We’re Off on the Road to Malacca

Gong Xi Fa Cai from Singapore! I hope everybody’s Year of the Snake has gotten off to a good start. Honestly, I love Chinese New Year. It’s always an exciting opportunity to travel and soak up some Southeast Asian culture, so I was very happy to add a new installment to my ever-growing litany of CNY adventures.

The original plan to ring in the Year of the Snake was a grand, slightly hectic romp across three countries, starting in Singapore, continuing into Malaysia and culminating in Indonesia with a volcano trek in Bukittinggi. I tend to pack my travel itineraries from start to finish, rarely leaving a moment’s pause. But luckily I was forced at the last minute to scale this trip back a bit, making for a much more relaxed experience. I’m so glad the whole thing worked out so seamlessly!

My friend Bernadett flew from Hong Kong to Singapore last Thursday night to spend her vacation with Sonia and me, and since I’m still Sonia’s houseguest, it made sense for Bernadett to stay at her place, too. It was pushing midnight when her taxi pulled up to the house, and a few rum and Cokes were obviously in order upon her arrival.

I’d seen her in Hong Kong less than a week before, but it had been a long time since she and Sonia had last been together. The three of us imbibed on the patio and were joined by one of Sonia’s current roommates, Rafael, who was departing for Cambodia on a Chinese New Year vacation of his own in about five hours’ time.

Sonia, having to work Friday morning, headed to bed around 2am, but Bernadett and I kept Rafael company until his 5am departure!

On Friday morning, we got to my office around 11 with a plan to finally book all of our bus and ferry tickets for the upcoming trip. However, in the 24 hours since I had last checked availability, everything seemed to have filled up! No more Saturday morning buses were available, and many ferries, too, were sold out. It became clear that we would have to push back our departure and tweak our itinerary by deciding on just one destination. We even discussed the possibility of a stay-cation in Singapore, but ultimately it came down to deciding between Malaysia and Indonesia.

After a nice Vietnamese lunch on Telok Ayer Street with Bernadett’s good friend Johannes and his girlfriend Leza, back to the office we went to iron out a final plan. Bernadett and I decided on Malacca, a well-preserved colonial Malaysian town that was—over the course of its history—controlled by Dutch, Portuguese and British administrations. The bus we chose was set to depart for Malacca at 7:30pm on Saturday night. An express bus, it would take us from downtown Singapore, across the border into Malaysia and onto our final destination about three hours up the Western coast of the Malay Peninsula.

Delaying our planned departure by about twelve hours meant we could take the opportunity to show Bernadett a little bit of the Lion City. After all, she had only been down on business trips before and never actually gotten a chance to explore Singapore. So after purchasing the tickets, I gave her an impromptu walking tour of the Central Business District, wandering up along Boat Quay, Clarke Quay and finally Chinatown, where there was a very memorable snake lantern display for the holiday!

In the late afternoon, we made our way via taxi to the British Club to meet Sonia for drinks and dinner, and sitting by the club’s pool indulging in a delicious meal was a relaxing start to our vacation. Back home we watched a few episodes of Friends before turning in relatively early.

Saturday morning the three of us dropped our bags in my office and headed out for a typically Singaporean Saturday. We met Johannes at Raffles Place and hopped on a river taxi to take us to Robertson Quay. The first available river taxi was actually sailing in the opposite direction of where we wanted to go, but we asked if we could ride it anyway, knowing it would eventually make its way back upriver and take us to our desired destination. So for only SG$3, we pretty much got the same river tour I’ve paid SG$18 for in the past!

It was a beautiful morning, with bright sunshine and clear skies. We sailed around the Marina Bay, past the Merlion and the Theatres on the Bay before heading back up past the iconic quays, finally alighting about half an hour later. At eM, the restaurant we had selected for brunch, we all had eggs Benedict (or some variation thereof) in the outdoor riverside garden, complete with jazzy tunes and Bloody Marys. And we then hopped a taxi to the Singapore Botanic Gardens for a stroll around the aromatic lungs of the city.

When the clouds overhead looked like they’d be able to hold their water no longer, we dashed over to Dempsey Hill to escape the imminent storm. We found a gem among gems in PS Café, a restaurant specializing in exceedingly unhealthy desserts, with large picture windows overlooking the wooded hill. My friend Taz, who has also just moved to Singapore, came by to join us, and the five of us gave new meaning to the word “gluttony” in the homey spot. I indulged in a sensational sticky date pudding with butterscotch sauce that was out of this world, and the rest of our group enjoyed similarly artery-clogging treats. As the heavens rained down on the glass window panes of the restaurant, we kept dry and warm, and it was a delightful couple of hours.

Whiling the afternoon away in the pleasant café, we almost lost track of time. Sonia, Bernadett and I made our way back to the office to grab our bags, got some Turkish food at a restaurant near Arab Street, loaded up on goodies for the upcoming ride, and checked in for our bus!

The ride to the border zipped by, although the bus driver was rather confused about how the whole process of crossing the border worked. About two minutes away from the checkpoint, he pulled off to the side of the road and told us that a new bus would come along to take us the rest of the way. We had been told that he would take us as far as Malaysia, and then we would switch buses, but we figured the driver knew best. WRONG! As we sat there waiting for about ten minutes, one resourceful Singaporean lady called the bus company and passed her phone along to the driver. Turns out he was supposed to take us across the border. Our new bus would not be meeting us until we were in Malaysia!

For some incomprehensible reason, the passport authorities of Singapore and Malaysia do their best to make crossing the border as annoying as possible. Instead of having one complex where you depart one country and enter the other—which would be the logical thing to do—you instead get off of your first bus, receive your official Singapore departure stamp, re-board the bus to drive over a causeway crossing the Straits of Johor, disembark again, clear Malaysian immigration, and finally get onto a new bus to continue the journey. Why they make you go through all that hassle is beyond me, but thankfully, there was no line at either checkpoint, and we fairly flew across the causeway, which can sometimes be gridlocked for hours!  

Our second bus was about a thousand times more comfortable than the first one, with fully reclining seats and leg rests! With some Pringles, a bottle of Smirnoff and plenty of mixers, it felt like just another part of the adventure. When you fly somewhere, it always feels like the vacation waits to start until you get off the plane. But by taking the bus, the journey becomes part of the fun, and that’s just one reason why I’m thrilled that Singapore has such amazing bus connections.

I couldn’t believe how quickly the ride flew, and before I knew it we were in Malacca. In fact, I was sure we were pulling in to just another rest stop when I saw a sign declaring “Melaka Sentral.” We grabbed the first cab we could find and made our way straight to the hotel I had booked, Heeren House, where we again dropped our bags and headed straight out.

Heeren House is just beside the river in the heart of Old Malacca, and it’s a historic Chinese building with an abundance of charm. Luckily our room was on the first floor—and I say luckily because they lock the front doors at midnight, so we had to climb in and out through our window to explore the city.

That first night, we took a midnight stroll around the colorful old streets of Chinatown, grabbing a drink here and there, with some abysmal chicken satays thrown in for good measure. There were so bad we didn’t even finish them, and I realized that this was probably the first time in my entire life that a satay had been left on the plate uneaten!

Still it was a fascinating stroll around the city. And you could palpably feel the buzz of Chinese New Year in the air. And then it hit me. This was actually really the fist time I'd been somewhere remotely Chinese for Chinese New Year. I've run away to Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam the past three years. And even though last year's cruise included a port call in Sanya, China, it was such a quick daytime stop that I was only barely aware it was a holiday there at all. But in Malacca's Chinatown, you knew something special was in the air. Almost immediately after we sat down for a drink at Georgraphér Café, fireworks began exploding not fifteen feet in front of us. I've never been that close to them in my life, and as they exploded, the cinders literally fell upon us. It was one of the most exhilarating moments I've experienced in a very long time. 

Although we only took an hour or so to get our bearings before going to sleep, it was enough time for us all to realize what a gem of a town we had stumbled upon. I went to sleep uber-excited for the days to follow!

I woke up bright and early on Sunday morning and finally met Marcia, the proprietress of Heeren House with whom I’d been e-mailing for weeks. She was an amazing hostess. We were staying in Malacca for two nights, but space in the six-room guest house was only available for our first night. Hoping there would be a last-minute cancellation, we had boarded the bus without a place to stay for the second half of the trip. Enter heroic Marcia. Sadly no room had opened up, but within minutes she had found us a room at another hotel a few doors away. Before breakfast, the crisis had been averted and we had a place to stay.

Popping open a bottle of seriously cheap champagne left over from New Year’s Eve, we turned the hotel’s simple breakfast, served in the charming knick knack-filled lobby, into a mini-celebration: scrambled eggs, sausage, tomato and beans, with ample toast and mimosas!

It being Sunday, and having already driven past two quaint churches on the ride into town the night before, I decided to attend mass. Bernadett and I walked around beforehand, exploring more of Malacca’s charming streets, squares and alleyways. Dutch Square was especially stunning, with its uniformly red façades concentrated around an elegant European-style central fountain dedicated to Queen Victoria.

While I was at mass, the girls moved our stuff from Heeren House to our new lodging, called the Hangout. And when we reunited, we decided to take a river cruise. While waiting for our boat, we ordered a cheap peanut butter and jelly waffle, a peanut butter and cappuccino-chocolate cream waffle and some delicious sweet corn, all for less than ten Malaysian ringgit.

And the cruise was wonderful. A strange assortment of music played—everything from the Black Eyed Peas and Evanescence to local music celebrating Chinese New Year. And the riverbanks were teeming with interesting sights, from street art on the walls of buildings to an amusement park with old-fashioned rides to local houses oozing unique character. If you ever make your way to Malacca, do not pass up a chance to explore the city by boat.

Post cruise, we headed straight for lunch at a quaint courtyard restaurant called Bistro Year 1673, just off Jonker Street. We had much better luck with our satays this time, and we also enjoyed a nice South African cider in addition to some local food, including my favorite—deep fried lychee stuffed with prawn! Although it had started lightly raining, a big umbrella kept us covered, and by the time we were ready to start wandering again, the rain had stopped.

Jonker Street is lined with all kinds of shops, from picturesque antique shops to trendy boutiques to garish souvenir stores selling Gangnam Style sandals and hilarious t-shirts. Although I’d love to play posh and pretend I preferred the former, it was the latter where I spent the most amount of time and money. I wound up buying two pairs of said sandals and at least five t-shirts over the course of the trip! (Before returning to Singapore, I also wound up adding two pair of sunglasses to my list of possessions—by far the most clothes shopping I’ve ever done on a vacation!)

We tucked into some delicious street snacks while exploring mosques, temples, churches, mansions and shacks. Malacca is a vibrant and diverse cross-section of Southeast Asia, and strolling it’s fascinating streets makes for a never-ending array of different cultures.

My favorite spot was a modern temple with a second floor terrace overlooking an obviously older temple just across the street. From the vantage point, you could see out over all of Chinatown, as most of the buildings are only one or two stories tall. Every sense was stimulated. Having just snacked on some madeleines from a street stall, I could feel the warm breeze on my face, smell the incense burning all around, hear the clang of a young monk endlessly ringing a temple bell and, of course, gaze upon the gallimaufry of life on display before me: red-tiled roofs stretching on and on, streets teeming with all sorts Chinese New Year-life, the rich colors of the ancient temple. It was almost overwhelming.

I think the real reason photographs so rarely capture scenes like this is because they are a purely visual means of recalling something that was actually composed of so many sensory details. Yes, a picture can help bring to mind these other aspects of the scene… It can be a good memory-jogger, but it’s never quite perfect. There’s a great line from the movie Rebecca, where Joan Fontaine fantasizes about reliving memories. She says, “You know, I wish there could be an invention that bottled up a memory like perfume and it never faded, never got stale. Then, whenever I wanted to, I could uncork the bottle and live the memory all over again.” Laurence Olivier then asks her what particular moment she would like to bottle up. For me, standing on that balcony with Bernadett and Sonia would surely be one of them. I’m almost glad my camera was charging in the hotel room at the time, so I could simply soak it all in. (And also because Bernadett and Sonia both had theirs, so I can get a ‘memory-jogger’ from them when I want it!)

After exploring the ancient temple across the street, which we were told is the oldest in all of Malaysia, we found ourselves a nice riverfront café and had a drink while dusk set in, waving at the guests on the passing boats.

We made a slight detour on the way to the hotel to snap some twilight-time photos in Dutch Square, and then we got ready for dinner at the Portuguese Settlement, a ramshackle seaside collection of local seafood restaurants. The girls were somewhat disappointed in the reality of the Portuguese Settlement. In their heads, it was going to be a slightly chic, picturesque part of town with Eurasian fusion restaurants offering a vaguely upscale blend of Malaysian, Chinese and Portuguese dishes, similar to some of Macau’s finer Portuguese establishments.

As nice as that would have been, I quickly fell in love with the reality of the place. Hundreds of people were chattering away at their tables, with plates full of fish and vegetables and rice and clams and scallops and crabs and all other sorts of seafood. Some families were releasing golden yellow lanterns into the air over the sea, and a young boy was shooting off fireworks with his dad. At one point, fireworks again began to explode in the skies over our heads.

Unfortunately, Sonia and Bernadett are not really seafood fans, so there was little on the menu that appealed to them. Even more unfortunately, the restaurant did not serve wine and was currently out of Sprite, only offering beer without even the possibility of diluting it down into a nice shandy. Fine for me, but poor Bernadett and Sonia don’t like beer and are normally wine-girls all the way. In fact, it was the first time I’d really seen either of them even drink the stuff!

In the end, Bernadett and I managed to find a table’s worth of food that she was willing to try out, and we did our best to finish fried squid, delicious ginger scallops, spicy barbecued fish, a plate of fresh vegetables and some rice. It was, for me at least, the culinary highlight of the trip. And for the price we paid, I’d also say it was a steal!

Back in the old city, it was already the final night of the holiday. And after such a full day, we were all exhausted. Sonia even fell asleep in the car ride back to town, while Bernadett and I gave it our best effort to stay awake, chatting with the local Portuguese-Chinese driver. Sitting down now to write this, I can’t believe all of the things I’ve just described actually happened over the course of a single day. Looking back, I feel like we spent much more time in Malacca than a mere forty hours.

Bernadett and I opted to take yet another moonlit stroll around town before turning in. We weren’t planning on stopping anywhere for a drink, but we wanted to savor the last night. We made our way to the ancient temple again, to see how the magic of the moonlight changed the feel of the place, and we walked down Jonker Street too, still full of life as always. And then, somehow, we found ourselves on a side street that we had yet to stumble upon, among the most atmospheric we'd yet discovered. There were quaint houses and potted plants and red lanterns; bright lights and colored flowers and catchpenny bikes. 

And there was a bar on this street with live music called Me and Mr. Jones, and although we each made our best effort to walk by without betraying to the other that we would love to stop, it was painfully clear what we both were thinking. “Just one drink,” we said, and this time, shockingly, we stuck to our guns.

Breakfast at the Hangout wasn’t nearly as nice as at Heeren House, but the toast and coffee were good enough to kick start our day. We took our breakfast on the small front terrace, and it looked like it was shaping up to be a beautiful day. Our bus didn’t leave until 6:30pm, and there were some sights we had deliberately left unexplored until our final day.

Most noteworthy of these was Saint Paul’s Hill, crowned by the ruins of its namesake, an old Portuguese church. Once the resting place of Saint Francis Xavier before his remains were moved to Goa, the hollowed-out shell of the church was full of old tombs and a stray cat or two. And the view from the top of the hill over the Straits of Malacca was very pretty. Just across from the church was the Governor’s Museum, housed in the former mansion of the head colonial administrator from the olden days. Bright sunshine filled the air, and although it was pretty crowded up there, it was an undeniably beautiful place.

A rather steep staircase lead down to a ruined fort, but we opted instead to take the gently sloping path down, where a sign indicated we would find the Dutch Graveyard. Midway down, there was an abandoned art gallery where some bats had taken up residence. And below was the cemetery, which in spite of its name, actually contains many more British burials than it does Dutch ones. I sometimes wonder when I’m exploring places like the Dutch Cemetery what it must have been like to come so far from home in the age of sea travel, knowing it would be years, if ever, before you would see home again. What it must have been like for these adventurers to come from Europe and live out their days in Asia, and to sleep here forevermore! I like to think I would have been one of them had I been born a few centuries earlier.

Near the cemetery is a sort of museum fashioned out of a reconstruction of the old Sultanate Palace, where the one-time ruler of the region would have lived. Constructed using historical methods, the stunning wooden building and its picturesque gardens were simply lovely. An interesting exhibit inside gave a good background of the old political system practiced in Malaysia and also recreations of the sultan’s bedchamber and other aspects of royal life. I wish I had been more in a mood to read up on my Malaysian history, but the weather outside was so beautiful that all I could think about getting back out there.

Past the entrance to the palace was that ruined Portuguese fort (called A Famosa) that we had seen from the hilltop. And near that was a memorial of Malaysian Independence. A proud reminder of a colonial past steps away from an even prouder monument to an independent future and those who fought to make it so!

Up until now, we had spent the vast bulk of our time in the preserved historic district of town, but at this point, we realized we were just on the fringe of the modern city so we decided to explore what was there. We found a Starbucks, where we took a breather on the second floor terrace, enjoying a bite to eat and some coffee. I also managed to add another mug to my growing collection. I now have Starbucks mugs from Cebu, Bangkok, Macau, Boracay, Singapore, London, Paris, Las Vegas and the Twin Cities. Unfortunately, in the eyes of Starbucks, Malacca isn’t important enough to warrant its own mug, at least not yet. But they did sell Malaysia mugs, so I figured that would be an appropriate substitute. I’ll always remember where I was when I bought it anyway!

Malaysia is such a cool country, and I'm glad its now at my doorstep. It's got the whole Europe-meets-Asia thing down pat, but it's also got a unique culture all its own, not to mention all the phenomenal natural wonders both on land and under the sea. And so far as I've experienced, the people are very interesting, friendly and proud of their country. I can't wait to see more of it, especially places like Penang and Kota Kinabalu, of which I've heard amazing things.

One of the quirkiest things about Malaysia, at least to an English speaking visitor, is the written language. It uses our same alphabet, but the spelling is slightly off. As one of my friends once observed, it looks as if a kindergartner did his best at spelling English words phonetically. Taxis becomes teksis; museums are muziums; we bought our tickets for the river cruise from the kaunter ticket; the central bus station in town is called Melaka Sentral; but my absolute favorite was the name of a hotel we walked by near the Starbucks, with an image of a bird rising out of the ashes, which you can see in the photograph below.

Taking a short cut through a shopping mall, we stumbled upon the sunglass store I mentioned earlier, were I bought myself some uber-cheap brand-name shades. I don’t know how these Malaysian shops can keep their prices so low! Smirk.

And in the same mall was a shop dedicated to Marvel superheroes. I don’t know if it’s just me and my lack of shopping experience, but I’ve never come across one of these stores before. I'm sure they would be a huge hit in the States and Europe, especially judging from the childlike reaction the three of us had when we found the place. We took about twenty minutes browsing the cool, high quality merchandise, and Bernadett even bought a shirt that says, “I only date superheroes.”

As the inevitable departure hour drew near, we had to make our way back to the old town, stocking up on some last minute purchases and miraculously stumbling upon a market stall in Dutch Square that let you make your own cotton candy for a song! We also finally ducked inside Christ Church itself, the iconic building that I’d probably snapped about sixty photos of by this point in the trip.

As our last act in Malacca, we splurged on lunch in a delightful riverside restaurant called Harper’s. We had sailed past it on the river cruise, and walked past the entrance countless times, since it quite literally faced our hotel’s entrance just across the street. Just after we sat down, something resembling a dinosaur swam by in the water! Yes, I’m slightly exaggerating… but only slightly. It was a huge lizard, about six feet long, and it suddenly put to rest any and all desire I once had to jump in for a dip in the river.

The food was delicious, and the girls finally got the Eurasian meal they had expected at the Portuguese settlement the night before: salmon served over spinach and Pernod-cream sauce, buttery cod with thick balsamic reduction and peppery chicken atop creamy polenta. With the ruins of an old fort across the water and Heeren House just a few meters upriver from our table, it was the perfect place to kill our last hour in town. Two bottles of white wine and a nice chat with the older European couple at a neighboring table completed the meal, and I’ll surely come back to this spot next time I’m in town. (Sonia and I have vowed to return to Malacca in the near future when we need to escape Singapore.)

The return journey home did not go quite as smoothly as the trip out. When we booked our tickets on Friday afternoon, direct buses from Malacca to Singapore had already sold out, so we could only get as far as Johor Bahru, the border city just across the causeway. We snapped the seats up because, if worst comes to worst, you can simply cross the border via public bus and then walk to the nearest Singapore MRT station and be anywhere you want in a short time.

The bus ride itself wasn’t so bad. We all looked at each other's photos from the trip and liked watching the Malaysian landscape as we whizzed past. At the first rest stop, Sonia and I enjoyed some fresh watermelon as the sun was setting behind us. She remarked on how wonderful the trip had been, but Bernadett cautioned her with a German proverb, “Don’t praise the day until the night.”

When we got to the Larkin Bus Terminal in Johor Bharu, a man immediately came up to us and offered private transport to Singapore for SG$15 per person. It seemed like a perfect fit. But as we waited and waited for him to finally put us in a car, the situation slowly started to appear less and less perfect.

Eventually a driver showed up, then a car, then other passengers, until there were seven of us plus the driver in a space that could have comfortably seated five. Our driver seemed confused from the very instant we met him, leaving the car several times to go speak to the man who had organized this for us. It even took him a few minutes to figure out how to turn the radio down when we complained that the music was too loud. Finally, after taking longer than should have been necessary to perform a simple three-point turn, we were at last making our way out of the parking lot.

One minute later, he jumped the curb hard. It jolted every passenger in the vehicle, and he even got out to check if there was any damage. Sonia sarcastically asked if this was his first time doing a border crossing; I shot back that it was probably his first time driving a car.

Looking at it now, that journey couldn’t have ended in anything other than an accident. From the very first moment, it had disaster written all over it. Even the Muslim lady sitting in the back seat was reciting the Koran aloud a few minutes into the trip, as Sonia joked to me and Bernadett that we ought to buckle up! Then, literally at the entrance to the border checkpoint, another car hit into us as we drove in the wrong lane trying to cut into a line of traffic. Our car was maybe moving five miles per hour at this point, with the other one moving about as fast. It was the most minor of fender benders, but it did knock the bumper off the other car.

Thankfully nobody was seriously hurt. Sonia had bashed her elbow upon impact, and I had a small cut on my leg, but things could have been much more serious. Another passenger mentioned that we were very close to the border and could simply walk to the checkpoint. We followed him, got our stamps, boarded the 170 bus across the causeway, queued up again on the Singapore side, got our re-entry stamps, and—finally—were sitting in a taxi on the way to Sonia’s house. Not quite as painless as the trip out, but in all honesty, it could have been far worse.

Car accident or no car accident, it was a phenomenal vacation, and I’ll always remember my fourth Chinese New Year in Asia as being just as good as its predecessors. You know it’s been a great trip when even a car crash does nothing to take away from it!