Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Hotel D'99 at Muar

A couple of weeks back, I was hit by a really bad craving for fried fish eggs from my favourite restaurant at Muar and so we decided to spend the weekend at Muar with the intention of popping by Melaka. As this was a January weekend, I figured that my favourite hotel in Muar -Streetview Hotel - would have rooms available and didn't bother making any reservations. Unfortunately, I was proved wrong when we tried to get a room about 12+pm and so my CEB suggested that we try one of the hotels that we had driven past called Hotel D'99. Here is a pic of the hotel he took while we were driving back across the bridge from the Giant hypermart.
This hotel is a far different cry from the boutique smallish type of hotel like Streetview Hotel as evidenced by the size of its lobby. The Chinese male receptionist was very fluent in English and most efficient during the check-in process. We were of course delighted that the price of the room was more than affordable at RM113 inclusive of breakfast.
Here is a picture of the room with its queen-sized bed and extremely basic furnishing. There is a safe in the clothes cabinet, a mini-fridge, a water dispenser and a small lcd tv that comes with cable TV. All of these in the room work just fine but the flush of the W.C in the toilet was spoilt.
I wanted to change rooms but my CEB was in favour of staying in the current room because of the river view from the windows per the picture below. The bridge in the pic across the river is the bridge which leads to the highway (Highway 5 and not the NS highway where one has to pay toll) to Melaka. I conceded to him only because he could flush the W.C by pulling something within the system beneath the lid. Like he says, Msia hotels are usually pretty ill-maintained.
Breakfast was on the first floor of the hotel and no surprise what the spread (which was decent enough given the price paid) consisted of - nasi lemak. I suppose this is to cater to the large number of Malay guests staying at the hotel which we had originally assumed was catering to the Chinese crowd because of the KTV/lounge/bar on its 7th floor.
For dinner, we ended up at the Delifrance restaurant in the same building as the hotel. This is the first and only Delifrance Bistro in Johor and it has a surprisingly wide variety of items on its menu ranging from soups to ice-creams. That is my CEB(on his iphone as always) with the Delifrance trademark logo behind him and 1 of their ice-blended drinks in front of him

We both each had a bowl of the lobster bisque which was priced at RM9.90 and let me tell ya, ya can't get lobster bisque soup this good at less than SGD5 per bowl anywhere in Singapore. Although it didn't have that much meat, it was warm, creamy and most satisfying.
I have been on a croissant binge recently and compared to the SGD6.90 I paid for the same croissant from Delifrance across my office, the croissant below only cost RM9.90. However, the chicken did not taste like chicken but more like tuna. The Slog Reviews: 7/10.
My CEB did better than I did with his cheesy baked seafood rice which looked and tasted pretty good.
My CEB and I concurred that Hotel D'99 is a viable alternative to staying at Streetview Hotel so if one is en route to Melaka and needs a place to crash for the night, one can swing by Hotel D'99 at No 173 Jln Abdullah 84000, Muar.

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