SignPost: Malacca (Melaka)

I traveled from Singapore on a bus to Malacca in the Malay language it is called Melaka. The ticket was $20 Singaporean dollars. I later realized I could have payed less if I stopped in Johor Bahru, but it was meant to be. I learned when backpacking, the most important thing is money. Saving money is more important than time, whilst in our daily routine life, usually time is more important because we have many things going on like work, doctor appointments etc...

I was not sure about Malacca but I took the opportunity to visit. After finishing the whole trip, I came to realize that Malacca city was the calmest city I have been to. calmer than Cameron Highlands which I will talk about in the next post. There was something about it, the serenity and the history. The colonial history of Malacca goes back to the 1500s. The Portuguese took over the city then after that the Dutch came. Every time I walked the streets of Malacca I felt that I was walking backwards in time because every corner had a piece of history that reminded me of the Portuguese or the Dutch and the Malay struggle to get their land back. How was life back then? Who stepped on these streets during the colonial era? I found peace in Malacca.

The famous Dutch church

Portuguese and Dutch wall

Kampung Hulu Mosque oldest mosque built in the 1700s

Inside this ship is a museum of the Dutch weapons

Malacca at night was lively and calm at the same time. Malacca was cool at night compared to other cities I visited in Malaysia, shopping was great as it was cheap and good quality too. I meet many backpackers at the hostel I stayed in. I meet a German, Brazilian, Japanese, Moroccan, Polish, and Singaporeans.

The Polish girl works remotely so she travels and works from her laptop. She told me about her adventures in Vietnam. She has been in Vietnam for three months, she bought a motorcycle for around $200 US dollars and traveled from Ho Chi Minh city in the south all the way to North passing the capital Hanoi city. She had a good heart. I sometimes think of my adventure and I realize that I was blessed to have meet so many kind-hearted people. The Brazilian guy travels with his guitar, he was in India before coming to Malaysia. He told me how he never understood the idea of just staying in one place forever without traveling to the unknown, I agreed with him, we had similar thinking. The Moroccan guy was in Malaysia for an internship, but the start of his internship was delayed , so he took the opportunity to travel Malaysia. The German girl was very smart, she was an artist, who was going to enter the university at the beginning of school year but has not decided what type of art she should follow. She can definitely draw. We talked a lot about the German language and how complicated the language was. She gave me a book (titled Heaven and Hell: Nine stories) as a souvenir which I will hold to for as long as I live. It might have been just a small book but to me it was something big, a memory from Malacca and of this good friend I made. Our meeting did not stop in Malacca, after Malacca I traveled with the Moroccan guy to Cameron Highlands, and the German girl followed us the next day. We stayed at the same hostel in Cameron Highlands, and we had a great adventure in Cameron Highlands which is coming up in the next post.