me a 10% off voucher, which was very handy when i booked a triple room at V Hotel for six days.  imagine, from the hotel's usual rate of $200, it went down to about $150, plus another 10% off!

going around Genting would have been fun if it didn't rain.  yeah, it was dead cold already, and it still rained.  my hands and legs felt stiff because of the cold.  i also wished that we had more time to spare. 

Genting to SG - aeroline doesn't have a Genting-SG route, but Transtar did.  oh i love Transtar!

going back was such a problem for me because time was a big consideration.  my family's flight back to Manila was at 1am, so they had to be at the airport by 11pm.  also, it was a sunday, and i didn't want us to be back so late because we had to go to work the next day.  at first, ross and i thought of flying through airasia or tiger.  by plane, it would only take about an hour from KL to SG.  but kim and my research convinced me out of it because it would have been even more tiring.  imagine, a bus ride from genting to KL would take about an hour.  then from KL to their budget airport will take an hour and a half.  and to get to the airport, we would have to take a cab, which i didn't want to because i heard that taxi drivers in KL were like the taxi drivers in Manila.  so NO.

Transtar also have these first-class buses, but way better than Aeroline.   we rode on a 16-seater bus with seats like this...

Photo from Transtar site

Photo from one of those blogs

yup, it's a real lazy boy-massage chair.  it also has a LCD display that allows you to watch movies and play games.  they're first-class seats, only on land.  they have more movie choices than Aeroline, but they don't have the BBC documentaries :)  oh, and their food was better too.  too bad they didn't have a portable toilet inside the bus.  the travel time was the same as that of Aeroline's.  the ETA they gave me was around 8.30 to 9pm, depending on the traffic.  but we arrived at Lavender MRT at 7.30pm.

the only thing i didn't like about the Transtar trip was that it was too bumpy.  and considering there were only 16 passengers, it was bumpier than usual.  the first couple of hours made me dizzy and nauseated.  i slept it off the whole time.  but aside from that, riding Transtar was just super comfortable.

oh, another thing that made me choose Transtar was its drop-off point in SG.  they dropped us off in front of Lavender MRT, where V Hotel was located.