Hey Hive!
If you missed the last few posts, I started sharing about our first time venturing up into the mountains of Malaysia, specifically to Genting Highlands, where there's an integrated resort there! I've heard about it a lot but never actually been, and Sean was excited to show me around since he used to go there with his family.
Last week, we traveled up into the mountains from Kuala Lumpur by taking a cable car up from the Awana Skyway platform. It was quite a journey from our hotel to Genting since we had to take a car, then a bus, then the cable car up but altogether it didn't take too long and once we got there it was such a relief. And it was quite a view from the clouds going up in the cable car!
Anyway, once we arrived in Genting the first thing we wanted to do was dump our bags in the hotel so off we go!
11 September 2022. Sunday.
We had chosen to stay at First World Hotel since it won the Guinness World Record for World's Largest Hotel! It boasts over 7 thousand rooms or something, and I wanted to see what the hype was about.
Although in hindsight it was definitely not the best choice of hotel to stay. There are plenty of other hotels up there that seem better in comparison.
First of all, check in was kind of a nightmare since it's so popular. It's actually also one of the cheapest hotels to stay here and since it has so many rooms I guess that's why many people opt for it.
There were sooo many people trying to check in as well, and many of them were boomers at the traditional counter.
But most of the self-service kiosks were taken too so we just had to wait until one of them opened up. It didn't take long thankfully, but even then the machine wasn't always working properly and couldn't scan our passports right.
It was quite a pain, and we could see other people also having trouble. I guess that's why there was such a crowd even around the self-check in kiosks.
In the end, we had to try at least 3 different machines before we finally got one that was working properly.
Instead of room keys, you could use an app to unlock the rooms which was a lot more convenient since there was a wait for the room keys too if you really wanted them.
But once we were checked in and had our room number we bolted out of that lobby to go find our room. Because of how big the hotel is, there are 5 towers to it and various lifts going to different floors.
Just finding the right lift to take us to our floor was confusing and quite a walk because of how big the hotel was.
We were in Tower 3 though so it wasn't too bad, but it felt like a totally different wing over here.
They had this modern-looking walkway to get to the lifts for Tower 3 which was quite a ways from the ones for Tower 2 for some reason.
There was also a few murals here just to show that they have 7,351 rooms here that earned them the Guinness World Record.
We even passed by a small restaurant on the way to the lifts. I guess these were fellow hotel guests.
Finally we arrived at the right lift lobby and it did look quite different compared to the more traditional look of Towers 1 and 2. We thought the rooms here would look nicer too.
There are 28 floors in total just in our tower. I'm not sure how many rooms that is.
But even though we chose a non-smoking floor I remember our floor still smelled of smoke for some reason. It's kinda dumb to smoke in hotel rooms since it's a fire hazard and I wish hotels would just have designated smoking areas instead of allowing guests to smoke in the rooms.
Our room number was 12969 so I'm not even sure what the last room number is. But thankfully the app worked and we managed to enter since there was no staff around.
And tbh the room wasn't that great. After staying in the very modern hotel called WOLO in KL, this was quite a letdown. Granted it's older, but the room felt more like a hostel or dorm room than a hotel room for sure.
There were super single beds and a ceiling fan. I don't think there was even air conditioning but thank goodness we're up in the mountains and it was cool enough outside. Other than the safe, it really reminded me of my college dorm room.
The bathroom wasn't great either and you could see everything was pretty old. The beds were also pretty average but at least everything was clean.
It's a good thing we got a deal on the room but at regular price I would be sorely disappointed. I guess all they have going for them is that they have the Guinness World Record. Whoop de doo.
I'm usually not picky with hotel rooms and I think WOLO might've tweaked my expectations since it was such a nice hotel, so it made this hotel a real letdown. At the very least we would only be showering and sleeping there so it wasn't a huge deal. After all, most of our time would be spent in the shops and theme park.
The words translate to: I'm currently at the world's largest hotel.
Now that we were free of our luggage, it was time to explore! The indoor theme park already had plenty of people in here queuing for rides and stuff.
There was even a second floor to the theme park called the Big Top and it wasn't creepy at all going through the clown's mouth, but there was an arcade up there with lots of carnival games.
The indoor theme park had a screen on the ceiling that kept changing colours and making the whole area different colours each time too.
There were already long lines for some of the rides, and I was kinda excited seeing the roller coasters.
The area was pretty big that we didn't know where to begin exploring tbh.
There was so many people around and so many noises from the huge TV screens broadcasting different things to people talking, kids screaming, both from the rides and in general. It was a little too much sensory input for my brain tbh.
It was really quite a sight and we didn't really know what to do first since there were people everywhere. But since we barely ate anything we figured we'd go for lunch.
So we walked through this section to get to the mall area where we figured the restaurants were.
Even though there were lots of people it didn't really feel that cramped thank goodness. The walkways were spacious enough for lots of people to walk through with ample space.
We passed by this very fancy looking Chinese restaurant that had a zen garden and a person playing the Guzheng very beautifully too attract customers I guess.
There was also a food court that looked pretty good with lots of local food that we're familiar with. The aromas wafting from some of the stalls did seem very appealing.
It was also quite a large food court so we'd be spoilt for choice in there.
But we wanted to see what else was available and found more restaurants.
I felt like having some noodles so we went to check out this place called Zok Noodle House.
It seemed like a Hong Kong style cafe and looked quite pleasant. There was also quite a lot of people eating here so we figured it must be pretty good. But there also wasn't a line outside so it was perfect.
We didn't want to get overwhelmed by the choices since there were numerous restaurants here and it looked pretty good so we just decided to try it. Apparently these were their top 10 dishes and they seemed pretty legit.
They had some dim sum as well as different fried dishes.
And of course various noodle dishes as well. I guess the signature was the fresh prawn wonton noodles.
We opted for the BBQ pork wonton noodles, but ordered the dry version. The wontons would come in the soup so we could try both the dry noodles and meat as well as the soup. Best of both worlds, really.
It was quite a big bowl of soup too, not just a small one like you'd expect in the hawker center.
The noodles did look really good and was already a little wet from the sauce but thankfully not too wet. There was also some chili sauce mixed in to give it a little spice. The BBQ pork was nice and tender and not too fatty as well.
The wontons had fresh prawns mixed with some meat inside and was good too. They were bigger than I expected and were nicely seasoned. The soup was light and complemented the black sauce of the noodles well.
We also ordered an appetiser; the Seven Flavours Fried Tofu since this was one of their top 10 items and it looked really good. It was nice and crispy but wasn't seasoned as much as I thought. Still yummy though.
We also ordered the stir fried turnip cake since it looked too good to pass up on the menu, and I think we didn't actually try something like this when we were in Penang. It was pretty good!
We ordered some salted egg custard buns from the dim sum menu since it'd been a while and I wanted to try at least one of their dim sum items.
It was soo melty and liquidy it started to spill the moment I bit into the bun, but it was nice and fluffy and warm.
For dessert we also got one Portuguese egg tart which was nice and crisp on the outside.
I think we ordered a set so it came with a drink as well and we chose the HK style Milk Tea which was quite good, but a little too sweet after eating the salted egg custard buns which are not actually salty but sweet.
It was a very filling meal for sure and refueled us with energy to walk around after that. So we went to walk around the mall to let all the food digest since that was such a full meal.
We came across this huge neon wall for some other restaurant that looked really cool!
But I think that's gonna be it for this post for now! Tune in next week for more as we explore Genting!
Thanks so much for reading!
To find out more about me, check out my intro post here!
Check out my previous post in this series!
TacoCat’s Travels #217 (KL-Genting): Escaping into the Clouds 🌦🌫
