A Trip up to Genting Highlands

Genting Highlands, Malaysia is where you would go for cool weather, fun at the theme park and of course, legalized gambling in 6 huge casino's. This is an overview of Genting Highlands.The oldest hotel is the one in the middle of the picture, the Genting Hotel. The colorful hotel o the right is the First World Hotel. With 3000 over rooms (no, its not a typo mistaken), its one of the largest hotel in Asia. This is where I stayed.

Located 6113 feet (1836 meters) above sea levels, expect cooler temperatures in the 20C's when you're going up Genting Highlands. Genting is only an hour's ride from Kuala Lumpur and is usually quite visible at night and during the day, if the sky is clear. Here's Genting from my house in Kuala Lumpur. Look at the set of buildings high up in the mountains.

The drive up to Genting is windy and quiet steep. Car drivers normally switch off their air-conditioners and drive in 3rd gear up the mountain. If you don't like to drive, you can take the bus from Kuala Lumpur. It will cost you RM30 for a trip up and down the mountains. Just remember to drive safely, you don't want this to happen, do you.

If driving up isn't your cup of tea, then you can take the cable car up. Driving up from Kuala Lumpur, the cable car station is about a quarter of the way up. You can also opt to lave your car there and take the bus up. But we opted to take the cable car. The reason we opted for the cable car on the second day of Hari Raya is because of the heavy amount of cars up in the Genting and parking became very difficult. This was a big mistake as the number of people queuing for the cable car was in the hundreds. There was around 30 lines of people, each line having 20 people, waiting to take the cable car up. But to Genting's credit, although we had to wait close to an hour in the queue, the line was constantly moving and the cable cars came quite quickly. Below are some pictures of the queue on the second day of Hari Raya and the cable cars.

And here's the view from the cable car.

Majority of the people visit Genting because of the casino. People come from as far away as Singapore on the weekends to beat the table. There's 6 casinos in Genting; and I visited the one in the hotel I stayed, the First World Hotel (shown below).

The First World Hotel is a 3-star hotel and it clearly showed. My friends arrived at the check-in counter at 12.15 pm but only got to get into their room at 5.30 in the evening. And the room was also so small. I guess this is what you get for a 3-star hotel - lousy service and miserable rooms.

The Genting Hotel and the Highlands Hotel is a 5-star hotel, the Resort Hotel is 4-stars while the Theme Park Hotel and the First World Hotel are 3-star hotels.

No camera's are allowed in the casino's and I was lucky to get away with this one shot before a security guard came out of no where and stopped me from taking more shots. So this is the only view I have of the casino in the First World Hotel.

Drinks are free in the casino cafe. you can also buy limited variety of snacks in the cafe. But most people in the cafe are there for the coffee. I was sitting in one of the very limited number of tables in the cafe munching my sandwich. And in front of me was a guy with bloodshot red eye, chain smoking and gulping down coffee. I casually asked him when he last got some sleep and 2 days was his answer. From the way he looked, I don't think he was on a winning streak.

On the left of the picture, covered by the lady in black, was a very beautiful European lady, who's been sitting in the table since the night before but was not playing. Instead, she was jotting down the winning numbers of the Roulette. I think she was trying to see if there's a pattern to the game. And here's a picture of our winnings for the day.

But if you're not a gambling person, well there's still the theme park. There's a huge outdoor theme park and a smaller, in-door theme park.

And the in-door theme park.

There's ample amount of food everywhere. There's also a food court but beware of the steep prices. A RM1.50 can of drink will cost you RM4 at the food court. I'll leave you to imagine the prices of food in the restaurants.

Just be careful when eating in some of these stalls. The bubur that we took was so expensive and yet so diluted that it was tasteless. When asked to add in more ingredients, they refused and said that everyone liked it. And of course, they didn't refund our money. So just be aware of such vendors.

Well, that's all about Genting Highlands. It's a good place to be for a change of weather.