Lonely Planet Review

This is one of KL's finest hotels, with a magnificent location and some excellent bars and restaurants. The five-star Mandarin has outstanding styling and design and is, quite simply, utterly sumptuous.

You know you're in a special spot when the huge, heavy lobby doors have metre-long serpents for handles, and they're pulled open by funny-hatted staff as you enter. The black-clad workers here constantly check everything, from the state of fresh flowers exploding in the lobby to the shell-shaped soap in the marble-trim bathrooms. Mandarin Oriental's 643 guestrooms are perfectly presented, with way more reading lights and well-placed cushions than necessary. The double-set drapery creates a cocoon, but who would want to block out views of those towers? If you can really be bothered moving from your room, there's a lip-less pool looking over a verdant slice of KL as well as tennis and squash courts, a gym, five restaurants (including Pacifica Grill, with its adjoining cigar room) and every facility that a business exec could need. Everything is more than accounted for at the Mandarin.