Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Coming from Brunei then KL's LCCT Airport thru Air Asia's promo fare, we arrived in KL Sentral by Skybus at almost 8 pm. Its good that we booked at YMCA for RM 80/night with breakfast, as its only 5-minute walk from the hub of bus and train stations. Their train system also use magnetic cards similar to Manila’s MRT, but they have much more routes and better organized.

After checking-in, we went to Chinatown at Pasar Seni station to buy some shirts. Dinner at a Chinese roadside restaurant on the corner and middle of Petaling St. in Chinatown was surprisingly expensive given the portion size of food and poor quality of a pearl shake drink which looked good in their menu.

Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia

Wife and I went to Kota Kinabalu three weeks ago, thanks to Air Asia’s promo fare at Php 500/pax from Clark Airport to Kota Kinabalu, booked last October 2009. We stayed at City Park Lodge which is at the city center along Jalan Pantai for just RM 80/night. 

The hotel has a perfect location since major areas are just within 10-minute walk away like Seri Selera, Atkinson Clock Tower, Jesselton Point, seaside food stalls, handicraft market, and all the 5 shopping malls. There is a grocery store and taxi stand in front of the hotel, money changer and cellphone shop at the ground floor, while inexpensive restaurants and bus terminals are just below the hotel and within the block.

Arriving on a Saturday night, we tried claypot and nasi lemak dinner at Sugarbun Café just below the hotel. The claypot chicken and 3-layer tea tarik were good, while the nasi lemak’s sambal sauce tastes too fishy for me. A live Malaysian band was performing that night on the foodcourt, but they’re not as good as a regular Pinoy band. 

The experience is not bad for a RM 24 dinner for two. We bought food supplies and RM 20 sim card with top-up load before getting upstairs to the hotel. The local prepaid sim card with load allowed us to make 30+ minutes of calls to Philippines, during our combined 4 days of stay in Kota Kinabalu and Kuala Lumpur.