Kireina Genting Villa & Cafe — Hotel in Pahang

This place has definitely seen better days. I booked a standard room from Agoda with breakfast for 2 nights, it cost me over RM1200 for 2 nights stay. I will show you the good and bad, pros and cons of this villa so you can make informed choices if you choose to stay there.

Our room was a standard room where it was located below all the other rooms. It feels more like a stand alone container that is old and maintained enough to function. As it is container, every step we made in the room will shake the floor and things even dropped from the table. Things are either old, rusty, chirpy or does not function properly. The room is noisy with loud car exhaust/ car racing sound from the highway especially at night. It can be peaceful during daytime if the nearby construction is not working.

We were looking forward to chill at the balcony with jacuzzi but there wasn't much of a leg space with a jacuzzi there. The blinds are dried, moldy, rusty with chairs that are too seasoned by the weather to use. Still functional though. Jacuzzi is really nice and spacious but it will need 3 to 4 hours to warm up. The Jacuzzi area is actually a better space to shower if you don't mind the possiblity of people peeping while you shower but it doesn't have hot water for shower. The Jacuzzi itself is noisy when it is on.

Toilet/ shower room is typical japanese size with poor drainage. Shower curtains that does not function properly and hot water that is not exactly hot enough for some people. The entire toilet floor will be wet after shower and could flood too when I wash my hair. As we shower at night, there's zero response from any services/ staff at night, we had to endure cold and wet toilet floor and wet mat throughout the night.

We had complimentary breakfast. There are only 4 choices. Croissant egg and ham sandwich, croissant with big breakfast, bagel with smoked salmon or bagel with cream cheese. We had the croissants variants on the first day. It is nice. On the second day we couldn't pick anything so they opened up the choice to choose from udons. We ordered curry udon and soup udon. Both came with tempura prawn and one with gyoza. The udon was a disappoinment as curry udon was not cooked fully. I am not sure if they follow the true Japanese style of cooking tempura that maintain raw meat even after they fried or they did not defrost the prawn properly before frying it, the prawn was raw and mushy. Teachnically the food here are ready made food to be reheated. We bought a lunch set as well. Teriyaki saba fish set that cause RM44 but quality does not match the price. Dinning view could be better if they chose to trim off the java ferns instead of killing it which makes some of the area looks deadly.

Amenities, concept of the place are all well thought of and nice. The once supposedly romantic chilling feeling reading area feels more like haunted house when looked up due to lack of maintenance. The swing is nice to play with a bit. The pool looks dirty. The jumping net has crackling sounds while we really enjoy the chilling nets and hammock area minus the highway noise.

If you have a knee issues or back pain this place is not recommended. The entire place is covered by uneven steps and it can be stressing to climb up the stairs alone. I personally felt strains on my back and needs every time I walk up and down the area. Pack light if you want to give this place a try.

Overall, service is good during day time, location is easily assessable to food. But quality does not meet pricing. If this is half the price perhaps it might get a 4 star from me but even that, the lack of maintenance is...

We are extremely disappointed with the level of professionalism of Kireina Staff. We booked for 1 night stay (check-in on 20/12/2022) to celebrate my wife birthday (she is 33 weeks in pregnancy), sadly disaster struck, on 16/12/2022, a landslide happened in Batang Kali, claiming more 20 lives with a dozen still missing. As a precaution against additional landslides, the Royal Malaysia Police in Hulu Selangor ordered the immediate suspension of all outdoor recreational activities around Batang Kali until further notice. This rule was extended to all campsites situated around high-risk areas throughout the country for seven days, starting from the day of the disaster. Fearing for our safety, we tried to contact the resort operator to check whether Kireina is fallen under this suspension and we also call to express our desire to postpone / reschedule our check-in. To our biggest disappointment, the resort operator is not very helpful, they kept saying no cancellation / postponement within 7 days from check-in date. They claimed that they are at the safe zone and the police has checked the area and given green light to continue their operation, they then started to respond rudely when we requested for physical evidence / approval from the police. They said: "Here’s our proof , they have went to all side of homestay in genting and check , if it is unsafe they will ask all genting homestays and resorts to close down" "But they told us it was fine that’s why we are all still operating at genting itself". We then again requested for physical evidence / approval from the police as we were not convinced with the proof they provided (it was a 2 second video showing 2 police officers were checking / patrolling a homestay, can't determine the time, date & location of the video was taken and not to mention the content of the conversation as well). This time they replied: “You can believe it or not our policy is one week notice to postpone”. We were so shocked that we couldn’t believe Kireina Management has put business in front of the safety of their guests and how on earth that we could have predicted the tragedy and should have requested for postponement 7 days in advance? They then ended our conversation by pushing back the ball to the booking platform and asked us to deal directly with them, leaving us helplessly and wondering on what...

The setting of Kireina is like that of a retreat.. And the facilities are still rather new. The staff at front desk are friendly and rather obliging, unfortunately we believe Kireina still has a long way to go to justify their high room rates. This place is truly not ready to be opened to the public.

The rooms have no TV, but uses a projector for Netflix... There's no way to increase the volume so you have to watch blur, silent movies on the room wall. They sent a staff to try to "teach" us how to find the volume button, unfortunately even he couldn't find it. The drainage system in the shower is extremely bad so you bathe in 1 inch of water all the time. I brought this up and they said they can't do anything, it's like that. The water pressure and hot water is very unstable so taking a proper shower is difficult, especially at night. The maintenance of the room and bathroom is also subpar as some of the bathroom hardware are falling apart/ mouldy. Reception closes at 9pm so there's no service apart from through WhatsApp and so that depends on whether the pic is still awake. Their cafe "staff" are mostly untrained except for the manager... They can barely understand English. That's still acceptable to us.. But the place I think is severely understaffed cause breakfast takes forever and anything you ask for takes forever as well. I asked for an extra towel and it took 2 HOURS and several reminders. Bearing in mind there's only around 10 or less rooms on the property. They have a common hall with free flow snacks where you can watch movies and kids can play, and a small outdoor play area for kids. These were a really nice touch and we loved that.

Kireina has a lot of potential with the room & property set up. Unfortunately the maintenance and service are well below par, so it's a place we wouldn't return to again and can't recommend anyone to come. Well not worth paying RM700-800 per night for, even with a private jacuzzi with unstable water temperature (first night burning hot, second night nice temperature).

It's only several months old and so many problems with...