Guesthouse Name: Check Mate Guest House
Address: 8, Jalan Rembia Off Jalan Tengkat Tong Shin, Bukit Bintang, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
[Edit: this place was terrible and it has since closed down. This review is left as an archive.]
I stayed at the Check Mate Guest House in Kuala Lumpur. I booked online for the rate of $12.75 USD and picked it for its location off Bukit Bintang, which is a popular area for hotels.
For cheap guesthouses in KL I usually stay in the Chinatown area. I have found that the cheap places in Bukit Bintang to be more run-down and it is better to pick something mid-range. Staying at this guesthouse confirmed that theory.
I checked in and the room I was allocated was mouldy smelling. I turned the lights on and they kept flicking on and off. Then I couldn’t turn them on at all. Occasionally the lights would flick on again. After the person on duty agreed that the wiring was on its way out, I was allocated to another room.
My new room was less mouldy but without a window.
It looked like a spare room that hadn’t been used for a while. I went into the bathroom and there were cigarette butts in the toilet. I flushed and the cistern didn’t refill.
After working out what was going on I found that the tap to the toilet was turned off. I turned the tap back on only to find that the reason it was turned off was because the sink had no tap. Every time I needed to fill the cistern I had to turn the tap on and watch the sink turn into a water fountain.
There was wifi in the room and the usual KL guesthouse breakfast of toast and coffee. There is an amazing Indian restaurant across the road so I went there.
I was only here a night and I had too much to do to be bothered to move. I couldn’t wait to get out of there. Overall this place was too run-down to recommend. They would be better off to renovate and rebrand.
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