Melange Boutique Hotel

“Good location and price, Rare budget ‘boutique’ hotel”

A budget 'boutique' hotel a couple of minutes walk from Jalan Alor food Street and the bars of Bukit Bintang? A trendy hotel stay for little more than £20, the price of 2 pints of beer in the surrounding area!? Can that be possible? Well, yes, just about. The hotel is tucked away in a side street… more

A budget 'boutique' hotel a couple of minutes walk from Jalan Alor food Street and the bars of Bukit Bintang? A trendy hotel stay for little more than £20, the price of 2 pints of beer in the surrounding area!? Can that be possible? Well, yes, just about. The hotel is tucked away in a side street behind the food street and a strip of massage shops- when walking here you'll run the gauntlet of 30 kids per shop trying to encourage you to take an overpriced massage. The street is urban gritty but funky- all the buildings are painted in street art, including the Melange hotel which has a cute kitten peering into its windows. It's a thin, six storey block with glass frontage. After an elaborate check-in process and the usual addition of mysterious extra taxes you always get in Malaysia, we were assigned a room on the 5th floor. The impression I got having checked out all the floors is that floors 1 and 2 (shiney wood panelled corridor) and 3 and 4 (swishy curtain covered corridors) are probably better standard than floors 5 and 6 (painted corridors slightly stained carpets). However our room was okay- fridge, big TV, a/c, large comfy bed, good sized bathroom with separate shower room and the best shower we had on this 5 week trip. The room had a window with views of the city skyline over the rooftops and the scruffy tenement building in front. I enjoyed watching KL's infamous rats make their way up the side of the building and in through people's windows. Our room seemed clean enough but it was let down by easily fixable things like staining on the funky white bed headboard which could have been deceased insects or even nasal debris and unmistakably a greasy head print. There were certainly 'boutique' elements such as the storks painted on the ceiling and unusual wire bedside lights, which I think were once insects but have now lost their wings, but then the whole thing was let down by little things like the key card only working on the 10th attempt. We slept well though- the bed was comfy and the room quiet, although the window didn't close properly which allowed more noise in than it would have if it closed. Staff were efficient and spoke okay English. The rooftop bar/ restaurant looked nothing like the photos shown on here. There was no one in when I called, just 2 teen staff watching cartoons on TV. It's a good view from the balcony but you can only access this when the bar is open and it closes early afternoon. With a little investment to tidy up small defects this could be a really nice hotel. However, I guess the conundrum for the owners is that to invest more may mean pushing the room cost up and I'm not sure mid range travellers would appreciate the 'gritty' city surroundings. As it is, it's a perfectly good budget option in a very convenient location.

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