So this weekend, I went to Melaka, Malaysia with Eric the New Zeelander, Vassilis the Greek/German and Liam the Irish dude. We started off Friday morning by taking the bus near Marina Bay at 10 am. The weather was great, and this was to be my second country to visit in Asia. After about half an hour, we arrived at the Singaporean part of the border; very close to the NTU campus, and there is only a bridge connecting Singapore with Malaysia. Turns out it is quite efficient to pass through these thorough checks, as they have automated the passport and finger scanning. Turns out they are very efficient at control… I took a photo of the control station after a request from Vassilis, which set off a chain reaction of personnel screaming at me and looking highly alerted. It felt like I had done something wrong. Had I broken in to a military base in GTA and immediately gotten five a five star rank? I froze where I stood, seeing in front of me a big sign with a camera crossed over by a red line. I took a look at my phone that I still pointed towards the border control station. I took a look back at the sign. I took another look back at my phone. The equation started to make sense, so I ran as fast as I could away from there and hijacked a car to get the hell away from an imminent caning.
That is one version of the story, anyway. The other is that I just stood there and awaited a guard which dragged me into their security office to make sure I deleted the photo I had just taken. You decide which story you want to believe!
Having gotten famous by the incident, I started talking to some germans/swiss on the bus taking us over the bridge to the Malaysian border. It was only a 2 km drive, but it took 2 hours to get here, because it was a big holiday in Malaysia, and a long weekend in Singapore. Therefore, there was a huge amount of traffic. It was a nice conversation we had though, and now I have started to make contact with some SMU and NUS people!
Arriving at Malaysia, it was immediately noticeable that this was going to feel much dirtier and less developed than Singapore. Lots of trash lied on the ground, and more things smelled with an intense odor; something that was especially noticeable when we arrived in Melaka and walked along its river, which was probably filled with unfiltered waste. More on this later, though, because I first need to mention that the bus ride to Melaka was very comfortable with big seats equipped with electric massage gear. It made the 3 hour trip seem quite relaxing.
Moving on, we arrived in Melaka around 16:30 and immediately checked in to our hostel; Three little Birds. It was a nice hostel with a reggae theme to it, and it was more a home than a hostel. We made out the majority of the customers staying at the hostel, and we stayed in a 6 bedroom room with AC. Breakfast was included, and they had safety lockers for us all.
Having installed ourselves, we went out to the city center, which took 5 minutes by feet to get to; something that was harder said than done, as the city barely has any sidewalks, and a quite aggressive traffic culture. Anyways, we visited a buddhist temple for some minutes, and then walked to their street food market, which was crowded with people, as this was a big holiday in Malaysia. Having checked it out for a bit, we ate something Asian we thought was chicken, that totally was not chicken; something that let me and Eric get Vassilis’ and Liam’s portions as they did not like the trickery.
We kept on moving on along the street market, but it was extremely crowded, which made our pace 1 meter per hour (yaaay!). Successfully snailing our way through it, we made it to our dessert place, where Eric had some durian ice cream-like dish, whereas me and Liam ate some mango ice cream-like dish. I had tried out durian ice cream a couple of days earlier, when I went to a high-end Hawker center with some other friends, and trust me; it is a mistake I will forever remember. Durian. Is not. Tasty. Eric likes it, though, so it is a coin-flip fruit; you either like it or hate it.
Snailing our way through more of the crowd, we eventually made it to the end of the street market, and decided to walk along the river, where there were quite a few bars we could have drinks at. We decided to go to the reggae themed bar, which our hostel’s owner also owned. We were quite happy about that decision, as we got happy our all night, along with good service and nice talks with the personnel that was very nice and service-minded. From our conversations with the guy who let us in to the hostel, Wei, as well as the owner Randy, we understood Melaka as being up and coming. It would probably be a quite nice city in five years.
This was something we could definitely notice. The river smelled really bad, there were no sidewalks, and the ones who existed were heavily worn down. There was alot of damages to structures, and there was not many things to do or see in the city.
We did however get bikes from the hostel and visited a floating mosque the next day, and made it to a Portuguese part of the city to eat fried squid, butter fried chicken and baked fish.
Throughout the day, we also noticed how popular I was with my blonde hair. People took selfies with me, and I could see kids taking out their phones to discretely point their cameras towards me. It felt weird but awesome; I was a superstar without having achieved anything special in life. All I had to do was exist and look the way I did. Thinking about going to Hollywood next!
Moving on, we went back to the hostel, where we rested for a couple of hours, and where I tried to get rid of the headache I had gotten through not drinking enough water. It was nice to skip the hot climate for a couple of hours. Anyways, next thing on our schedule was going to the streetfood market again, where I had dumplings and the most delicious french fries I have ever had in my life. Having gotten the french fries, I also took a selfie with the workers upon their request. The life of a superstar feels great!
What also felt great was going back to the reggae bar, where we stumbled upon multiple travelling gangs from NTU and joined up with them for drinking the rest of the night (the photo below is just 1/3 of our newly assembled gang). It was very nice to see some familiar faces and get to know some more of the exchange students. What also made it great is the very cheap prices in Malaysia; I had 4 beverages (2 drinks and 2 beers) and paid roughly 100 SEK equivalent in Malaysian money.
This pricing held true throughout the entire trip, where I struggled to get rid of money. The last day we went to a really nice dutch restaurant by the river and I had a burger and 2 cokes, but only paid the equivalent of 60 SEK. Western food is rare here, which made it a great end to the trip. Oh, and the last day, we also went up a small hill to some old dutch monument. Apparently the dutch were pretty active in this city a few centuries ago.
Summing up this trip, it was very price-worthy, and it was nice to party in the city at night. However, I am very glad we only stayed for 2 days, as there was not much to do. Also, it is very dirty here, and it feels alot more unsafe than Singapore. We saw this first hand immediately before we took off back home with our bus, when a girl came crying and said that a motorbike gang had snatched her backpack; sending her for quite a rough fall to the ground. A kind of incident we had just read about a few hours earlier in our NTU exchange travelling group (from someone else who had faced the exact same crime). Therefore, I recommend you always stick together and do not go alone in night when you are intoxicated without telling your friends where you are or responding to messages two hours after your splitting up with them (I am looking at you, Liam the Irish).
Oh, and if you want to look at more photos from the trip, simply go to our shared Melaka album!