Christmas Holiday in Kuala Lumpur 2023 - St Giles Boulevard Midvalley, TRX Exchange, Skyline Luge, Desa City Park

 We went up to KL to spend the Christmas holidays with Daniel! And again, I'm ever so thankful for all the blessings throughout this trip. Let me begin...

Bookings for 2 twin rooms at St. Giles Boulevard were made at a good deal via Agoda, for a total of RM2277.40 for 3 nights with breakfast. Yippee!

Two days before the trip, Daniel announces he is Covid positive. Yikes!

Hubz and I frantically discusses if we should go up a day earlier but eventually decides to book a small room for him at Smile Hotel Wangsa Maju so that he can isolate himself there as he has a roommate at the hostel. So that was settled. Thank God, his symptoms were very mild, just sore throat and slight fever for a day. In fact, I think it was a good thing we went up to KL to be with him during his isolation, at least he wouldn't feel so lonely. 

Day 1

We started our journey from JB at 6am. Traffic was just slightly heavy which was expected, morever the toll were free! We did a pit stop at Seremban for breakfast, reached Wangsa Maju at 9.30am to pick Daniel up from the hotel and continued our way to Midvalley Megamall.

I requested for connecting rooms at St Giles Boulevard, and luckily they were available. Not only that...

One room was upgraded to a junior suite, at the highest floor, level 28.

Super spacious with an amazing city view.

Bathtub was well used. I practically soaked in it everyday.

Radio and coffee machine.

The usual coffee and tea making amenities.

Made in Australia Ink&Water toiletries.

Feels special with this personalised welcome screen on the TV. 

Made me feel at home because Channel News Asia is available. There were some movies to watch but the quality was not very good, not HD you know. The boys watched The Meg 2 and that's it. 'Low quality' they say.

OK, done with the room! We explored Midvalley Megamall a bit. 

The main Christmas decor this year is epic they said. A European style luxurious mansion.

Day 2

TRX Exchange

The playground. Quite unlike other mall's free playgrounds, this is something extra with water play, a huge play cave and play house.

Saw kids and parents walking around in the mall wet after playing here..hahhaa.

Be warned, on festive peak season like Christmas Eve, almost ALL the eateries had long queues, at ANY given time of the day. There were queues even at 3pm. I thought, if you would start looking for a place to eat around dinner time like 7pm, you will PANIC after seeing all the long queues, serious! Especially if you have seniors and young kids. 

So, it was 5pm when we decided we should just queue for our early dinner here. No time to 'survey' where to eat. 

Very happy with your choice. In fact, I think this was my favourite meal during this KL trip. It was relaxing and fulfilling.

Next, I went to check out Seibu's stationery section. Here, Darren and I played 'Guess How Much' game. Heh.

RM51.00 for a bite sized plushie.

Shinzi Katoh! RM40.80 for stickers.

Someday..maybe. RM1600++ for keyboard.

Nice to have in the office.

We left TRX Exchange and went back to Midvalley by LRT-KTM. The train system is a bit more complex than Singapore's MRT system. Here, there's LRT, MRT and KTM operated by different companies. So a lot of station transfers depending on your destination. We had to do 2 transfers and the journey duration isn't short either, I think it took about an hour. Maybe it would've taken more time by car due to massive jams, I don't know. Nevertheless, this is quite an experience for us.

Day 3

Skyline Luge

This almost didn't materialise. It was supposed to be Darren's highlight of our KL trip. So imagine his disappointment when we tried booking tickets online and it was sold out. Yes, you have to book online, especially on peak season holidays. The website says you was queue on site for tickets subjected to availability but on the day we went, only online bookings were accepted. I checked for tickets online two days before this and it was sold out. But then, I checked again the next day, it was available. Very funny system. With tickets secured, we arrived there around 11am.

The queue. OH the queue. THE queue.

An hour for the Skyride. Another 45min for Luge at the first-time-rider lane. Then queue again for Skyride. It was the longest in the morning, and it got shorter towards afternoon. And then you can queue for the Luge at the 'Ride-Again' lane which moved faster because you don't need the briefing.

So thankful for the weather. No thunderstorm, just cloudy most of the time, not hot either!

Staff was concerned with a kid who had an arm cast, understandably because you really rely on two hands to brake. After demonstrating that he can pull the handles to brake, he was good to go.

We were done around 3pm, after going for 3 rides. Spent a good 4 hour there! So glad that we could include this in our trip.

After a brief break in our room, we were off to Hing Kee Bak Kut Teh for dinner. Michelin awarded, this one. Different style from our favourite one in JB, but generous serving of tender meat though. OK, can pass! 

Then to one of KL's dog-friendly Desa City Park for a walkabout. Lots of decorative lights, and lots of cute little dogs! Some on leashes, some in strollers. 

We need this place in JB please!

Day 4

Back to JB

Enjoyed our breakfast buffet for the last time here.

I wasn't brazen enough to take photos of all the food but it was pretty standard, you know, there are bread, pastries, the egg station, noodle soup, porridge, cereals, kuih muih and few cakes, mini roti canai with dahl, pancakes, baked potato wedges, chicken stew, sausage or ham, hash brown, baked beans and....the nasi lemak section with a variety of add ons like sambal bawang, sambal sotong, chicken rendang, kang kong belacan etc, I highly recommend this one, it was my favourite.

Our journey back to JB was smooth, better than expected. Toll was also free! 

All in all, I couldn't ask for more. With Daniel studying in KL, I guess we'll be making more trips in future!

Sharing Sticker makers / Sticker manufacturers in Malaysia

Recently I came across a creator (artist, designer of stationery and accessories) who has grown quite a following on social media and is doing well in sales I presume. One of her main product is stickers that she designs and have them made by sticker makers / manufacturers / print companies. I wanted to know which supplier she engages as I, too, would like to find a good one, and there are so many out there I didn't know where to start. So as I was reading through her replies to comments and other captions, I found that she doesn't like to share her supplier list or info, citing that 'it isn't fair for others to have it easy' and that it's best that creators go through the trial and error, and all the process she went through I guess.

Is this true that creators don't like to reveal their suppliers/manufacturers? Really?

Well, I'm sharing. Gah.

I designed some sticker sheets and I was looking for good sticker makers in Malaysia. I wanted those that can make the kiss cut stickers where you can peel off from the sheet like this 

So I started looking on shopee for sticker makers. The good thing about shopee sellers is that they accept small quantity orders, even one single sheet. I figured maybe this is the best way to try a few. Turned out, there aren't many sellers on shopee that can do kiss-cut sticker sheets. I tried only 2 sellers and here are my reviews: 

thechaeg - A6, matte, 10 sheets, RM18.00 with free shipping.

The prints were very nice but in darker shade, well, a lot better than my Canon Pixma E410 series. I test-printed with mine in so many settings but none of them were near the original colour shades. However, I realised it was a lot darker after I saw the second shopee seller I ordered from. Also, the individual stickers can't be peeled off easily by fingers like you normally would. The only way I could peel them was to use the sticker tweezer, but I reckon not everyone would have one right? Thankfully I only ordered 5 sheets for each design. I contacted the seller and gave the feedback in which she acknowledged the issue and said she will adjust the setting next time. Honestly, I felt that as a good seller or service provider, you should rectify the issue and produce good quality goods, no? And then I took the risk and ordered from her again, this time, another 2 new designs, 10 sheets each, because she said she has fixed her cutting issue. About the printing shade, she also said that she tried to adjust the print brightness but it turned out reddish. Fine then, I thought all printers will be the same. Theeen, I tried a higher priced seller, but first, some pictures of the stickers made by thechaeg.

Original design. Look the orange cat here and compare it with the print above. Mmmm...

happy2print - A6, matte, 8 sheets, RM22.90 in total.

Faster chat response. Nicer print! Buuuuut, out of 8 sheet, 4 had the kiss cut lines a bit off. Sadly I can't sell those. I gave feedback to seller but all I got was a "I will check with production team". Never got back to me. Strike! But at least, I know the pro printers out there can print better like this.

Original design. Very close!

So the conclusion was that I cannot rely on neither of them for mass production.

After this, I mulled for a couple of days before I realised the solution has always been in Google. I mean, I know it, but somewhere in my mind told me, 'no use wan la, all are vinyl stickers for cars'. 

So then, I started with a simple search on Google. 'Sticker shop Johor Bahru Malaysia'. From the top matches, I listed some and texted my enquiries to them, with the following result and quote:

gogoprint - Cannot do 

imagemagic - A6 mirrorkote, minimum 100pcs, RM102.40 but I need to draw the cut lines myself

stickerbear - A6 mirrorkote matte, minimum 100pcs, RM150 + RM10 shipping fees.

stickermaniac - A6, RM4/sheet if order 12pcs, RM3.20/sheet if order 100pcs.

I put those aside for the time being, because lo and behold as I expected it, sticker shop ads keep popping up in my socials' feed. Nice.

So whenever I came across an ad, I'd directly whatsapp them. And I gathered more! Here they are:

Colorlab advertising - A6 mirrorkote matte, minimum 100 pcs, RM125 + RM8 shipping fees

stickerboom - Cannot do 

sticker.fp - Only prints A3 size

stickerpro - Cannot do

Egoule Print - A6 mirrorkote matte, minimum 50 pcs, RM45 + RM10 for creating cut lines + RM6 shipping fees

Moomoo sticker - Cannot do

Pusat Borong Sticker Label - Cannot do.

After I narrowed down to a few, and after more discussions and confirmation, finally I chose 2 companies to try, Colorlab and Egoule. Here are my reviews:

Colorlab

Awesome print, awesome kiss cut, can peel off easily by fingers. Love it!

Egoule Print

Also awesome! Also love it!

However, I see that the Colorlab sticker sheet curves like this after a few moments. I suspect it's because of lamination as they stated they use mirrorkote matte with lamination. Maybe?

So I have decided to order more from Egoule! Still in the process of determining if the kiss cut lines can be created from the new designs... can't wait!

I hope this post helps you sticker designers out there. There might be more companies and if you already have good one, I hope you're willing to share too luv.