Kaeru's Online Journal
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Bagan Lalang, Sepang
Bagan Lalang, is a small public beach about an hours drive from Kuala Lumpur. It's very easy to get there as it's on the same highway to get to KLIA and LCCT. You basically take the turnoff to the Sepang F1 and LCCT from the KLIA highway and then take the road to Kuarters KLIA. From the roundabout, keep going straight. After that just follow the signs to get to Hotel Sri Malaysia, Sepang and Sungei Pelek. You'll end up at the beach.
The beach is rather clean with white sands, though the water is muddy as a lot of the west coast of Malaysia consists of mudflats, and there are mangroves and a river nearby. So expect to dig up little crabs and clams when building your sand castles. At high tide, it doesn't get deep and is relatively calm so kids can play close to the shore.
There are shady trees all along the beach, so you can lay picnic mats and such and stay in the cool of the shade.
Along the narrow beach road, there are stalls that sell the usual snacks, toys and floats and t-shirts. If you're not into swimming, you may want try kite flying and all sorts of kites are available at reasonable prices.
Unfortunately there are no good public facilities, especially toilets, showers and changing facilities. There is only one small shack where you have to pay about 0.80sen for a shower with very low water pressure and only two shower stalls. It's not very clean. Simple public showers by the beach with changing rooms would have been much better.
Food, there are a few seafood restaurants. Unfortunately these seem to be poorly managed. There didn't seem to be enough places for the amount of people on the weekend, and the restaurants seem ill equipped to handle the weekend crowd. Since there are no table numbers, menus and apparently staff, you're going to have to chase people around and check whether what you've ordered is really coming and figure out the system. We had to wait over an hour for our food and drinks.
Overall this place has much promise, since it's very accessible now due to the KLIA airport. It's a shame though that there isn't better support from the local government. If the restaurant owners got some assistance in basic F&B management they could be doing much better. Similarly improving the public facilities, including the water-front shops would do wonders in getting more people to come back and improving business opportunities for the local folk. This is where the BN government has really failed in terms of "development". While a few folks probably got millions, from the highway development, the lives of the local folk could do so much better with a little bit of assistance and guidance.
For now unfortunately it's not worth a return trip. Without good facilities, it's hard to come with kids, and if it's faster to drive home to eat, might as well eat at a good restaurant in the city. Hopefully things could be improved to warrant a return trip in future. Lumut Jetty is a very good example of how things can be improved with a little bit of government support.
Avillion Admiral Cove
Still on the lookout for a comfortable family weekend getaway around Malaysia within 2hrs drive. Previously we tried Thistle which according to Internet ratings, has quickly risen to be the No.1 resort in Port Dickson. At around RM500/night net, it's also rather on the expensive side for regular weekend trips.
This time, we gave Avilion Admiral Cove a try. It's quite new, and much cheaper than it's sister resort Avilion, Port Dickson. Net rates for weekends is only RM250 net (cheaper with promotions) and around RM280 for seaside view.
Rooms
The cheapest superior rooms are very spacious, new and clean. The only negative for some, is that the bathrooms do not have baths, just shower. More than enough space for a family of 4 with two small children. Also a nice sofa as in Thistle for you to lie down and read a book or afternoon nap. Even with the rooms without a view of the sea, you can still see it from your balcony. It's only a little bit more (RM20) for a better view, so I would recommend this upgrade. For a business trip or conference though, it would be even better. One of the few hotels, in which the desk actually is a proper working space with proper adjustable chair. It also has free unlimited Internet, which I didn't try out (hey.. it's a weekend getaway). It passed my moldy dust allergy test and I had a good nights sleep. TV with usual limited selection of Astro channels and all important Disney channel. Unlike other hotels, each room has it's own air-conditioner. Not sure how efficient this is, but it does allow you to control the temperature or even turn it off unlike most hotels in Malaysia which are freezing cold
The other room facilities are all there, electric kettle, fridge, hair dryer etc. The things missing that matter to me, was a lack of indoor slippers (apparently available upon request) and some sort of mechanism for hanging wet swimmers.
Facilities
I didn't get to try out all the facilities, there is gym, tennis and pool. Pool is the important one for the kids. It's not a huge pool, but it has two kid pools and the main pool isn't too deep. It also wasn't very crowded at all, so it seems the others were interested in doing other things, which is good for us. It would be good to have a water slide, but it was fun enough just to be in the pool for my daughter.
Beach is much better than Thistle. It's a 5 minute walk to a private beach, and it looks to be the same stretch of the main beach of Port Dickson. Clean with fine sand to make sand castles and such.
It's a marina too, so there are charter boats for fishing and cruises, if you don't have your luxury yacht berthed there.
Breakfast buffet is included. For the price, it was as expected and there is enough variety of local and continental dishes.
Getting There
Very easy, it's basically 5 minutes on the right after the end of the Port Dickson highway. You can get there in around an hour and half or less from Kuala Lumpur once you're on the North South Highway.
Summary
Definitely recommended for family weekend getaway, and possibly for a business retreat. The price is also affordable enough for a family to come back again more often.
Thistle, Port Dickson
Thistle Hotels http://www.thistle.com a UK chain recently opened a new resort in Port Dickson.
We're always on the lookout for close getaway places for the weekend, as a break for the parents, and enjoyable for the little ones. It should be affordable too.
One of the problems, is that most of the local places in the range of RM150-250, are usually not neat enough to be relaxing for me. Also a lot of the rooms tend to be dusty, with mungy carpets and air-conditioners. For a person allergic to dust, it results in having a weekend with flu like symptoms, rather than recovering from stress.
Thistle has none of this. Unfortunately is a bit on the high side, expect to pay around RM500/night in total with extra charges. Breakfast is included though.
Rooms
Clean, warm and cozy. The room is not too different form Hilton KL Sentral, with a 32in LCD TV and a cozy corner to read books. Little touches like tags promoting Malaysian latex mattresses shows attention to detail. The usual tea and coffee facilities are there also. It would be great if they had Milo sticks for the kids too. There is also Internet connection, but yeah right.. as if I'd pack my laptop for a weekend getaway. Didn't test it.
If you pick the sea view room you get lovely sunsets and a view of the pool.
Facilities
The pool is awesome, huge with two kid pools with water slides. Endless fun for the kids. There are also kids rooms, tennis courts and beach activities. The beach was clean, but being Port Dickson, it's not white sand and blue ocean as it looks like on their website. For those with older kids, the banana boats and kayaks rates were reasonable.
There are three restaurants, but we didn't try them out. The breakfast is great though and what we expected for the price, although it seemed at times the staff were overwhelmed. They have only been open for a month when I went there, and the for hire signs are still around.
Getting there
It's really easy, it's on Google Maps too. Basically it's North-South highway, Port Dickson exit.. then Port Dickson highway.. and at the end of the Port Dickson highway, turn left and there are ample signs letting you know that you're on the right track to Thistle. For me, it's a little over an hour and a half driving from Subang.
Overall, I would recommend this place. As mentioned before the only gripe is price, if it was about RM150 cheaper, it would be some place the family would go to more often.
