The Long Road to Malacca

Today we woke up early to get prepared for a trip outside Kuala Lumpur -- to Melaka (a.k.a Malacca).  Melaka is located in the southern region of the Malayan Peninsula and is renowned for its famous Strait of Malacca, an important shipping route in the world.  It also known for its dutch architecture brought about by Portuguese colonization in 1511.  Today, Melaka is one among the only two places in Malaysia which are listed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO (the other one is George Town of Penang). 

From our hotel in Bukit Bintang, we ride a "teksi" (taxi) to the bus station in Bukit Jalil since we failed to research our transportation details in advance.  The driver said the bus terminal was temporarily moved to Bukit Jalil while its original terminal in Puduraya was being renovated.  The teksi driver refused (as usual!) to use his meter and charged us for  contracted price of RM40, justifying that it is a 20-minute ride going there.  To our surprise, it only took us 10 minutes!  We were very disappointed at that time and felt that we had enough of these teksi drivers' abusive treatment to tourists.  We swore that it will be our last time to ride a cab on our trips.  To add to that, the ticket from KL to Melaka cost only RM13.50/pax which further affirmed the overcharged cab fare.

Anyways :-), it has been a verrrrry long 2-hour ride (via a rollercoaster-like driving without a minute of traffic!) before we finally reached Melaka.  Along the way we have seen how Malaysia's countryside look like, pretty much just like ours in the Philippines.  We were dropped-off in Melaka Sentral, a bus hub going to various places in Malaysia (you can also take a bus going to Singapore, a 4-hour drive, with a fare of only RM22).  We first had lunch at McDonalds before riding again a bus to Melaka Town (fare is RM1).  It was obvious that tourism in Melaka is not organized, evident by the lack of decent maps in the tourism information center, no clear signages on which bus tourists should take, and even many locals, when asked, can't help you with the directions. After 30 minutes of finding which correct bus to take, we finally arrived in Melaka Town.

The weather was so hot and humid!!!  It's around 33-35 degree Celsius! Though we wanted to roam all the sites by foot, the weather stopped us from doing so and instead we ended up staying a lot in the shade.  Sobrang init talaga!  The last time I experienced such kind of humidity was in Ayutthaya, Thailand.  Huhuhu!  So below are the only sites we managed to see:

Christ Church. It is an 18th century Protestant church in the city and is the oldest functioning Protestant church in Malaysia.

The historic Melaka Town.

The Tower Clock. 

Alvin and Nikki sitting at the foot of Tower Clock.

Stadthuys, an old Dutch spelling which means "town hall".

According to some research, the buildings in the town was painted red in 1911 and this distinctive colour scheme has remained the hallmark of Malacca's Dutch-era buildings.

Rose at a Victorian Fountain

Colorful Pedicabs for the tourists.

The Malacca River, 
flowing to the Malacca Strait.

Jonker Walk,
Malacca's traditional Chinatown.

Old Chinatown...

St Paul's Hill shows ruins of a Portuguese fortress, located on top of a hill:

Bukit is a Malay word for "hill"

Climbing up the steep hill

St. Paul's Statue

A&R at St. Paul Hill, Melaka

The Interior

Tombstones

Of course, we didn't missed taking our jumpshots!!!! 

Our jumpshots should have been perfect if not only for some male vendors who showed rudeness to us and to other tourists.  In order to keep under shade and avoid direct sunlight, they keep on relocating their goods from one place to another even at the expense of tourists by blocking their way when taking pictures.  Poor tourists, they traveled far just to be treated impolitely by such kind of people.

The Strait of Malacca as viewed from St. Paul's Hill:

For a tourist spot, I guess there's nothing much to see in Melaka.  Nonetheless, it's still worthwhile to visit the historic town when you have extra time to spare in Malaysia.  At 5:00pm, we already decided to leave the town to catch up with our 8:00pm trip going back to KL.  Here's the deal: If the bus ride from Melaka Sentral to Melaka Town only took 10 minutes , surprisingly, it takes an hour going back!  It's because all roads are just "one-way", hence, you will literally have to roam the whole town first before you arrived back to the bus station.

Sunset at Melaka

Back in Bukit Jalil, we were happy to know that there's a nearby train station where we can go back to Bukit Bintang.  All the establishments are already closed because it's already 12:00pm when we disembarked from the train.  It was a good thing that there are still carinderias opened at that time.  

We ended our day (or rather started the next day) eating "take-away" spicy nasi goreng ayam. :-)  Time to sleep now.   

*The data used on this post was sourced from various 

Wikipedia sites.