Right off the bat, even if you are a budget traveler, do yourselves a favor - don't even consider this hotel unless they've done a massive turnaround right from staff managing the place to the entire building itself! unless, if you're super desperate for a night's sleep - which was our case. It's so bad, I didn't bother to take pictures.
Gosh, where do I even start? Reception staff (all three of them) didn't bother about us and made us wait for a good 20 minutes before being waited on. Mind you, we had approached one of them and were told that there was only one person who could check us in! What??
We requested for a late check out for the next day which was not available. We offered to pay for an additional half day rate which is quite a normal request anywhere in the world but it wasn't possible either - they didn't understand the concept and we had to pay the full amount. Since we were on an emergency trip to Johor (having had to drive from KL just before midnight, attended a full day's funeral and helped our relatives attend to arrangements with no sleep and managed to break away for a quick check-in at 6pm before going back for prayers at 8pm), we just decided to pay the full amount anyway for all our three rooms with little energy left to argue.
Walking to our room (like zombies from lack of sleep), we couldn't help feel that the hotel was supremely outdated and actually, ironically primed to receive zombies! Imagine a zombie movie at an old hostel. It was almost as if no maintenance was done ever since it first opened. Furniture in the room looked like it was designed in the 70s and was never re-upholstered; we wouldn't even donate the beds to the poor as it was embarassingly in a sad state; and the bathroom? Oh dear. In our bathroom there were two ant trails with broken tiles, while in our brother's room the shower was broken. The airconditioning needed replacement - forget trying to add gas or cleaning it up. Even a fan would've been a better offer! There was an overarching dank and dreary feel to the room topped up with smells of stale cigarette smoke. Small portion of the ceiling already had a tiny hole in it and I reckoned that it would soon be bigger.
We turned on the TV just to create some "noise" and let the kids (our neice and nephew) be occupied for a bit but it wasn't working - did we mention that it was a 30 year old TV?
There weren't even towels available much less other standard amenities and we paid a hundred bucks not inclusive of the additional half day paid in full. Like we said earlier, only if one were DESPERATE. We sorely missed the Thistle at this point but it simply wasn't practical given the situation so we just had to suck it up and spent the night anyway.
Please, just don't bother until a full fledged turnaround is done - it is not fit to receive guests anymore. If given a choice, we wouldn't even rate it at all.
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