Tune Hotels.com, Kuching

I didn't think that I would be staying in any Tune Hotels so soon after my last experience with Penang's Tune Hotel. Granted most of the Tune hotels were built in strategic locations, but I remembered the Tune Hotel in Penang was a bit too cramped. It was alright for a night, but to stay for 3 nights with someone I have never slept with (hehe.. hold on to your imagination, don't let it run wild. My sleeping partner in Kuching was Aunt Annie), I just couldn't imagine how we could stay and not get onto each other's nerves.

Nevertheless, the hotel rooms were booked, and I should be grateful that someone spent some time booking the rooms for us. We were supposed to stay at the Singgahsana Inn, but the rooms which we wanted were booked much earlier.

So anyway, this is TuneHotels.com, Kuching. Like I've said earlier on, the Tune Hotels were built in strategic locations and the one in Kuching was located in the heart of Kuching city.


The Kuching Tune Hotel is just opposite Hilton Hotel.

And it is very near to the Kuching waterfront. I took this picture from the window of my room.

The negative part of this hotel is, you have to climb more than 10 steps to reach the reception area. The ramp for people who use wheelchairs was at the back of the hotel. It would be very inconvenient for people who could not climb the stairs.

This is the reception area. It's quite clean, but has one kind of smell, not unpleasant and I think it could be the disinfection chemical they used or some kind of cleaning chemical.

The receptionists were very helpful. I like the idea of a 20-minute internet usage for the guests' convenience. If you brought your laptop and intended to use the internet in this hotel, be prepared to pay RM12 per block of 24 hours.

Oh by the way, don't be fooled by the "from RM8 or RM9.99 or RM18" promotion per night. The concept is something like AirAsia's. You may or may not get it, depending on the dates you choose and that's just the basic cost. If you want air-conditioning in your room you'll have to prepay credit hours in blocks of 12 or 24. A block of 12 hours air-cond credit cost RM13.49 and 24 hours cost RM21.00.

A towel rental and some essential shower basics cost RM5 and you'll have to add a RM10 deposit for the towel, refundable when you returned the towel.

The hotel charges admin cost of about RM9.90. And don't forget about the 10% service charges and the 5% government taxes.

You'll need to pay a refundable deposit of RM5 for your room key card and they only give you ONE card.

So let's just say that you managed to get the RM8 room promotion, and if you only want to stay a night you need to be prepared to come out with at least um.. let me do a quick calculation.

1) Room charges - RM8 + 0.80 (10% service charges) + RM0.44 (5% government tax) = RM9.24

2) Air-Con charges (12-hour block) - RM12.85 + RM0.64 (5% government tax) = RM13.49

3) Admin charges - RM9.90 + RM.050 (5% government tax) = RM10.40

The total bill comes up to RM33.13 and this excludes the towel rental and deposits mentioned earlier.

The hotel room is still very very cheap after adding all the extra charges.

Oh, I forgot to mention a few more things. The check in time is at 12pm and you'll have to check out by 10am. That's a bit too early for some people, so please take note. If you have an evening flight and need to deposit your luggage somewhere, you can ask the Tune Hotel's receptionist for help and they'll charge you RM1 per bag.

If you forgot to bring your hair dryer, you can rent one at the reception for RM1 per day with a refundable deposit of RM30.

There isn't any jug kettle in the room but you can rent them at... ah, it's free, but you'll have to return it within 2 hours. I'm not sure if you need to pay a deposit. Probably yes.

As for the one-eyed monster, the TV, I'm not a TV/movie fan so I never got around to asking if we could rent a TV. I don't think so. The room is pretty small.

The snack corner shares the same floor with the reception counter. If you don't mind spending a little extra for snacks you can get at the Giant supermarket just minutes behind this hotel, then this is a good place to have a cup of drink with your room mate.

The corridor is alright, not too narrow, but I did wonder why the corridor was not fully carpeted. And I missed the floral paintings on the wall along the corridor. Sigh. I saw them in Tune Hotel Penang and fell in love with the paintings. In Tune Hotel Kuching, only the reception floor had this floral painting.

We were given only 1 key card and you can see that most of the time our doors were not fully closed. We booked 4 rooms and specifically asked the receptionist to put all of us near to each other. Most of the time, one of us will be in the other room and to avoid troubling our roommates, we left the door slightly ajar.

Surprisingly the room space was much better than the one I stayed in Penang. This one looks like a normal standard hotel room, only thing the room is much smaller.

I immediately cheered up when I saw the room. I was actually dreading to sleep in the room similar to the one I stayed in Penang last month.

The bathroom was more spacious too. :) - Definitely much better than Penang's.


The space in front of the bed was wider than Penang's.

But... the room was infested with cockroaches. Maybe the word infested is a bit too strong. The first night, I found 1 cockroach in my room and I killed it with my sandal. The 2nd night I saw another one near the ceiling. It was too high to reach and it crawled to I don't know where because it suddenly disappeared. My dad found 2 cockroaches in his room too. The 3rd day, we saw someone from the housekeeping department and told her about it. She knew about the cockroaches and told us that she had already sprayed our rooms. I didn't want to complain further. The sad thing was, this hotel is only 2 months old (or so I've been told).

And well, the air cond was leaking and the walls were plain unlike the room I stayed in Penang. Okay, I'm not going to say anymore. I kind of like this hotel but wished that they would clear the cockroaches once and for all.