KL was touted to us all year as having the best accommodations on Remote Year, but I hadn’t heard too much about the workspace. Read on to see all of the details on where we spent our month in KL.

Apartment

This month, we all lived in the same building, spread across two floors. I love months when we all live near each other, so this was pretty ideal for me, all things considered.

Minutes to the workspace: 18 (which I never once walked – it was too humid / rainy)
Style: 2 bedroom apartment
Roommates: 1 – Nandita
Bathrooms: 2 – one in the master suite and one guest bathroom
Neighborhood: Bukit Bintang (city center)
Best thing: the apartments are incredibly spacious and some bedrooms have killer city views
Worst thing: the apartment smelled – all the time – of sewer and weird freezer smells. Also, you could not flush toilet paper in the apartments (despite being otherwise able to in other parts of the city) and the apartments had the WORST internet of the entire RY experience so far.

This is likely an unpopular opinion, but I actually liked the Thailand apartments better. They were newer, and I thought generally nicer than the KL ones, which (to be fair) would still come in second for me as far as overall niceness of the apartments. On the downside, 20 minutes is a long walk to the workspace when it’s as hot and humid as KL generally was, especially in rainy season. The apartments were also in sort of a strange area – there were a couple of cafes in the building, and a small convenience store, but not much else nearby. It was a 10-15 minute walk to restaurants, coffee, bars, or even a grocery store.

Additionally, as I noted above, the internet in the apartments was really terrible. Typical speeds were well under 10 mbps up/down. I was unable to work from home at all, and struggled to even watch short YouTube videos without interruption. I know Remote Year doesn’t commit to good internet in the apartments (only in the workspace), but in this day and age it just seems unacceptable to tolerate such low internet speeds regardless of what the formal policy is.

The KL apartments had 24 hour security, laundry on site (but not in your apartment), a pool, a gym, and also came with weekly cleaning (including linen changes) – oh how I’ll miss the weekly cleanings when RY is over! They were also, as I mentioned earlier, absolutely massive.

Workspace

This is my favorite workspace so far. This month, we’re in a WeWork, which spreads across the 17-21^st floors in the Equatorial Plaza building.

We have the best of both worlds – our own, private, dedicated RY office space (enough to fit the whole crew) and the benefits of sharing an actual coworking space with the local community.

WeWork has beautiful office spaces, with real office chairs (my back thanks them!), fruited water, an onsite barista making free handcrafted coffee beverages, employees to wash your coffee mugs, and even free beer daily from 5-7pm. They have tons of plugs, call booths, conference rooms, and clean restrooms.

Although the AC turns off at 6pm each night, and I work well into the night, it really doesn’t get tooooooo hot in there, and there are plenty of fans throughout the space if it does start getting too hot.

I loved this space, but unfortunately between our small RY crew in KL this month, and all of the traveling we did on our own, there wasn’t often a ton of people in the workspace. It was also just kind of a pain to get to the workspace – it was a long, hot walk and it wasn’t super safe after dark so I had to take a car to/from work at night. Grab (the only ride-hailing app available in KL) was the subject of new regulations implemented while we were there, which meant less drivers on the road and longer wait times for rides.