Traveling with the Jones — Sharing Travel Discoveries

Not Your Average Hotel Restaurant: Chynna in the Hilton Kuala Lumpur

by Janis on January 30, 2015

When we stayed overnight at the Hilton Kuala Lumpur hotel early this month, we had high expectations for our room, the executive lounge, and the hotel’s location.

What we did not expect was to dine at a restaurant with world-class Cantonese cuisine and dim sum in the hotel.
Located on the hotel’s fifth level, Chynna is a stylish restaurant with an open dim sum kitchen. We enjoyed a dim sum lunch before our departure from the hotel.

Lunch began with the tea man approaching, wielding his sword-like tea kettle, which he used with great finesse and showmanship to fill your tea cup.

Each of the four of us had a different-colored place-setting with detailed artwork.

The lunch menu offered dim sum to order a la carte or by one of several set menus. We chose the dim sum set 3 menu pictured above.

We admired the dim set utensil settings, with a silver resting piece for the soup spoon and the chop sticks.

This was the first of many delicious courses. At the top, the crystal shrimp dumpling with water chestnut. To the right, the vegetarian “ham” with vegetables and the seafood dumpling at the bottom of the steamer basket. All were light and delicious.

After a busy morning of visiting the Petronas Towers and climbing the steps at Batu Caves, we enjoyed this relaxed-pace lunch. Along with our tea, we requested our favorite cocktails in the hotel, the “Malaysian Mule” made with lemongrass-infused vodka, Kaffir lime juice, brown sugar, fresh ginger and ginger beer, with a stalk of fresh lemongrass. It was the perfect match to the dim sum.

If you are in Kuala Lumpur, regardless of whether you are staying at the Hilton hotel, make a point to have lunch at Chynna.

What’s your favorite place to enjoy dim sum? Please share in comments below.

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A Look Inside the Hilton Kuala Lumpur Hotel

by Janis on January 29, 2015

Toward the end of our 14-day Asian Holiday cruise on Holland America’s Volendam, our itinerary included an overnight stay in Port Kelang, Malaysia, which is the cruise ship port for Kuala Lumpur.

Known as KL locally, Malaysia’s capital city of 1.6 million people is about a 32 mile, heavy-traffic drive from Port Kelang. To maximize our stay, we decided to book a hotel room in the heart of the KL. We used Hilton Honors points to book an award night stay at the Hilton Kuala Lumpur hotel.

The view from room 3205 at the Hilton Kuala Lumpur hotel.

Once our ship arrived in Port Kelang and was cleared for passengers to debark, we headed out to find a taxi along with our friends James and Rick, who had also booked an overnight stay. We located a van-style taxi, and headed off to the city. This was New Year’s Day, a holiday, so the normal traffic was quite light. Still, the drive took about one hour.

The 35-story Kuala Lumpur Hilton located next to the Nu Sentral shopping mall and train station, and right beside the Hotel Le Méridien which is in a twin high-rise building. (While the hotels look the same on the outside, they are very different on the inside.)

The KL Hilton is very modern in its design and decor. The check-in desk was busy with post New Year’s Eve check-outs, but got us into our rooms quickly.

We were assigned to room 3205, a 470 sq. ft. King Executive Lake View Room with Executive Lounge access and complimentary breakfast.

Take a Peek Inside Room 3205 at the Hilton Kuala Lumpur

The hallways are dark with high ceilings and a zen-like quiet.

As you enter the room, there is a wood-paneled hallway with sliding doors on the left to reach the bath and closets.

The room has a large floor-to-ceiling curved window. The view was amazing, as you can see in the photo at the top of this post.

The glass desk, flat screen television and mini-bar /coffee area were sleek and efficient, taking up minimal space in the large room.

Sliding doors opened to the marble bath area, with a separate shower.

The large closet was covered with mirror-covered sliding doors. There was a massive amount of storage space in the closet that is hidden by the mirrored door in the photo above.

The toilet with its high-tech buttons is in a separate, enclosed room.

Outside of the rooms, the hotel is decorated with simple but elegant touches like this fresh flower in the hall way.

The Executive Lounge on the 33rd Floor was open for complimentary breakfast, afternoon tea, evening cocktails, and tea and coffee throughout the day. We enjoyed the art, the views and the fantastic staff when we visited the lounge for evening cocktails.

While we could have enjoyed breakfast in the lounge, we also had the option of enjoying breakfast at Vasco’s, the first-floor buffet restaurant, with many Asian and international food stations with made-to-order food.

The Malaysian Mule was our favorite cocktail at the spacious lobby-level bar called The Lounge.

There are 1o different dining and drinking venues within the Hilton Kuala Lumpur hotel, as well as a number of other choices next door in the Le Meridian hotel.

Chynna, a modern dim sum restaurant with Shanghai Tang style grandeur was our favorite dining experience at the Hilton Kuala Lumpur. It is definitely not your typical hotel restaurant.

Our bottom line on the Hilton Kuala Lumpur hotel:

As a category 5 Hilton Honors property, this hotel is a terrific use of points.
The rooms, service and dining options were all first-class.
The hotel is located in a convenient location for exploring the heart of KL.

Have you stayed in the Hilton Kuala Lumpur hotel? How was your experience? Please share in comments below.

We like to stay at Hilton properties around the world. Check out these posts for a look inside some of them:

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Celebrating New Year’s Eve on Holland America’s Volendam Cruise Ship

by Janis on January 28, 2015

To celebrate the close of 2014, we were sailing on the 14-Day Asian Holiday cruise on Holland America’s Volendam cruise ship.Celebrating New Year’s Eve at sea is one of our favorite traditions to ring in the New Year.

First, we put on our formal wear, and headed to the main dining room. The evening menu was printed in a special “gala” booklet.

We ordered a bottle of festive champagne and tried on our party hats as we contemplated the menu.

There were special cocktails and appetizer offerings, featuring seafood, caviar and sweetbreads.

Crab bisque and the celebration salad were the biggest hits among the soups and salads.

The entrees all sounded pretty great, but we all ended up making the same selection. Can you guess which one?

The surf and turf was terrific.

Choosing a dessert was tough, the most festive and delicious was at the top of the list.

This is the Chocolate Decadence 2014, and it was a good way to end the year.

The big countdown event was in the showroom with a live band.

We choose to ring in the New Year in the MIX (the just added new open area with the piano bar, wine bar, martini bar, and spirits and ales bar.)

We celebrated with new friends, like Virgil from central California.

After the clock struck midnight, we headed to the Crow’s Nest where the party continued.

Have you spent New Year’s Eve on a cruise ship? What is your favorite tradition? Please share in comments below.

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Remembering a Tough but Lingering Visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau

by Janis on January 27, 2015

Today, in a snowstorm, some 300 Auschwitz survivors and other guests gathered at the entrance to Auschwitz II Birkenau to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the camp’s liberation. I was reminded of my visit in April of 2000.

In all of my travels, a visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp has been the most awful place that I have experienced.

The rail track in Auschwitz II-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp.

The horror of the place is seared into my soul.

Although my visit was nearly 15 years ago, just a fleeting thought of the place makes me break out in chills.

The crematorium of Auschwitz.

To be reminded that mankind could even dream of that level of depravity shocks me to the core.

Before our visit in 2000, my group had lunch with the last living survivor of Schindler’s List in Poland at the time. He is pictured above second from the left.

Auschwitz was first constructed to hold Polish political prisoners in May 1940, with the first extermination of prisoners in September 1941. From 1942 through 1944, transport trains delivered Jews to the Auschwitz II – Birkenau gas chambers from all over German-occupied Europe. At least 1.1 million prisoners died at Auschwitz, around 90 percent of them Jewish. Others deported to Auschwitz included 150,000 Poles, 23,000 Romani and Sinti, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war, 400 Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, and tens of thousands of people of other nationalities. Many of those not killed in the gas chambers died of starvation, forced labor, infectious diseases, individual executions, and medical experiments.

As Soviet troops approached Auschwitz in January 1945, most of its population was sent on a death march. The prisoners remaining at the camp were liberated on January 27, 1945. In 1947, Poland founded a museum on the site. It was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979.

The most important lesson that I took away from my visit to Auschwitz is summed in the quote above. “The one who does not remember history is bound to live through it again.”

If you have the opportunity to visit Auschwitz in Poland –as painful and shocking as it is –please go and have that experience.

Read more about today’s events in this NPR story: A Holocaust Survivor, Spared From Gas Chamber By Twist Of Fate.

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