10th NHAM Annual Scientific Meeting 2006

Recently, I had a privilege to attend the 10th National Heart Association of Malaysia Annual Scientific Meeting from 31st March to 2nd April 2006, fully sponsored by drug company. I went with a friend and we shared a room in Hilton KL, a 5-star hotel.

Here are some photos I have taken:

Viem from KL Sentral station

The beds

The wash room from the side view with the door slide-opened

Somebody can actually watch you bathing from outside

A plasma TV

The magnificent KL view

What a wonderful '6-star' experience I thought.

Mind you, the room cost about a whopping 15% of my salary, and never in my life I would imagine I'll be able to afford such luxury.

However, our stay was marred by an unpleasant experience. On the third day, we went out for dinner with friends and when we came back, we were denied access to the room. Reason, our sponsor had only made reservation upto that particular day, due to miscommunication. Though, it was later settled, I was so embarrassed thinking of the whole episode.

Didn't the hotel management have some kind of courtesy to at least to have inform us earlier regarding the matter, and not when we tried entering the room at 10.30pm?!

I remembered few months back, when I was staying in a 2-star hotel in Seremban, the receptionist called to confirm the extension of our stay in the hotel.

Never mind such humiliation. When we checked-out, we were told there wasn't any outstanding balance to pay and my friend even asked the credit card slip be torned in front of us (something new I learned from my friend).

Anyhow, to my friend's surprise, he was billed RM18.90 in his credit card 2 weeks later. How could that possibly be considering the credit card slip was torned? Both of us wrote a complaint to the management and we were told via e-mail later that we had consumed a packet of SMS chocolate in the mini bar fridge.

My friend and I were trying hard to figure out how could there be possibility of us swallowing up that damn chocholate, knowing before hand that those foods in the mini bar fridge were chargeble and damned expensive.

Then, I told him I did remember that I ate a packet of SMS chocolate which was given in the lunch box set, and I did throw the empty packet into the bin. Probably, they could have mistaken that the packet was from the mini bar fridge.

Unsatisfied with this kind of day-light robbery, I told my friend to reply to the management explaining our innocence, though that RM 18.90 was just a small sum to my friend.

However, my dear friend did not want to bring up the matter further, because he felt it is embarrasing for us as professionals, specialist doctors to be exact, to fight for such 'small' sum of money back, as those fella out there is a reputable international 5-star hotel.

He also fears that we could be 'black-listed' by the hotel in future should we have the opportunity to stay there again. What a cowardly reason.

I told my friend anyway that Hilton KL is gonna be black-listed by me instead!!

By the way, I should not be making a big fuss, as the money was not mine.