VIDEO DESCRIPTION:
Planet Doug is still based in Melaka, Malaysia, and time is running out! My tourist visa expires in a few days, so I need to make a move. In this classic Planet Doug errand-run-style vlog, I head out on my bicycle to buy a ticket for the IndoMal Fast Ferry across the Melaka Strait to Dumai, Sumatra, Indonesia. Along the way, I explore the quiet streets of Melaka, visit the ferry terminal, and share some local history (including the sad story of Melaka’s demolished fortress walls).
But the small adventures don’t stop there. I also continue my never-ending struggle with my bicycle kickstand – and come up with a creative (hopefully useful) solution using spare parts from an old kickstand. Will it hold? We’ll see.
And finally, the day ends in the best possible way: a surprise food delivery from a generous Planet Doug supporter. Chicken biryani, curry, papadam, and more – eaten right here in Planet Doug Studios.
📍 Locations featured:
– Melaka, Malaysia (Dutch Square, Melaka River, ferry terminal)
– Eco Green Bike Station
– Mahkota Vibe Inn
🔧 Gear mentioned:
– GoPro (and the classic “forgot to hit record” moment)
– Heavy touring bike + dual kickstand experiment
🍛 Food delivery highlight:
– Chicken biryani with curry, papadam, boiled egg, and mystery yellow dessert
Thanks again to the Planet Doug supporter who sent dinner – you know who you are!
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Good morning and welcome back to Planet Doug in Malacca, Malaysia. And I have an errand to run this morning. My visa for Malaysia is expiring next week, just in a few days. So I’ve been organizing an exit from Malaysia, hopefully a temporary one. And I’m going to be taking a ferry. At least the plan right now is to hop on the IndoMal Fast Ferry here in Malacca that goes across to Dumai in Sumatra.
I haven’t been out in Malacca on my bicycle yet. So I’m sort of disoriented. I’m like, where am I supposed to go? That’s the danger of talking into a GoPro. Your brain stops working in all other aspects of your life. So it’s like, oh, where am I supposed to go? But the ferry terminal is on the other side of the river. I think it’s quite a big building and I believe that’s where the IndoMal Fast Ferry ticketing office is. I don’t know for sure that I can just head over there and buy a ticket, but that’s what I plan on doing. You can buy them online, pay for them online, but I’d like to do things in person. It gives me a chance to see the dock, see in advance where it is I need to go on the day of the trip, do a little bit of scouting, a little bit of reconnaissance.
Plus these boats have an economy class and then they have a VIP class. And usually VIP class is quite affordable. In my experience, it’s a good value. And the only way to get a VIP upgrade, to buy a VIP ticket, is doing it in person. You can’t do it online for some quirk of their website, their ticketing online site.
I was going to just take a casual stroll over to the ferry terminal because it’s right across the river from my hotel. It’s very, very close. But from what I can tell on Google Maps anyway, there’s no access that way. The only way to do it is doing a long detour onto Jonker Street going back and around. And there’s one bridge that takes you over to the peninsula where the terminal building is located. And then it ends up being a bit far to walk. So I just hopped on my bike.
Very quiet today here in Malacca. It is a Thursday. There’s another weekend coming up — Friday, Saturday, Sunday. It’s probably going to be bustling, but on a weekday like this, it’s a pretty quiet place.
I’m not sure if this is a one-way street or what. I thought it was a two-way, but I seem to be going against traffic. Anyway, I’m just approaching Dutch Square right ahead and that building up there, the Stadthuys. Stadthuys, I think it’s Stadthuys. That’s where the museum is located. And I went there the other day.
And there’s the Middelburg Fortress rebuilt out of laterite according to the diagrams and paintings that they found of this historic spot. Yeah, as I talked about in my museum history video, I was really sad to hear the story of how when the British were in control of Malacca, and I mean it made sense at the time, it was logical, they decided to tear down the fortifications. So the fort, the wall that went all the way around Malacca, they decided to tear it down. I guess it had no value to them and they were promoting Penang and Singapore as their shipping ports of choice. They didn’t want people to be trading here. So they didn’t want any competition. At least that’s what I read. And then they said about demolishing it and of course it was a pretty big job to demolish it by hand. And they ended up using explosives and basically went all the way around the city of Malacca and demolished and tore down the entire wall. And all I can think about is what a loss that is to history. Can you imagine if the entire wall still existed today as it was built by the Portuguese, by the Dutch and then modified by the Dutch and the British.
There goes one of the river boats, the river cruise, which I have not done yet.
But I imagine if you went into the history, when the British made that decision, it made sense at the time because the wall had no historic cultural value to them. It was of their time technically. So they didn’t need it anymore. The modern world, I guess, had gone beyond that kind of a stone fortification. So they just started tearing it down. It was probably getting in the way of urban development, building new roads and new houses and developing neighborhoods. Anyway, I’m just guessing where I’m supposed to go here. I think I have to stop for a Google Maps check. Make sure I don’t go too far off track.
And I did read somewhere that this decision to tear down the wall was made under Raffles. And then Raffles actually came here and then he was kind of dismayed at what was going on. And then he tried to stop it like mid-demolition. He tried to stop it and all he managed to save was that little piece they call A Famosa. There’s a gateway. That’s the only remaining piece of the wall that still exists today, the original fortifications at A Famosa. And yeah, I guess he tried to stop it, but yeah, I don’t know all the details about that. This is just something I read in passing on the internet. I’m passing on internet rumors, little things, little bits of info that I read.
Yeah, the ferry terminal building is not only on the other side of the river. It’s actually sitting on a peninsula that sticks out into the river or maybe an island actually. So even though I’m on this side of the river, I think that is the terminal building right there. I think that’s the ferry terminal, but there’s water in between me and that building even on this side. So I’ve got to ride all the way to the end and find the bridge. Much bigger building than I expected. I’m accustomed to leaving on the IndoMal Fast Ferry from Port Dickson. And the terminal building in Port Dickson is very quaint by comparison. Practically a tiny…
Yeah, this is where having a bicycle with you, not just traveling by bicycle, but just having a bicycle is really nice. Gives you the freedom to do this. Of course a sensible person would just summon a Grab or something from their hotel and they would drive them right to the dock. But then they don’t have any of these experiences looking around at less trafficked parts of the city. Okay, there’s the bridge. Yeah, I’m not seeing any clear signposting like there’s no arrows and signs saying this way to the ferry terminal to the dock. Just have to trust Google Maps. This is where it is.
I think the ferry leaves. The one to Dumai goes every day at 2 or 2:30 in the afternoon, which is pretty comfortable timing. And two and a half hours. It’s a much easier journey than the one that I used to take from Port Dickson to Tanjung Balai. It’s more like a 7 or 8 hour journey and you leave earlier in the morning.
And find a place to park my bicycle. I like to be able to lock it to a pole of some kind, though. Now I have my handy dandy new kickstand, but I don’t need it because I have a handy pole right here.
Yeah. No sign at all anywhere saying ferry terminal. Just have to assume I’m in the right place.
I had a wonderful interaction with the woman at the ticket counter for IndoMal. Everything was incredible. Everything was amazing. Tons of detail. She told me everything, itemized everything. And then when I sat down, I realized, dummy, I forgot to hit record on the GoPro. So that whole interaction you just have to imagine a lovely friendly woman with very good English at the IndoMal counter, very cheerful, and gave me all the information.
So yeah, there are a few things to explain because you start with the base price which is 160 ringgit one way but then I upgraded to the VIP class and that was 20 ringgit to be able to sit on the upper deck and that comes with quite a few benefits and there is a fuel surcharge which is interesting because the other day — was it one of my first days here where yeah when I went to the museum in the museum video maybe I’ll carve it out and make a separate video about it — I came across one of the IndoMal ships refueling so they crossed to the other side of the river and then they took a hose from the boat and ran it to a fuel truck and they loaded… I filmed the whole process and I was chatting with the guy and he was telling me just how much the price of fuel has gone up and he again yeah I think he said I thought he said 60% increase but that seemed like way too much to me. I thought I must have misunderstood. And then when I showed up at the counter here she said 60 ringgit fuel surcharge. I thought wow that is a lot to pay. And she says yeah because of the war the price went up. But then when I saw the bill, the final total, it wasn’t 60, it was 16. That terrible thing in the English language where 16 sounds like 60. And anyway, so it’s 16 ringgit extra is the fuel surcharge for the ticket. And I was thinking maybe that’s what the man said who was fueling up the ship. Maybe he was telling me that the ticket now costs 16 ringgit extra. So yeah, I have my ticket. Everything’s all set to go. Yeah, I wish I had all of that on video, but yeah, I forgot to hit the record button.
And here’s the interior of the building. Much more spacious than I expected. Dome ceiling up above. Lot of seating here. And there’s the departure hall.
And it costs an additional 20 ringgit to bring my bicycle, which I plan on doing. So I assume that when the day comes, I just roll my bicycle in here. And this is the departure area. And they’ll have… Okay, there’s two lines. VIP, economy, and then over there there’s a table where you would pay for your luggage. And then off you go. Security, immigration, all that good stuff, the departure hall.
That’s the terminal building behind me. I took video of it already, but of course I forgot to hit the record button, so I was just talking to myself and filming nothing.
The other trick to this, as she explained to me, she talked to me about the visa. Of course, you can get your visa for Indonesia online. This time, I just didn’t want to bother with that. I went to the website, but the Indonesian immigration website is very glitchy. You never quite know what’s going on with that website. And this time when I went to the website, I thought about starting the process, just seeing how things worked out. But right at the very top of the website was a big red banner that said this site is down for maintenance. And then it had a counter like this big allowed like a NASA launch counter. And there was like a timer to tell you when it was going to be back up again. But the timer was at zero. So I guess the maintenance period was already over and it counted down to zero or it hadn’t even started yet and they’re going to launch the countdown. I couldn’t tell like is it running? Is it not? Is it up? Is it not up? Anyway, I didn’t want to risk it. I’ve had so many problems with the website. I didn’t want to go through the whole application process for the visa, get to the payment stage, submit payment, payment fails, application fails. You know, who knows what could go wrong. I just didn’t want to risk it. So I thought a smaller risk will be buying my visa on arrival when I physically arrive, which it is possible to do at Dumai. Then you have to have cash. So you have to, as this woman was explaining it to me, you can pay in US dollars, Malaysian ringgit or Indonesian rupiah. And it’s a different price depending which currency. And I assured her, yeah, I have, I will have rupiah, Indonesian rupiah. I’ll change money before I go, but I also have US dollars and I have ringgit as well. And she says, well, it’s actually significantly cheaper if you pay in rupiah. So her advice was to do that and you save like $5 US if you pay in rupiah. It’s like $5 cheaper. It’s like 35 US if you pay in US dollars and about 30 if you pay in rupiah.
But yeah, as I said, there’s a water barrier on both sides of this building. So there’s this side separating me from the land and then on the other side of the building is the actual river on the other side. So this is actually sitting on an island, and the only way to get to the island is across this bridge. Very cool. Well, that was a very successful errand as far as errands go on Planet Doug.
Yeah, I have such good feelings about Indonesia, about Sumatra in particular. Things tend to be casual, easygoing, and since I had a success with that errand, everything went so smoothly. I might attempt a second errand, go back to the bicycle shop. The other day I went to this bicycle shop called something like the Eco Green something something bicycle shop. It’s like just a 100 meters if that away from my hotel. And so I went there to look into getting a kickstand and I got one. And when I first saw it, I wasn’t that impressed, but I ended up going back and buying one. And then he installed it for me. And so far, I’m relatively pleased with it in terms of it’s an improvement over the horrible one that I’m using now. But at the moment, I have both kickstands still on the bike. So this one mounts underneath the bottom bracket, like the middle of the bike, and that has advantages and disadvantages. My old one attaches near the rear wheel, and that also has advantages and disadvantages. Having both of them is… Yeah. I mean, makes your bike heavier, but if I was worried about my bike being heavy, I lost that battle ages ago. Every time I pick up my bike just to carry it over the curb or something, my whole body is like, “Oh, man.” Like, it feels like I have all my bags attached, it’s like, “Why is this so heavy?” And really, it’s just the weight of the bicycle. It’s a heavy heavy bike. So yeah. So adding a second kickstand doesn’t really phase me that much. That’s just Tuesday on Planet Doug.
I wonder if I’ve gotten myself into a dead end or can I turn left? I think I can turn. Yeah, I can get out this way. Oh, by the way, why don’t I just take a look over here? I have the power of the bicycle. I can go anywhere I want. And this is the far side of the river. There’s a walking path here. I don’t know how far it continues. There’s a whole bunch of river boats here. The cruise boats. Guess this is another place where you can buy a ticket for a river cruise.
But I was just saying I still have my old kickstand mounted. So I have two of them, but the old one is so useless. But I have a piece of steel from my old kickstand. Like the… I bought a new one to replace this one. And I kept some of the parts. And I was thinking maybe I can take this old piece of steel from the old kickstand and put it on the new kickstand and maybe reinforce the part that’s always bending. But I don’t really have the… I think I need a couple of extra bolts, longer bolts in order to do that.
There’s a big sign here for the Malacca River. Beautifully developed town. Really is nice. As I can see, Malacca satisfying a wide range of people. Someone like me love it here. The depth of the history, the interesting architecture, the history that you see in the streets, the old buildings, the fun of the rivers, the river boats, and then someone coming here looking more to relax and have a holiday. All the restaurants, all the nice hotels, you can spend as much money as you want and have as enjoyable a time as you like. And I would say even for families, riverside walks like this. Go out for a stroll with the kids. I don’t know. I don’t know what kids like.
Very well organized, too. I see a lot of maps around like this one here. Tons of museums, of course.
Let’s try out my new kickstand. Oh yeah, that’s why my GoPro is now pointing up at the sky cuz my bike is leaning over, but there’s the new kickstand and it braces right underneath the frame of the bike and it feels much more solid. This is my old one. And this complex mechanism here, it bends like rubber. So it doesn’t support the weight of the bike. So this is not a high-end kickstand by any means. It’s not a strong one. It’s not designed for a touring bike, but it is definitely better than this piece of junk here. But I’m thinking of like this piece of metal right here. I have a second one that’s exactly the same. And I thought maybe I could undo the bolts, put in a second piece of steel, and then reinforce it, make it twice as thick. But these bolts aren’t long enough. So can ask the guy at the bike shop if he has some longer bolts. Maybe he has another idea to reinforce it.
But anyway, I parked the bicycle because I wanted to show this place. Look at that hotel. Get yourself a room here with a balcony looking out over the fountains. And this would be your view over here out over the river. Oh man. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I’m fully oriented now. I know where I am. That is crazy. What a pleasant walkway. Yeah. This is the whole front side of the Casa del Rio here. And yeah, my hotel is on the other side of the river up in that direction.
Yeah, like I said, I think Malacca could be good for young people, good for retirees. Great little town or a great big city. It’s like a small historic town in the middle of quite a large city. So you can get everything here all at once.
I said I had to wait until the weekend for people to show up, but everybody seems to be getting a jump on the weekend. At least down here at Dutch Square, this is always bustling. Everybody comes here. So no matter how many people there are visiting the city on any one day, you’re going to find 70% of them right here around this square.
In my videos, when I’ve been cycling, I’ve been talking about how much I’ve been sweating and the sweat goes into my eyes and causes trouble. And of course, people are leaving helpful comments about clothing I could try, headbands, this and that. But it’s really got nothing to do with cycling. Like right now I can’t even see because all I’m doing is walking and the sweat is pouring into my eyes. So it’s just the cost of doing business. Cost of being a Canadian trying to live in Southeast Asia.
So I’m at the bicycle shop. We’ll see whether he’s busy.
Hello. Oh, hello. How are you? Yeah. Hi. Good. I have a question for you. Maybe you can help me with something. This kickstand seems okay. Yeah, no problem at all. The other one I have this old… This is from the old kickstand. And I’m wondering if I put it on like it’s this piece here. So if I was thinking if I put this also on maybe it makes it… Yeah. So it doesn’t bend so much. Okay. But these bolts are kind of short. So if I put… if I try to put that on maybe the bolt doesn’t… Maybe if you have a way to figure that out just to somehow… Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, try something like that.
So I’m back at… what is the name of your shop again? It’s Eco Green Bike. Eco Green Bike. And he’s come out with his tools. Much better tools than mine. He’s going to see whether there’s a way to make this work to make it stronger somehow. This one. This one. Chain too short one. So he might have some bolts that work better. Yeah. I was surprised these ones are not stainless steel. Yeah, this one is normal. Yeah, they rust. Yeah.
And there’s the outside of the shop again. Eco Green Bike Station. Really convenient location if you’re a cyclist coming to Malacca because as I said, it’s so many hotels here. Just hotel after hotel after hotel. This street, the next one over, the next one over. There’s lots of low-budget hotels and a lot of restaurants here and near the historic neighborhood. So yeah, he’s all done. And my idea seems to have been successful because normally this kickstand only has one metal bar here, but since I had an old version of this kickstand, I kept the second bar as a spare part. So now it’s doubled up. So there’s two pieces of steel here and it makes it a lot stronger. So yeah, like now I can even lift the rear tire off the ground like on the kickstand, which I couldn’t do before because this part would bend. It just bends inward. I’m a little nervous about these bolts getting so close to the spokes. I might have to take a hacksaw, cut off the end there. But it’s not perfect, but it’s better than before. And then now I can use this kickstand all by itself. See that? Much more solid. And I could even use this kickstand by itself. Not as good. And then now as long as they’re a similar length. Right now I’ve got a dual kickstand. Two heads are better than one, they say. And perhaps two kickstands is overkill, but maybe two kickstands is better than one.
Picked up a cold drink from the KK Mart, my neighborhood convenience store. Two errands down. Not bad. Pretty effortless on both of them. Very pleasant. Heat. Heat. Oh, I know.
A short interlude, a snack interlude on Planet Doug. I was recording the Ask Me Anything video upstairs and I was contacted by a kind…
It’s flooded down here. I guess they’re washing the stairs, but all the water has run downhill and it’s pooled down here. Hello. Holy for Roy. Roy. Yep, that’s me. Thank you very much. Yeah. Yeah, they changed the name. It’s like Makakota Inn, but this is also Hotel. Yeah, two names. Yeah. Yeah, two names there. Thank you. Okay. Thank you very much. There we have some food. Food delivery. And in case you’ve probably seen where I’m living, but just in case you haven’t, there is the Hotel Makakota Inn. And I was just saying that yeah, Planet Doug subscriber ordered some food for me. There is the food and I’m going to enjoy this up in my room. Got to go navigate the flood again.
Yeah, I guess it’s kind of convenient when you think about it. You just go up to the top of the building and start washing on your way down and all the water just ends up pooling at the bottom and then you sweep it out.
All right. All right. Working hard. Yeah. All right. Thank you. All right.
Yeah, I’ve enjoyed myself here at the Makakota Inn. It all comes down to people. It really does. If you’re lucky enough to go to a low-budget hotel at a time when their staff are just friendly, welcoming, nice people, you know, you have a really good experience. The condition of the room in the hotel that is often really just a secondary. Well, I’m back in Planet Doug Studios.
Yeah. Yeah, I’ll show it to you. I don’t have any real secrets. This is what the place looks like now cuz I’m over there editing right now. I’m editing the Ask Me Anything video. I recorded it this morning and then some of the afternoon, but I don’t know, things have sort of spun out of control in terms of Planet Doug Studios here. I’ve been very busy doing a lot of different things. But yeah, my mystery benefactor promised me a snack to give me the energy to keep editing the video, but it is based on weight. It is not so much a snack as a full meal. So there’s… I have no idea what the food is. Let me sit down and dive into it.
Okay, I think we’re okay as far as the GoPro placement is concerned. And let’s dive into this feast.
Curry. I smell curry. Even my poor Planet Doug nose knows curry. Even I can recognize the smell of curry. Papadam crunchy crackers. Ooh, like sort of yogurty sauce. Some kind of yellow cakey thing. More yellow stuff. No idea what. And the curry sauce. And then we come down to chicken biryani. That’s chicken biryani.
There you have it. Chicken biryani with sauce with papadam with stuff in general. Let’s give this a try with the rice without any accoutrement. Classic biryani. Tastes good to me. A complete boiled egg. And as I’ve learned, the chicken is always buried. So you have to dig down and then you find. So there’s a big chicken leg down there. So that’s where in one of my Ask Me Anything videos questions, one of my Ask Me Anything questions, somebody was asking whether I’m because I’ve been cycling, getting more exercise, am I making sure to eat more protein? And my answer was, well, no. I don’t really pay attention to what I eat, but here you go. Big chicken drumstick getting some protein.
And the papadam, if you don’t know what that is, nice crunchy snack. I remember there were a couple of restaurants I went to in KL quite often and I’d sit down there and have a meal and they had a system where sometimes they gave you papadam like they have a big bucket of it and then they’ll go from table to table and they seem to pick out their favorite customers and then give you a big handful of papadam but not everybody got them. Some days I got it. Sometimes I didn’t. It was like a lottery or something and I was always very excited when I was the chosen one and they get out the big bucket of papadam. They come to my table and start piling it up there like yes. Today I’m one of the papadam people. I hope I’m saying it right.
I don’t know if this is this yellow stuff. Is it part of the meal? Is it a desserty sort of thing? I’m guessing dessert like a cake almost. Let’s give that a try. You could eat it together. It’s got a little bit of sweet to it. Could be dessert. This other yellow stuff is something else. To my taste buds, it’s identical. It’s like another piece of the same thing.
And for the sauce, well, this is going to go in a bowl cuz I’m not going to pour it all over the rice. I have my little Trangia cook stove pot system and it comes with a pot your cooking pot basically. So I do have a pot. So my curry sauce is going to go in there. I always like to have my sauces separate from the meal. I don’t like making a big mess. So let’s pour this in here. Yeah. Smooth. It’s not hot and spicy. Flavorful curryish.
And the last item is this… Aha. One must be ingenious when you are living that low-budget life and having amazing food delivered to you. Tim Hortons coffee mug. I don’t have another pot. So I will put this into my coffee pot. Coffee cup. Oo, nice. Suppose I could have put this into the lid, but the lid has the dessert in it right now. But yeah, it is this basically veggies to go along with your meal. All chopped up cucumber. Nice.
All right. I have my own cutlery of course that I travel with. I used to have a full set of plastic cutlery like a spoon and fork and everything, but the fork and the spoon were stolen in the Philippines a long time ago when I was there. I was thinking of that because one of the AMA questions was, you know, have you ever been robbed while you were overseas? So I was thinking about all the times where things were stolen from me and I only mentioned a couple of them in the video and I completely forgot about some other stories like when my smartphone was stolen in Sumatra and that had a big psychological impact on me. And now I remember in the Philippines I was camping at a hotel but I was in a hotel grounds but I didn’t pay for a room. I paid to set up my tent on the hotel grounds and there was a fence and everything. So I was feeling a little bit secure and I left my camping gear outside on a table. And then I went somewhere for a minute, came back and everything was gone. Just someone had jumped over the fence, snatched everything and disappeared. But I still had my knife. I think I hadn’t laid it out or something, but all my cutlery was stolen. But I’ve replaced it with a metal. I bought this at some store at some point. Anyway, let’s try the piece of chicken.
Nice. So as I go through this, the way I eat my meals, I sort of take a mouthful of whatever and then I add the sauce and then I add this. I do it rather than mixing everything together. I just sort of go from container to container. That’s what I’m going to do. So yeah, this looks really great. Thank you very much, mystery benefactor out there. Nice choice, nice, simple, filling meal, and it arrived right when it was necessary. So I’m going to dive in and enjoy this meal.