Worst Part of our Stay in KL
We had booked a room for one week at Hotel Chinatown Inn more than a week in advance, but the night we arrived, were told that our room had been given away! This was due to some error processing our credit card (for the booking fee), which is a visa and should have worked. It would not have been a big problem if we had been notified in an appropriate amount of time of the failure & we could have given them another credit card number. But we had not been contacted at all and were told "Now we are fully booked," just like that. Our first time in Malaysia, first time in KL, it's late at night and not sure of where anything is, and the hotel basically told us to bugger off. This gave us quite a fright and a bad start to our holiday. Finally, after I pitifully approached the manager about what our options were since we didn't know where to go for the night, she told us there was a room available at the other branch, Chinatown 2, just a couple doors away. Things were about to get even worse, if that was possible.
The first night in that hotel was a nightmare. We knew there was noise from the night market and we were prepared to deal with it as all part of the cultural experience, but "noise" as a description of what was happening outside our wall-length window would be the understatement of the year. The night market quieted down about 11:30, then the racket from packing up the metal scaffolding began. After that there was the roar of the garbage truck about 3:30-4:30 a.m. We had a horrible, sleepless night and changed rooms the next morning to something more "interior."
The second room was still noisy due to the broken toilet constantly gushing water. We reported this to the staff, who explained it would "take time to repair" and asked if we would like another room. So we switched again.
The third room was windowless, as quiet as a grave, great for sleeping. However the total lack of light was a little bit inconvenient in that it made one rustle around in the dark for a long time in search of a light if you had to 'go' in the middle of the night.
This third room was not so bad, but we were so annoyed with the hotel by this time that we decided to switch hotels. Just down the road, out of the chaos of the nightmarket, was a lovely accommodation having bigger rooms for a slightly cheaper price. We'll never do Hotel Chinatown (1 OR 2!) ever again.