There’s a swimming pool about ninety seconds from where I’m sitting. It’s the nicest pool I’ve ever swum in. Most days, my wife and I have it entirely to ourselves.
I want to be clear that I am not a wealthy man. I’m a bloke from London who lives in a one-bedroom flat.
The flat costs RM3,500 a month. At the time of writing that’s roughly £600, give or take whatever the pound is doing that week.
Six hundred pounds a month, in London, gets you a room in a shared house with a boiler that makes a noise like a distressed animal. Here it gets you the 34th floor and a pool nobody uses. I’ve had eighteen months to make sense of that and I’m still not entirely there.
What the money actually buys
One bedroom. Thirty-fourth floor. And then the bit that surprises every British person I’ve ever explained it to — the shared facilities, which come with the building rather than as some premium add-on:
- The pool. Properly nice. Almost always empty.
- A gym. Not brilliant, in fairness. Perfectly adequate. Free, which improves it considerably.
- Steam room and sauna. In a country that is already, at all times, a steam room. The comedy of this is not lost on me.
- Games rooms. Which I have used precisely twice and intend to use again any decade now.
In Britain, a building with a pool and a gym is a luxury development with a service charge that would make your eyes water. Here it’s just what a condo is. It’s the standard, not the treat.
The pool thing genuinely puzzled me for months
A tower block full of people. A beautiful pool. Empty.
I assumed at first there was something wrong with it. Some maintenance issue everyone knew about except me. There wasn’t.
The actual answer, as far as I can work out, is a mix of things. It’s hot — properly hot — and the enthusiasm for sitting in direct equatorial sun that a British person brings to any body of water is not universally shared. There’s also a strong local preference for staying out of the midday sun rather than lying in it, which, having now lived here a while, I’d say is straightforwardly the more sensible position.
And the British thing of treating any sunshine as an emergency that must be responded to immediately — that’s ours. That’s a national trauma response to living somewhere grey. Nobody else has it.
So the pool sits there. And I swim in it. Alone, largely, like an eccentric.
What to actually check when you’re viewing places
Having now done this, and having got some of it right by pure luck, here’s what I’d look at:
Ceiling fans. Look up. Real ones, in the bedroom and the living room. This sounds trivial and it is the single biggest thing standing between you and an enormous electricity bill — I’ve written about why separately, because it saved us an absurd amount of money.
How high up you are. Higher is generally cooler, quieter and better for airflow. It is also further from the ground when the lift is broken, which is a thought that visits you occasionally.
What’s actually walkable. This matters more than the facilities. A gorgeous condo marooned somewhere with no station and no shops means every trip is a Grab. Check the walk to the nearest train station in real life, not on a map — a five-minute walk on paper can be a five-minute walk along a road with no pavement.
Whether the facilities are maintained. Every building lists a pool and a gym. Go and look at them. Some are immaculate. Some have been “closed for maintenance” since roughly the Obama administration.
What’s actually included. Get clear on maintenance fees, whether they’re in the rent, and who pays for what. Ask directly. It’s a normal question.
The honest downsides, because this isn’t an advert
It’s a one-bedroom flat. It’s not enormous. If you’re picturing a British three-bed semi with a garden, adjust — condo living is flat living, and outdoor space means the balcony and the shared bits downstairs.
You will hear your neighbours occasionally. Renovation work in a tower block is a genuine feature of life here and it starts early.
And the lift, when it’s slow, is very slow, and you are thirty-four floors up, and you will at some point stand there recalculating whether you really need that thing you forgot.
None of which I’d trade. Six hundred pounds. Empty pool. Sauna I don’t need.
So is it good value?
Compared to Britain, absurdly so. Compared to what Malaysians pay, I’m in the expat bracket and I know it — you can live here for considerably less, and plenty of people do.
But if you’re coming from a British salary and British rent, the honest summary is this: you will get more space, more facilities and more sunlight for less money than you are currently paying, and it will take you about two months to stop feeling suspicious about it.
For the full picture: what everything else costs, how renting actually works here, and which areas to look at. There’s also a calculator that tells you whether the numbers work for you.
FACTS CHECKED
✓ RM3,500/month for a one-bedroom condo, 34th floor, with pool, gym, steam room, sauna and games rooms — Edward’s actual flat and actual rent
✓ Pool consistently near-empty — Edward’s direct daily observation
✓ Shared facilities are standard rather than premium in KL condo developments — consistent with the wider rental market
⚠ GBP conversion given as “roughly £600, give or take” rather than a fixed figure, because the rate moves
⚠ Reasons for the empty pool are Edward’s own reasoning, and are written as such rather than as established fact
⚠ Rents vary enormously by area and building. Correct at time of writing, August 2026.
Rent is only one line of it. Here is what everything else costs, off my own bills.
