Day Trip to Melaka

During my friends' visit recently, we drove north to Melaka city for a day trip. Melaka (a.k.a Malacca in English) is third smallest state in Malaysia. Melaka city is very rich in history and its city centre is a UNESCO listed World Heritage Site.

The drive was super straightforward (from East Ledang to Melaka) and took about 2.5 hours to and 3+ hours from Melaka. I pretty much followed the highway heading to KL direction, and followed the signs on the highway all the way to Melaka (same vice versa on the return). The charges for toll were ~25RM each way.

Since we only had ~3 hours to spare, we went directly to the city centre, Jalan Hang Jebat. The street was packed with tourists (both locals and foreigners). I loved walking down the streets and checking out the local shophouses , most of which were built in Peranakan design.

We had our late lunch at the famous Famosa Chicken Rice Ball restaurant. We ordered the famous chicken rice ball, half Hainanese chicken, salted vegetable, assam fish, stir fried green vegie and of course nyonya chendol. I love love love the hainanese chicken which taste quite different from Singapore's (they use kampung chicken) and loveeee the nyonya chendol. The gula melaka on the chendol is so fragrant, it was super yummy. I would definitely recommend eating at this restaurant when you're ever in Melaka.




After lunch, we walked along Melaka river to Melaka Maritime Museum. This museum is a replica of the Flor de la Mar, a Portuguese ship said to have been carrying loot plundered from Malacca when it sank off the coast of Malacca on its way back to Portugal. The museum presents various history of Melaka from Sultan, Portugese, Dutch, British administration era.


After a relaxing afternoon, we decided to head back to Singapore at around 5 pm. When we returned to the car, we realised that we've been fined for illegal parking (paid a guy who collected 5RM as parking fee but disappeared when we returned to the car). We also ran into more dramas on the drive home (i.e. caught up in frustration with a tailgater, huge traffic on highway and being stalked by a truck driver!). So my lessons learnt from this trip are 1). don't trust a stranger, 2) avoid Sunday late afternoon travel back 3). still try to educate tailgaters :)

Besides all the dramas, I really enjoyed the day trip to Melaka and would definitely be going back to show my family around the city in their next visit to MY.

Have a great week!