My wife and I stayed at the Traders Hotel for 10 days in May. We probably would stay there again because of the location and price, but we'll expect more smiling, well-meaning, amateurish service from a young and inexperienced staff. There were about a score of incidents showing lack of training or supervision that made the hotel name seem like Traitors--to the good name of Shangri-la. There was no shower curtain in the bathroom so the shower water splashed onto the floor in front of the toilet, etc.
Traders and the better-managed Mandarin Oriental are the only two hotels in one of the most magnificent adult playgrounds in Asia. You can walk from the hotel lobby to the Convention Center third floor, admiring more than a quarter-mile of panoramic, ever-changing 30-foot floor-to-ceiling vistas of the KL City Centre park, waterfall, jogging track and tip-to bottom of the diadem-like Petronas Twin Towers. One rainy night we walked easily to an 8 p.m. performance of "My Fair Lady" at the Convention Centre auditorium. Tropical rain heightens a sense of grandeur and safety as you walk through the carpeted convention center gallery to the covered walkway to the Mandarin Oriental Hotel and then to the rather covered walkway to the giant Suria Shopping Centre at the base of the Twin Towers. On the top floor of the Ramlee side of Suria Centre can be found at least ten delightful Thai, Lebanese, Persian, Japanese, Cantonese, Indonesian, Indian, Malaysian restaurants with tables by the walkways like sidewalk cafe tables, each with a view of the twin towers through the transparent ceiling windows.
Traders' fitness center provides 26th floor views of the convention center, high rise buildings, and the Mandarin Oriental pool as well as TV screens on each elliptical trainer/treadmill. Traders provide a network cable for Internet on a $15++ for 24-hour basis. We preferred to use an Internet kiosk in the lower-priced and large Sungei Mas shopping center (15 minute walk away where an ever-busy Best Rate money changer inside and to the right of the main Jalan Sultan Ismail entrance gives the best rates), which provides faster connections for $1.20 for the first hour. At the Traders sixth floor restaurant, the food (especially the lobster bisque) is delicious and original, but we preferred the ambience and food at the Mandarin Oriental's Pacifica Restaurant. Traders have Star Movies and HBO, and the cable TV was down only once for about 20 minutes while we were there.















