A week earlier, my hubby told me that he will be going to KL for training. After I got to know that he planned to drive there during the wee hours, I decided to take a day off to accompany him.
We found a good budget hotel at Kota Damansara area. At first, we were quite worried of the accommodation around there as there seems to be not many budget hotels besides all the 4-5 star hotels. I checked out Royale Bintang and it was totally out of question. Then my hubby’s friend mentioned about Tune Hotels, unfortunately it was fully booked for that day we wanted to stay. So I tried my luck on Google and it brought me to Smart Hotel. I was quite convinced with it due to its location and room rate. After reading through the comments, someone recommended Media Hotel instead as she didn’t like the service provided at Smart Hotel. So instinctively I searched for Media Hotel. It was indeed a very impressive budget hotel with modern rooms and facilities at an attractive price of only RM118Nett! Furthermore it’s only a few KM away from my hubby’s training center.
So we departed from Penang at 12AM (yeah we travelled on midnight!). Due to the wee hours, we couldn’t stand the tiredness and took a 30-minute nap in the car at one of the R&R’s. And with the help of GPS , we managed to find our way to Kota Damansara and arrived safe and sound at 5:30AM. Upon checking in, we were told that there were no queen-bedded rooms available. We argued that we already booked for the room for that day and informed the receptionist that we would be arriving at 4am-6am! After some checking, the guy at the reception managed to find a room without windows, we gave in. But then again we were told that we will be charged an extra RM60 for early check-in. I didn’t remember hearing the receptionist mentioning that when I called for booking. Nevermind, we were tired and we needed a room badly. Anyhow, it’s reasonable for any hotels to charge that as you are checking in half day earlier than the usual check-in time.
Hubby slept for 2 hours before leaving for training. I continued to sleep until 1.30PM, if not for the cleaner who knocked on my room, I don’t think I would be up by then
. Went for a shower and dressed up for lunch. Decided to give a try at the cafe downstairs owned by Media Hotel. I was starving and I ordered Banana Leaf Briyani Rice + 1 chicken drumstick + 1 curry egg + 1 Teh Tarik and it costed me RM13. Reasonable?
When hubby came back from training, we headed to The Curve, again guided by the stupid GPS who nearly brought us to Kepong! I really lost my trust to that GPS as it always lost its signal, unable to detect satellite, and the instructions are not clear! Instead of asking you to make a U-turn, it says ‘Turn right and then turn right”… -_-” You really need some intelligence to use GPS, when you’re supposed to turn right, it missed out!
Finally when we arrived, it’s almost time for dinner. After inspecting each and every eatery outlet, we decided on Gardens. It is a very nice restaurant with a garden-like ambience. The restaurant is surrounded by fake greeneries and a white grand piano sitting at the center of the restaurant. I had Spaghetti with shrimps and extra virgin olive oil (RM17.90) and hubby had Sirloin Steak (RM29.90). The prices were quite reasonable and the service was damn quick. Our food arrived within 5-8 minutes.
The next morning, I suggested PappaRich for breakfast. It has almost the same concept as Old Town except that the bread used is different. Hubby didn’t quite like it as he finds it to be relatively expensive. Well, I had steamed bread with butter and a cup of hot white coffee (almost RM8 for these 2 items). I had to agree that it is expensive but if we never tried, we never know how it’s like.
After breakfast we went back to the hotel to pack our stuff and prepared for check-out. We then proceeded to IKEA, it seems like a MUST for every KL holiday-maker to visit IKEA. The main purpose of our visit is for the infamous Beef Meat Balls in its signature brown sauce! It was so yummy and we were full after having 7 meatballs each. This marked the end of our KL adventure.
On the way back to Penang, we dropped by Ipoh for dinner. It seems our trip is always full of makan trips! LOL!! We landed on “Lou Wong” Bean Sprout Chicken rice restaurant. Honestly, the competitor (Aun Kee) is a better one as I remembered eating the bean sprouts non-stop (I’m not a bean-sprouts lover but I only love Ipoh’s bean sprouts!). Lou Wong’s chicken wasn’t that fresh either compared to Aun Kee. Anyway, we had a fruitful trip this round.
written by appletan