We left Sungai Petani (SP) with lots of mooncakes, Old Town White Coffee and pamelos in our car boot. The drive from SP to Kuala Lumpur (KL) was about four and half hour. Driving along the North-South Highway (PLUS), we made pitstops to break the monotony of the drive. Restoran Jejantas (literally, restaurant located on an overhead bridge spanning both sides of the highway) was our favourite place for stopping.
Not only the place has lots of carpark lots, it has big toilets and a variety of restaurants. We could choose among the many choices available, Malay Mixed Rice, KFC, Burger King, A & W or Dunkin’ Doughnut. There is also an Adidas sports goods outlet for us to shop too.
The journey would have been shorter if not for the time taken to locate Golden City Condominium located along Jalan Ipoh in KL. We took an earlier exit from the highway thinking that we could avoid the peak hour traffic jam in KL city. But we still ended up going round and round for a while getting stuck in a jam before we finally managed to locate this condominium allocated for us under our brother-in-law’s participation in a time-sharing scheme.
We have heard horrible stories of a time-sharing scheme. The hard-sell tactics used aside, participants are asked to pay a certain amount of fees upfront to secure a number of holiday stay in participating accommodation facilities such as condominiums, apartments or hotels. Our kind brother-in-law let us use part of his yearly quota since he and his family won’t be able to finish it all due to time constraint.
We already had a taste of what it was when we stayed at the condominium in Port Dickson on our first night of the trip. The place was poorly maintained and was not the best located. And the Golden City Condominium (http://www.leisureholidays.com.my/) located next to the Dynasty Hotel gave us the same rundown experience. The management office was located in one of the condo units in the building. We were greeted by two polite Malay ladies who were watching TV in the apartment when we stepped in.
After getting the keys and went into our allocated unit, we were quite ok to discover the place spacious and had a good view from the living room. However, it was quite obvious that this apartment had not been occupied for quite some time. The floor and bed were dusty. And we also struggled with the remote control to finally realize that only one of the three bedrooms had air-conditioning working.
So I called the Malay lady whom I had just met when I checked in. To my huge dismay, she replied matter-of-factly that all the condo units suffered the same air-con problem, only one of the rooms would have the air-con working. The last straw was that she did not express even a tiny sense of apology.
We have had enough of rundown apartments. We wanted our last night of this driving trip a pleasant and memorable one, so we decided to check out the newly renovated Crown Regency (http://www.crownregency.com.my/crown/). For a promotional rate of RM350 a night, the experience was a whole world of difference!
I am not sure whether all the accommodations available under this time-sharing scheme are of the same standard. Or is it just those available in Malaysia? All the apartments that we stayed in during this trip suffered from poor maintenance and management. A lot of my friends said that this is one of the major problems facing the Malaysia property scene.
Malaysia has a lot of natural resources that offer great tourism values, if only there is proper management and upkeep. Looks like a lot more need to be done to attract both first-time and revisiting visitors.
More info on time-sharing scheme:
http://www.crimes-of-persuasion.com/Crimes/InPerson/MajorPerson/time_shares.htm
http://www.globalresales.co.uk/timeshare-resorts/Golden-City-Condominiums.html
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