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Find Cheap Accommodation In Kuala Lumpur

We have twice passed by Kuala Lumpur on the bus and once changed planes at the airport so once we had made our plans to fly to the UK from Singapore we decided that this time we would invest a little time in getting to know this city.

Nowhere near as in your face chaotic as Bangkok, or as smoothly modern as Singapore, KL sits comfortably between these two cities in feel and vibe as well as geographically. Though most travellers seemed happy moving on after a couple of days, we invested 12 days in the city, doing our favourite activity of a lot of nothing. Mostly we wandered about, getting lost occasionally (usually ending up beside a set of bins – though not the same ones – for some reason), hung out at the Central Market and in Chinatown – in particular the Tang City Food Court – and explored by foot anywhere else within walking distance.

During our time here we slept in a few places and have evaluated two different options below:

PODs

Unit 1-6, No 30, Jalan Thambipillay, Brickfields, KL. Tel +603 (02) 260 1434. Email admin@podsbackpacker.com. Web www.podsbackpacker.com

We didn’t know what to make of PODs at first. Though we had a private room, the walls did not reach the ceiling and shared our air conditioning, lighting and sound with the other rooms (PODs) on the floor. At 11pm the communal lighting is turned off and latecomers are left to grope around in the dark until switching on the little green lamps thoughtfully provided in each room. Anywhere else this might have been irritating but we quickly came around to POD living, recognising the energy saving benefits of not having an individual air-conditioning unit at our whim, and noticed how quiet the rooms were as people adapted their sound levels to compensate for the gap between the walls and the ceiling.

We didn’t know what to make of our room at PODs at first

The PODs themselves are snug and sparse. With nothing more than a mattress on a raised floor and the lamp, us and our bags fit well enough, with space to put things around the side of the mattress and a locker for valuables. Our POD had a window but not all do. Bathrooms are shared and – usually it would be Deirdre who coos about such things – I loved the simple and roomy corrugated iron shower units.

New owner Wah, a backpacker himself, is attentive to improving his new business but the place ticks over efficiently already. While we preferred the bustle of Chinatown (a 10 to 15 minute walk away), Brickfields has a few streets of colour and noise worth exploring, and other parts of the city are accessible via the very close by monorail station or by bus. PODs is also very near to KL Sentral Train Station.

Pros
PODs is secure, quiet and well run. Good bathroom area.

Cons
Sharing the lights with neighbouring rooms takes a little getting used to.

BackHome

30 Jalan Tun H.S. Lee, 50000 Kuala Lumpur. Tel +603 (02) 022 0788 Email info@backhome.com.my. Web www.backhome.com.my

Staying in BackHome meant moving into flashpacker territory and stepping up a price grade. For the price of rooms elsewhere we were sleeping in a dorm (74RM) shared with three other couples, but our patch of temporary living space was still larger than the three other places we stayed in the city. Equally the arrangement of the room into double bunk beds – each with their own low lighting, small shelves and plug sockets – and separated by an internal wall maximised privacy, while ample locker space ensured security. The bunk above jutted out further than expected so I did hit my forgetful head a couple of times (but after travelling for months in countries where almost everyone is shorter than me I had by now got used to an almost permanent state of semi concussion).

Though room layout maximised privacy it did cut us off from the banter found in most other dorms in which we have stayed – the main advantage to staying in a shared room. However, outside of our room lay an area armed with comfy sofas, a coffee table and a fan, while down the stairs making friends is easy in the outside seating area of the adjoined café and breakfast seating area. A nice touch is that the names of the occupants of each dorm room are chalked onto the door and I was particularly happy not to be forced to take off my bloody boots each and every time I walked in and out of the building – something that irked a little everywhere else we stayed in KL.

All this we found out during our three night stay but our first impression was of the welcoming and helpful staff who all seemed comfortable pitching in with whatever needed doing, were happy to chat and took the time to show us around when we first arrived. Three nights later we came to the conclusion that Backhome is a lovely, if slightly more expensive place to spend the night in Kuala Lumpur.

Pros
Great common areas and lovely staff.

Cons
The most expensive of the four places we stayed.

Disclaimers: We traded advertising for our stay with each of the guest houses above. While this means we didn’t stay for free it can sometimes feel that we did, and we did not have to make the price to benefit analysis that happens when we hand over hard cash. Rates may have changed since this piece was first published