Visiting The Historical City of Malacca

So, I’ve just returned from an overnight trip to Malacca yesterday. It was merely a weekend getaway, another reason to bring my mom away from KL for a while since she’s been stuck in the house all by herself since she came  here about 2 weeks ago. Poor her. She must have thought that KL is the multiplied version of a Disneyland when it is actually not. 🙁

It was my second time there. I remember coming to Malacca when I was a student with a tight pocket. I didn’t even bother to get into any of the museums back then considering a little bit of entrance fee might cost me a few days worth of meal. You know how student life is. It involves a lot of Maggie noodles. He.

Taking a bus back then, it was overwhelming to come to Malacca by driving a car this time. Despite the long list of expensive hotels suggested to me by friends and colleagues, I chose to stay at a rather budget hotel called Roof Top Guest House.

I liked EVERYTHING about the guest house – from its ambiance to its characters, from its location to its hospitality. It didn’t surprise me that it tends to get fully-booked most weekends.

 

The only down point was probably its window-less-ness but then it was only an overnight stay so we KNEW it wouldn’t really kill us.

One thing you gotta know about Malacca is that, it has a very unique way of  managing their parking . You wouldn’t see anybody coming to your car and slipping a parking ticket under the wiper.

You gotta buy some kind of hourly-rated parking coupons (RM0.60 per hour) from any of the convenience stores, do a little bit of scratching in accordance to date and time of parking as intended and put them under the windshield so that the traffic officers could see them.

 

I was told that traffic officers in Malacca have the eyes of an eagle and hands of a bitch so you wouldn’t want to mess with them. They’d be more than happy to bitch-slap you with a fine whenever necessary.

Getting a parking space within the city or at least in and around the UNESCO Heritage Site is quite much of a hassle. Every now and then you’d see somebody sitting out on a chair under the hot burning sun as if doing some kind of sunbathing or something. Oh well, believe me, they don’t do it for fun nor do they enjoy doing it. They want to keep the parking space for themselves. LOL!

The presence of so many tourists in Malacca actually surprised me a little. I mean, I didn’t expect Malacca could draw such a big number of tourists.

 

It would be the last week of public holiday in Singapore so it only boosted the number of Singaporean tourists to Malacca which is merely a three and half hour’s drive from the island city itself.

Quite up to its reputation as a UNESCO World Heritage site, Malacca has a whole lot of things to offer to its visitors. I was fully-confident that I knew just about everything of them but guess what? It was probably another case of over-confidence.

 

For one, I didn’t know that Malacca provides such a tremendously fun experience of river-cruising across its historical city.

It really was amazing to view the city from a slow-moving boat and watch the locals come about their daily activities along the riverbank of Melaka River.

It gives a little bit of picture how the traders from all over the world made their entries into the busy port of Malacca back in its heydays. And the view of the centuries old shop houses that lined up along the river bank was simply astonishing.

 

And taking a walk or simply lepaking around on the river bank at night may provide you with an unforgettable moment of relaxation. I had one. 🙂

Then there was this Taming Sari Tower. Where the hell have I been all these years that I’ve never heard of it in all the 3 years of its existence so far? Standing exceptionally tall right smack in the middle of Malacca town, it might be quite difficult NOT to notice its tallness from just about every corner and yet it’s very easy to ignore it because it could be easily mistaken for an antenna or something.

 

I was actually waiting for the boat to be launched off the hook when I saw people sitting on its uplifted deck and my curiosity had prompted me to ask around.

You see, something that I had never known the existence of had suddenly become the highlight of my visit to Malacca. Of course I gave my mom the impression that I DID know about the tower all along and that I DID plan to go there right from the beginning. Otherwise she’d slam me for being so much under the tempurung for not knowing something as amazing as Taming Sari Tower.

In term of food – oh well, it’s very difficult NOT to compare Malacca with its sister city Penang which is known as the food capital of Malaysia. I’d say, Malacca is not really a place for foodies.

 

It takes quite bit of an effort to find a good restaurant with good foods. Even the famous Jonker Street couldn’t help much to save Malacca from being drowned out by my fond memories of food encounters in Penang.

Still, there are foods in Malacca that quite unique to its culture. I saw this featured in some Travel and Adventure program so I jumped at the idea of tasting it when I saw it in real. SPICY but good. That’s all I’ve got to say.

 

OF course I did the usual things. Not only I was short on cash, I don’t remember being excited about checking out the historical parts of Malacca when I went there 10 years ago. In fact, I didn’t even bother to bring a camera with me (not did I have any har har har).

My years of traveling have changed the way I look at things now. Coming into Malacca this time, I couldn’t help but observing the historic elements of the city from the perspective view of a traveler and believe me, travelers are the most observant people in the whole world.

I took time to imagine how Malacca must have had been back in those days – when it was still the trading centre of the whole region. I imagined how trading ships from all over the world came harboring into the port of Malacca – which – to my imagination, was super duper busy and probably noisy with all kinds of trading activities.

Of course, you can’t say you have visited Malacca if you didn’t go its famous fortress – A Farmosa. Built by the Portuguese to defend Malacca from a series of resilient attacks by outside forces, it has now become the most iconic structure in Malacca. Sadly though, people like me have a thing about iconic structures. We’ll always find something to molest somewhere. LOL!

And if you wonder where the hell it all came from, wait until you see how mom did it FIRST. 😛

So – Yeah, Malacca gotta be a place to visit if you have not been there yet although I’m not sure if it’s worth to stay there for long. Everything is pretty much within a walking distance you might tend to wonder where else to go or what to do next if you stayed there for too long.

For me, an overnight stay is already enough.

Tips: Driving over to Melaka from Kuala Lumpur

In case you didn’t know, the most convenient way of driving to Malacca from Kuala Lumpur is via PLUS Highway. Checking in at Sungai Besi toll plaza in Serdang and coming out at Ayer Keroh toll plaza in Malacca, it only takes about 2 hours of super smooth ride with more than sufficient signage to make sure you wouldn’t stray off the track and end up hitting into Singapore instead. Of course the super smooth ride comes with a price. RM16.50 of one-way toll (RM33 per return) has to to be considered in your budgeting details.