Day 1: Singapore - Kota Kinabalu (Malaysia)

I bought the Tiger air tickets to Kota Kinabalu (KK) last year. The flight schedule was supposed to be at 8 o'clock in the morning but a few months later, Tiger changed it to 8pm. At first we were not happy because this would waste our one night accommodation if we only reached there at night. Trying many times to call Tiger but their call center sucks, so we just left it as what it was.

It became our blessing in disguise when we knew that we would go to Korea and only came back to Singapore 1 am in the early morning on the same day of this KK trip. If not for the schedule change, we would have at most 3 hours sleep since we still have to pack and then go to airport by 5am. We also encountered this situation on our back to back Paris, Krabi and Taipei trips so I guess we are always quite lucky in matching multiple flight schedules :P

Tune Hotel
The hotel is located at 1Borneo complex which is 7 km away from KK city center. There is a half hourly shuttle bus to town, so transport is not a problem. The main tenants are 1Borneo hypermall and another 3 upmarket hotels (i.e Novotel, Courtyard and Mercure).


Novotel and Mercure in 1Borneo

Tune Hotel is really the cheapest hotel in the world. I only paid SGD 33 for a 3-night stay! At SGD 11 per night for two persons, I couldn't even get a shared room at a backpacker hostel.


Lobby


7-Eleven and Gloria Jeans in the lobby.


The corridor to rooms


Greeted by an advertisement


The basic package doesn't come with air-con and TV.

But don't worry, a 12-hour air-con only costs RM 13.5 (SGD 5.6) and 6-hour TV costs around RM 6. It was also calculated per use, meaning I could use 6 hour now and then another 6 hour tomorrow. That's fair. :D


A very comfortable King Koil queen bed.


A dressing table that could be lifted up.


Small LCD TV


Door to bathroom


Came with hair dryer and toilet paper, but no towels and toiletries. You could rent them at RM 5 or bring your own.


Shower room


So have you noticed the advertisements everywhere?

The hotel doesn't live up to its motto of "5-star sleeping experience at 1-star price" but more likely a 3-star experience. But hey, for the price I paid this was a very good deal. :D

From these photos you would think that the room looks pretty good, but actually we saw many cracks here and there and the shower room door was broken too. It was such a shame that the the workmanship was so poor since it had just opened its door last year.

So overall this trip only cost SGD 140 per person for both flight and 3-night accommodation. Unbelievable right? :D

Day 2 >>