We check out from St. Regis at 2-ish, dashed home, repacked another set of clothes and we’re off again for a week on the road – a reprise of our roadtrip from June 2019!
We split this week into 2 segments, the first half in KL and the latter part in Klang so it made sense that while the first would be at Hilton Doubletree KL (revisiting this since our last visit pre-Covid 2019), the 2nd was Hilton Doubletree Shah Alam I-City, a fairly new Hilton property which opened just 2022. This comes highly recommended by Gugu J and Grandpa J who typically stay here when travelling here for work or to visit family given its location conveniently smacked in between KL and Klang.
We kickstart the trip with durian!
Nothing much has changed about the hotel.
Welcome by the standard DoubleTree Cookies!
Lounging by the Executive Lounge at L34…
Settling into our room… Daddy adds on a rollaway bed which the were nice enough not to include in the final bill.
What’s a day out without Mummy’s homework!
Breakkie at Makan, most of the setup is identical to what we recall it to be, save for the new honeycomb!, green corner and Kidz corner (thankfully we didn’t see this previously lest Daddy make us sit there!). There’s also the live prata station that whips up a wicked prata.
And what’s a holiday without our usual prep time, and TV as reward! As if a deja vu we get so engrossed with TV and again miss the opportunity for a dip in the pool. You can checkout the pix from before, nothing much has changed on this front.
We spent a lot of time on the 34th…
After 3 days, its time to leave. We checkout at 3pm from KL and make our way to Klang/Shah Alam.
Interesting that the Doubletree Shah Alam is located adjacent to Wet World (or was it Water City) Shah Alam. Parts of it looks like Sunway Lagoon which we also wrote about back in 2019, OK maybe just a subset of it, and not as big.
In the absence of an exec lounge, there are welcome drinks and daily snacks/canapes at the Axis Lounge.
They upgrade us to a Deluxe Family Suite, but because this is a fairly new (small-ish) property there is no executive lounge, but in the absence of which, invite guests to the Axis Lounge for welcome drinks and light bites. Here’s also a nice gesture with welcome amenity.
For the record, it wasn’t all work and no play!
There’s a fancy Games Room on Level 5, gym…
And an infinity-like pool!
We lap up breakkie and head to Kidzania. This was totally unplanned since we only considered Petrosains which we we planning to visit on Friday. Nonetheless Daddy found out that Kidzania had reopened which he thought surprising given the SG one shuttered indefinitely, so we check out tickets the night before. Note you get a discount for repurchasing this before 12pm the day which we unfortunately did not qualify for since we only booked it past dinner the night before. Anyway they’ve all gone cashless so remember to book out your tix ahead. There is also a pre-registration (uploading a selfie of oneself) prior to arriving at the gates.
We proceed with our check in and boarding passes were now in the form of wrist bands. Boarding was a breeze with the automated facial recognition.
Seems some of the store fronts have changed. Notable updates include A&W for McDonald’s (you do need to pay to ‘work’ there since you would get to keep the meal you whip up, comprising burger/hotdog, root beer and waffle ice-cream.
Here’s us enjoying the fruits of our labour…
The others include:
1. F&B: Yayoi, Subway and Tealive. Daddy quipped ‘for the life of me can’t figure out if it’s pronounced Tea-live, or Tea-life’! Note Tealive (whatever and however its pronounced!) had the longest wait list so take note if you’re a fan of bubble tea and making your own bobas, do make sure you register early (yes as simple as rockin’ up and telling the kakak your name so she notes your name on the record).
Well F&B here implies food outlets with a kid training centre and a separate food outlet operating at what Daddy says are astronomical prices!
2. Non F&B – well Foodpanda has a delivery system which we enjoyed doing. Here’s a pic of us with Pao Pao.
We didn’t realize the last trip that there was a parents lounge which our parents this trip took turns hiding at (grandpa and grandma pretty much camped there for most parts).
Here are some of the other random pix..
Working at Foodpanda (with Pao Pao in the back!)
Didi doing his delivery rounds, part-timing as a housekeeper at the hotel, and moonlighting as a wannabe-magician at what must have been his favorite gig at Urbano’s Magic Shop.
Jie Jie at the florist, and her own delivery round.
At the hospital!
Some other miscellaneous jobs…
Daddy says he was on this radio station a couple of times previously…
Map of the park
Us in the prison, and the parade where we meet the mascot KZ, and a final family pix before we head out.
At the end of the day, we earn like $200 KZ Dollars between Jie Jie and I – the equivalent of 2 erasers which we redeemed! Life must be hard as an adult… working your butt off all day for a day’s wage which buys nothing more than an eraser…
