My Travel Adventures Part 1 - Melaka

Now, I do not have much experience on travelling, unlike a lot of travel bloggers I've read before, but I do have a some amount of travel experiences in some places I have been to a few times before. So I will blog about those places instead. Maybe you could pick up a tip or two from my experiences.

Bandaraya Melaka

I think when I was younger, I've been here about once or twice with my family. Ever since moving to Johor Bahru 3 years ago, I have been here many, many times. Usually a day's trip only, but once or twice I stayed overnight. Ever since one of my best friends from my university days started working in Melaka, I have gone there even more often, mainly due to the fact that I know there will always be a free place to stay for the night..hahaha. Thanks, Ruhil :P

So one of the first times I have been to Melaka was with Ayuni, because she forced me to go with her. We drove there in the morning, reached there almost noontime (so okay, we didn't exactly drive early in the morning to reach there at noon. Guilty) and took a quite heavy lunch (because Ayuni is such a big eater) before starting off some sightseeing. 

One thing about Melaka during the weekends, and I mean the Bandaraya Melaka, is that the traffic jams there are massive. In a small place with traffic light stops every 2 minutes and hundreds of cars pouring in, be prepared to get stuck in a heavy jam. Mornings are not so bad, but when it gets to noontime until evening, it's the worse.

The nice thing about Melaka is that it has a lot of photogenic places, being the historical city of Malaysia and all. The bad thing about it is that these photogenic places are photogenic only when the hot sun is pouring down on you. Melaka is a hot place. So if you go with the intentions of visiting these photogenic places, make sure you wear something light with sunblock and bring your sunglasses and hat. Forgetting not to bring a hat, however, is not problem because practically every inch of step you take, there will be several vendors selling affordable sun hats in a range from RM10-RM25. I have a nice small collection of these hats.

The first time I went to Melaka with Ayuni, I was excited and full of energy and so when she suggested to climb up the A'Famosa, I agreed right away, although it was freakin' hot. But we got nice pictures from that small hike.

On top of the A'Famosa. I had to hold in my stomach because Ayuni said she could see it bloating. Hence the hand on my tummy pose.

The second time I went to Melaka was with a group of friends. Again, it was Ayuni's idea. She's really good at planning these kind of trips. I wore a dress this time so I refused to hike up the A'Famosa when they suggested it. So we posed at the foot of the fort instead.

The third (I think) time I went there was with a different group of friends, and this time we stayed overnight. Actually, our intentions were to go to a friend's wedding in Negeri Sembilan on the very next day but one of us had a mastermind of using that opportunity to wander around the streets of Melaka and everyone else immediately agreed. This time, because Shahrul was there, the pictures were nicer than iPhone camera pics, thanks to his professional Samsung camera and wide lens. Hahaha.

We had dinner at Hard Rock Cafe that night. We took some pictures inside the place but it was really, really dark so the pictures didn't turn out that great. Even with Shahrul's fancy camera. Lol.

Then, there is Jonker Street, which is what I love most about Melaka. I love the small, antique shops lining up on both sides of the roads, selling stuff you would never need but still want to buy. I love those small laksa and baba nyonya shops with the old heritage feeling to them. I love the beautiful, very photogenic street art you can find along every corner of the road while you explore the twists and turns, I love the weekend night market, although crowded, but there are just so many good junks you can't help but buy.

Photobombed by this tall uncle. Which made my picture even cooler >.<

The first time I went to Melaka with Ayuni, I had already Googled earlier what street art were nice to take pictures of on Jonker street and there was this one Orangutan shop where they have this cute orang utan painted on the wall of their shop that caught my attention and I told Ayuni, by hook or by crook, we have to find that shop and I had to take a picture of that orang utan. And Ayuni being Ayuni (meaning she never fails me) she found that shop for me. She even stopped this one uncle riding his bicycle along the road and showed the painting from Google, asking which turn we had to take to find that orang utan. Lol.

I purposely made the same pose. Ayuni's idea.

Jonker Street at night is really, really beautiful. It's a big loss if you visit Jonker Street and don't stay there until nighttime, at least once even is enough. It gets really colourful with the beautiful lights and the street arts popped up as if they had come to life.

Other than the street arts, there are many good places to eat at Jonker Street. The fourth, or fifth, or sixth--I don't know. I don't remember--time I went there, I went with my boyfriend because he was craving for some good baba nyonya food. We came across this restaurant called Restoran Peranakan and dude, the food was delicious.

After Ruhil saw me upload the picture in Instagram, she immediately wanted to go to that same place so when Wani came to Semenanjung, we took that opportunity to take a trip to Jonker Street to have a good dinner there. Unfortunately, the place was either closed or jam-packed that night, I can't remember why, but we didn't go there, instead we went to another baba nyonya shop which tasted just as good called Bistro Year 1673.

I didn't take any pictures of the restaurant, so instead I will upload a picture of our faces inside the restaurant. Hahaha. It's close enough.

That night, we slept over at Ruhil's place and Wani had to leave early in the morning, so Ruhil and I decided to continue our Melaka City adventure so we went back to Jonker Street the next day and tried to find Jonker 88, which is a very popular laksa shop in Melaka. Man. There was this looooooong queue outside the shop of people waiting to take their laksa but we were determined to taste this laksa everyone was talking about so we queued up and searched for an empty table, which was hard because it was a very small shop with more number of customers than chairs but this one really nice couple offered half of their table space for us, probably because they saw Ruhil with her baby and they are really nice and reasonable people.

How was the laksa? Not bad. But I actually expected it to taste better on par with its popularity. 

And of course, Melaka would not be complete without riding their famous beca. It's even more fun riding them in the night where you can choose which brightest beca you want.

I joked about this pic where Ruhil's family were the only ones with "cahaya keimanan" while the rest of us were loss cause. Lol.

These weren't the only places I went to the many times I've been to Melaka. There's the time I went to Pantai Klebang for their famous coconut shake, and the time we went to Kampung Umbai for their seafood. It's quite a secluded place and takes a while from Melaka City to get there but it's worth it. And the delicious cheese nan from Pak Putra. Bottom line is, there are way too many things to do and see in Melaka and one blog entry is not even close to fair to write about everything.