Ariva Gateway Kuching

Ariva Gateway Kuching is one of the serviced apartments by the Ariva Group in Malaysia.  In addition, the other serviced apartments are in China, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam.

 

This "hotel" was picked as it was reasonably priced (a packaged tour that was enquired about listed Hilton as the accomodation, but I don't really need to stay so luxuriously) and was near a shopping centre, so I presumed meals would not be a problem.  How wrong I was!

 

Ariva Gateway Kuching's reception was on the fourth floor of the Gateway Building, the taller half of which was occupied by banks and property firms, the shorter half are Ariva Gateway Kuching.  Of the eight rooms on each floor, four were single hotel rooms with attached baths and the remaining four were serviced apartments which could be expanded to include the hotel rooms that were connected by internal doors.

 

The room was fairly spacious, with plenty of space for two to walk between the beds and the TV, and there was another table at the side so my things were not falling to the floor, unlike the tiny hotel rooms in Japan, where a little table in front of the bed served to hold a tiny TV, a kettle, and whatever little space left was never enough for my things.

 

Only the hotel rooms had balconies, but four compressors (!) shared space on the little strip of outdoor space.  I supposed those compressors served to cool the serviced apartment next door, but thankfully they were not too noisy.

The bathroom was sized decently and not too shabby, although the hair dryer was missing.  Housekeeping did not seemed to believe that there was no hair dryer in the room and wanted to check all the drawers, which I already did, TWICE.  They then deprived room 602 of its hair dryer.

Breakfast was a buffet of fried rice and fried noodles (changed everyday), toasts, hard boiled eggs (which were always very popular when a new batch emerged from the kitchen), porridge, kuehs, little cakes and two types of fruits.  The fried rice and fried noodles were surprisingly not oily nor salty, unlike the other meals I had at the coffee shops.  Pity there was no kek lapis at breakfast.

As Kuching is a city with mostly low-rised building, my room on the 14th floor gave splendid views from the balcony which was quite impossible in densely-packed cities with skyscrapers.   The beautiful clouds probably only appeared on the first day to lull me into complacency, because the lack of cloud cover on subsequent days, especially during trekking at Bako National Park browned me tremendously.

The sharp pointy roof in the far background in the photo below s the Civic Centre, which I decided not to risk a walk under the baking sun. On the right of the photo is the newly-built and expensive Pullman hotel (with its impressive lobby) and attached Hills Shopping Centre.  While the Hills Shopping Centre made for a cool stopping point before returning to Ariva, food outlets there were pricey, in comparison to the coffeeshops and other eateries along Jalan Padungan.

On the first day in Kuching, I made a wrong turn when searching for dinner and was shocked to discover the coffeeshops which were opened earlier had all closed!  Slightly desperate, I was ready to settle for McDonald's when I discovered the neon lights of Top Spot and seafood saved my dinner.