VIDEO DESCRIPTION:
Welcome to Melaka, Malaysia – this isn’t a deep historical tour, just a genuine first look at the city as I stumble into it.
I’d arrived the day before by bicycle from Tampin, and the day was supposed to be a quiet “YouTuber housekeeping” day: replying to comments, organizing videos, and editing. But then a Planet Doug supporter surprised me by ordering a meal from a local cafe about 18 minutes away on foot. So I grabbed my GoPro and headed out.
What follows is exactly what it looked like: my first real walk through modern Melaka, passing everything from the famous revolving tower (yes, I immediately thought of Final Destination), a Portuguese ship reconstruction, Dutch-era fortifications, trishaws with Pikachu themes, and more shopping malls than I expected. I also learned that “Asam Pedas” is a dish, not a restaurant name.
The walk itself was simple: pick up a Nonya Laksa from Bibik Cafe (with a small language barrier adventure), carry it back to my hotel room, and eat it while sitting on the bed using a pull-up table. After that, I headed out again to a local bike shop to try a new kickstand for my bicycle – which led to a front derailleur adjustment, a brake pad fix, and some honest tinkering.
This isn’t a polished guide to Melaka’s history. It’s a real-time first impression of the city’s modern, bustling, slightly overwhelming character – and a reminder that even small errands can turn into the day’s adventure.
Thanks as always to the Planet Doug supporter who sent that meal. And if you made it all the way through this rambling walk, you’re in the Crunch Club – drop “CC” in the comments.
Next up: the history museums and a proper deeper dive into old Melaka.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Good afternoon and welcome to Planet Doug Studios here in Melaka. That’s where I’ve been spending most of my day today. Today was a YouTuber housekeeping day so far. Just chatting with people through the YouTube comments. I had a couple of videos where you have to do the video title and description and thumbnail and all that kind of stuff. And then I have a video from yesterday that I haven’t edited yet. And that is going to be the rest of my day. But I just got a message from a generous Planet Doug supporter that has ordered a meal for me and I’m heading out into the city just to go for a walk and it’s about 18 minutes away on foot to get to this cafe and the order is being placed now. So I’m just going to go out for a walk in Melaka. I know next to nothing about the town yet because I arrived yesterday afternoon by bicycle from Tampin. I rode from the town of Tampin to here. Arrived late in the afternoon, checked into my room and didn’t really do much after that. So I haven’t been out exploring Melaka yet. That is still to come. I’m just sort of getting caught up with things now. But let’s head outside. Head for this cafe.
Very quiet as always out in the hallways of my hotel. My room door is a little bit of a struggle to close. It’s jammed up there at the top and I don’t like making a loud bang. So I have to use Hulk power in order to close that door. But yeah, I don’t want to pull too hard because then it bangs and it bothers everybody. So yeah, this is the Makota Vibe Inn is the name of this place and it used to be called Holy and it still says that on the front. And I’m going to be walking by the main building. This is actually the hotel’s second building. That’s where they put most of their guests these days, it seems. You got to push the door to get out.
Look at that. A little restaurant right beside the hotel. This place was closed yesterday when I showed up. So I didn’t know what it was.
The weather pattern changed a lot when you head down to the coast. Up in the hills where I was earlier, hot sun every single day nonstop. Now that I’m down on the coast, clouds have moved in a little bit and there’s even a little bit of rain. And as luck would have it, I’m out of practice, so I don’t even have my umbrella with me. But I think I’ll be okay. Anyway, there’s the hotel, now called Makota Vibe Inn. And that’s their building as well where I’m staying. And I’m glad to see my bicycle is still here. There’s really nothing else I can do with the bike except park it, lock it up outside right here. So at least it’s still there. Should I go back and get my umbrella? What do you think? Yeah, I think so. Play it smart.
At this point in the afternoon small adventures, I lost the audio completely. The microphone that was damaged just stopped working. All it did was send loud crackling to the GoPro and that’s all you hear on the audio track. But I remember at the time I was talking about the tower that you see up ahead. I knew about this tower in the city, but I had never seen it in real life before because as I said, the last time I was in Melaka was back in the ’90s. And I’m pretty sure this tower did not exist back then. And I didn’t even know, to be honest, that that platform went up and down. I thought there was an elevator inside the tower. And then you rode up the elevator to the observation platform. And then as I was talking about the tower and the platform and whether I would pay to go up there or not, and I remember talking about the weather and how you’d want to make sure you go up on a clear, sunny day. And while I was talking about all this, then the platform started to go down. And I realized then, oh, you actually get in the platform at ground level and then it rotates and rises all the way up to the top and basically all day long it goes up and down, up and down, carrying people who paid a ticket to go up and down there. You can see now it’s going down. And I was surprised to see how quickly it went down. I thought if it was going to move like that, I thought it would be more gradual, but it seemed like it was moving faster than I expected up and down. And I remember talking about the movie Final Destination Bloodlines. I’m a big fan of the Final Destination movies and I recently watched the final one in the series. I think it’s called Bloodlines. And the big setpiece in that movie, the disaster that opens the film was set in a tower like this with a big observation platform at the top. And of course in the movie, the entire platform crumbles and falls to the ground. The whole tower collapsed basically and just about everybody gets killed. So it’s sort of like, oh, I just watched Final Destination Bloodlines. It doesn’t make you particularly eager to go up to the top of a tower, particularly with a platform that rises and goes up and down on its own. And I remember in the video at this point I was talking about asam pedas. I saw those words Asam Pedas on a restaurant and I thought it was the name of the restaurant, but then I kept seeing it over and over and I eventually learned that it’s actually the name of a special dish, a type of food that Melaka is famous for.
As I continued my walk to the restaurant to pick up the meal, I passed all kinds of interesting things. And at the time I had no idea what they were. So this, for example, I looked at it. I saw it was a ship, but I didn’t know what it was. But since then, I’ve learned that this is a museum connected with the Malaysian Navy. And of course, once I’d learned that, I made instant plans to return there one day and check it out. And of course, this ship really caught my eye. And again, at the time, I had no idea what it was, but I found out later that it is also part of a museum, and it’s actually a reconstruction of a Portuguese ship, a well-known one that sank on its journey back to Europe.
And then here’s life with just a tiny bit of rain and everything falls apart. I don’t know whether I have any audio. I was just talking on this video for the last 15 minutes and then I noticed I went to check the video and it has no audio because the rain I guess got into the microphone, the plugs, and it just shorted it out and I think I’m getting audio now. Let me take a look at the indicator. Yes, I seem to see some audio levels bouncing up and down. So I have audio now just in case none of that was recorded. What I was saying is that I’m in Melaka and I’ve been in Melaka just for one night. I got here by bicycle from the town of Tampin yesterday. Arrived late in the afternoon. And if you didn’t know I was in Melaka, you do now. These are becoming more and more famous in Melaka. These guys compete with each other for having the loudest sound system, the brightest lights, the fanciest most childlike decorations.
I just watched a YouTube video kind of a documentary that focused on one of these guys rebuilding his, I forget what the name of them is, a pedicab. And then he spent thousands of dollars redesigning it for the new system, for the new season, I mean.
And I assume this is a historic part of Melaka. And I was just saying that I just got here last night and then a Planet Doug supporter and I spent all day just working on YouTubery stuff, YouTube videos and editing and replying to comments. So I have not even begun my exploration of the city yet. So I don’t know anything about it. So forgive me if I just wander around and go, I don’t know what this is and I don’t know what that is because I just don’t know yet. I haven’t had time to go out exploring. This is my first time out in the city. So there’s the Melaka River.
All kinds of restaurants and spots like that. I’m sure. And I have no idea what this is, but like I said, I’m not really primed for this yet. Just that a Planet Doug subscriber ordered a meal for me from a nearby restaurant. So I’m walking to the restaurant for this meal. So okay, you are here. And this is the Bastion Middelburg. The Dutch renamed the eight bulwarks when they captured Melaka in 1641. So the Dutch reinforced this complex of defensive wall by building another fortress called Middelburg. So anyway, I’m not going to read all of that right now. As I said, that’s not the project for today. The project for today is to survive the rain and go to a restaurant for lunch. I might, it’s actually a pickup order, so I can bring it back to my hotel or I can eat it there. And the rain doesn’t just short out all the electronics. Of course, it makes me wet and at the same time it interferes with fixing all the electronics because when I try to check up on my GoPro or my microphones, I put on my reading glasses and I can’t see anything because my reading glasses are covered in rain. Raindrops. Yeah, rain and I just don’t get along anymore. Ever since I became a video master, rain is just like the worst thing.
Ah, beautifully restored square. Like I said, I’ve been here before, but I don’t really remember. And that as you walk around a town like this, you have to keep making little detours because there’s always people setting up a tripod, shooting video like I’m doing selfies. I was going to walk through this park here, but my way was blocked by two people or a whole group there setting up for some scenic shots right there. Okay, I think I go this way. Yeah, these are the highly, this is a Pikachu. They chose a Pikachu theme, man. I hope there’s an electric motor in there as well, though. I don’t think so. I think it’s all just pedal powered, but that would take a lot of energy to drive that heavy cycle around with a bunch of people in it, a bunch of chubby tourists like me. Okay, I’m walking by what is another big landmark here in Melaka. This is Bukit Melaka, Melaka Hill up there and the Dutch graveyard. Honestly, I had no idea I was this close to the action as far as attractions go. So when I got out, when I stepped out of my hotel this morning, I just thought I’d be popping over to a restaurant. I had no idea I would be passing so many local attractions, but as I said, I’m not doing a deep dive into anything today. Yeah, it’s funny. Even though I have Dutch heritage, both of my parents are from the Netherlands. They immigrated to Canada when they were young. I don’t really have a strong connection to that heritage. So I often forget that, oh, these Dutch colonizers, the Dutch that lived here back in those days, they’re kind of my people. But I don’t often think of them that way. Never even been to the Netherlands myself.
Wow, that’s quite a structure over there. Part of my impromptu walking tour. I have no idea what that is. People who have been to Melaka watching this video, you know a whole lot more than I do at this point. So you probably recognize everything around me. I’m completely disoriented. I nearly got run over by a series of three tourist buses in a row coming around that corner. I’m just not prepared for all of this big city excitement. Yeah, the cafe where I’m heading to is called Bibik Cafe. I don’t know anything about it other than there’s some food there waiting for me and I may eat it there or walk back to my hotel. I suppose at this point it makes more sense to eat there if it’s a comfortable place and they have air conditioning because I’m already just like hot and sweaty just from this short walk and if I walk all the way back again my food will get cold and I’ll be hot and sweaty again. I’ve arrived. Wow, what a quiet spot.
Bibik Cafe. So there’s the outside. Yeah, no parking here at the front. Obviously, this is just one narrow street. And if those tourist buses come thundering down here, you don’t want to be parking your car here. But they have parking available at the back.
Huh, look at that. Very casual seating over here. Some vintage photographs. Muslim friendly. So the food here would be halal.
And here we are on the inside. Yeah, very cozy, very intimate. I’m assuming this is all real. Fresh every day. Yeah, I think so. Some umbrella decor up there.
Hello. Yeah, I’m the pickup order. Yeah, I’ll just sit out there. Thank you.
There was just one guy back there in the kitchen and he was looking a little bit flustered. So I think I’ll take pity on him and he’s preparing the food to go, of course, because it’s a pickup order. And I thought maybe I could ask him to put it on a plate for me, but I don’t think they’re ready for that since they’re preparing it to go. I kind of have to take it to go. He’s here all by himself. I don’t want to make him rush around. He’s the cook, you know, getting out plates and cutlery. And anyway, so just waiting for the order to be ready. Yeah, just taking a look at their menu, little clipboard menu. They have a breakfast and lunch menu, sandwiches and wraps, add-on options, Malaysian homemade cuisine, Bibik signature vegetarian spicy fried rice, nona curry rice bowl, and then yeah, Laksa chicken, nasi lemak, rendang. Anyway, I don’t know what my friend and Planet Doug supporter ordered for me. I don’t know what food is coming my way, but I think I’ll walk it back to my hotel. It’s not exactly comfortable dining in my room either, but you know, at least it is air conditioned in there. This place is not. So it’s just like a fan. I just don’t want to bother the poor guy to make him set a table for one when he wasn’t expecting to. Every time I do something like that, I end up feeling like I made the right choices in life to make my life as simple as possible because like on my own, I don’t do these things. I don’t call restaurants, place an online order, then go there to pick it up at a set time because I know in my world these things just don’t come easily. There’s something about me. I guess I have such an awkward presence. What I’m talking about is I went back to the kitchen and there was a very pleasant nice young man back there. He didn’t speak a word of English though and he’s the only person there. There’s no wait staff, no owner, no manager, nobody at all. Just this poor guy back in the kitchen. So I go back to the kitchen and I make eye contact with him and I say, “Oh, order pickup.” and he just kind of looked at me kind of startled and then he kind of pointed out towards the tables and I went, “Oh, okay. It’s not ready yet. I’ll go and sit down and wait until the order is ready.” I thought we understood each other. So then I go out into the area with tables and I sit down there and I’m waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting and nothing is happening. And he finally comes over to my table and again he doesn’t speak a word of English and he’s like looking at me and he’s like, “So, what do you want?” I’m like, “Well, what do you mean? What do I want?” I’m like, “Pick up order. I’m here to pick up the order. I thought we had this already figured out.” And he’s looking at the menu because I had a menu at the table just to look at it. And he’s pointing at the menu. Says, “Oh, you can, you know, just choose your order.” Says, “No, no, no, no. My order has already.” And that’s when I make my mistake because I always make things more complicated than they need to be. And then I said, “Well, my friend placed an order for me, so I am here to pick up the order. I think it’s ready.” Right. The pick up the order. And he says, “Oh, you’re waiting for your friend.” Okay. Okay. And then he walks away. I’m like, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I’m not waiting. Let’s start all over from the beginning.” And we just go around and around and around and then finally the light bulb went off in his eyes and he’s like oh takeaway pickup. Yeah. And then he turns around and grabs a bag and hands it to me. So the order was completely ready that entire time. He just had no idea I hadn’t expressed it properly. I guess that I was there to pick up an order. There’s just something about my mannerisms that the modern world and I often are at odds. I don’t seem to convey properly what it is I’m there to do.
Yeah. And it was a good call to just bring the food back to my hotel because when he presented it to me, it was all like fully wrapped. It’s a laksa. I finally saw he confirmed. He says, “A laksa.” Oh, okay. Laksa. And it’s a big bowl of soupy stuff and it’s all wrapped up and sealed and double wrapped and triple wrapped. So if I told that poor guy at that point, “Oh, can you lay it out on the table for me to eat here?” His head would have exploded. He’d like, “What is up with this guy? Does he have any clue why he’s here? What he’s doing?” So I just took the order, put it into my handy dandy knapsack, and now I’m carefully balancing it. And laksa, oddly enough, I can tell you what it is because I’m walking by a restaurant that has a photo of laksa. Yeah, I imagine Melaka is filled with these places. This is the Felin Cafe Cop. Another little quaint little spot. And they have an advertisement here for Nonya Laksa. So that’s the meal that I am currently carrying in here. Nonya Laksa.
Of course, I went in the wrong direction. I got distracted by the traffic. Like even teeny tiny Melaka, you can’t really take a step without running into a car. They come pouring around this intersection. Like there’s no end to the flow of cars. And I got flustered and turned left when I was supposed to turn right.
As always, I blame it on the GoPro and my glasses were falling off my neck cord. Can’t see through them because they’re covered in water droplets. Just like ah, yeah, look at this traffic. It’s crazy. I guess it is, I believe it’s Saturday today. So this is probably the busiest day of the week in terms of visitors. So, oh, there’s a good landmark for me. I was wondering where that tower went. I think that’s the tower with the restaurant or the revolving platform. So as long as I can see that tower, I’m heading in the right direction.
So my hotel is very near the tower.
The Melaka Mega Mall. Check that out. Yikes. Complete with a McDonald’s.
Yeah. Here’s this building that it’s pretty much abandoned. I think it’s empty. Wonder if they’re going to tear it down at some point. That would be a big project. Cause chaos in this old neighborhood for a long time.
Hello. Hello. How are you?
Yeah, the scale of this town is a little bit more than I was expecting. Like that the Imperial Heritage Hotel and this mega mall. Look at those huge buildings down in that direction.
Yeah, it feels like the kind of city you if you have two basic interests, it will work out well for you. If you have an interest in colonial history, luckily I do, so I can easily enjoy my time here. Or you can come here with a lot, you know, deep pockets if you got lots of money to spend just on restaurants, pubs, nightlife, cafes. Yeah, just come here and open up your wallet and just go crazy. There’s a London bus cafe. There’s another restaurant here, Paya Royal Thai Restaurant over here. Like you could just go down any street, look for quaint cafes, big restaurants, whatever you want and just eat your way through the week or through the weekend. Though I think if you have an interest in the history of the city, you have to do a little bit of mental gymnastics as you walk around. You have to somehow mentally throw yourself back in time to the way the city would have looked 4 or 500 years ago. You have to mentally strip away all of this and all of that and all of that and the 7-Eleven and molten chocolate over there, the molten chocolate cafe. And I think that would be kind of hard to do to somehow remove all of this from your mental map of the city and try to feel the history.
Maybe I need a soundtrack. I’ve done that before in my life where I’ve gone to big attractions. I remember places like Borobudur in Indonesia going there on a day when there were a lot of school trips there. So a lot of kids running around and then I just popped in some atmospheric music in my earphones. It was actually the soundtrack from The Killing Fields and that kind of blocked out all of the kids and all of the noise and chaos and I really got a feel for the history of the temple. So maybe I need to find my Melaka soundtrack. Though if I have that then I can’t talk to you on the video because I’ll be listening to music the whole time.
Look at this place. I feel like a country bumpkin where somewhere where I don’t really belong. You know, everything sort of like KL towering above me. I wasn’t expecting that at all to feel kind of dwarfed by the architecture.
Yeah, it’s a much more bustling city than I anticipated. Much more modern. Look at all these motorcycles and scooters. That’s the true lifeblood of Melaka these days. It’s not colonial trade. It’s your MX King 150 zooming around the city. Good grief. Another giant shopping mall. Busker music. Amplified busker music coming from outside. Victoria’s Secret. Yeah. Another big shopping mall here. Another one across the road there. And I noticed the name on that one, the Mahkota Parade. And that’s the same name as my hotel. So I guess Mahkota has a meaning of some kind. I’ll have to look that up. Something to do with the history of Melaka. Mahkota.
There’s the tower up ahead. The platform is down at the bottom right now. So I still got a little ways to walk. That restaurant was a little bit farther away than I thought it was.
There’s the Holiday Inn over there. I remember it that I was right beside it on the road when I cycled in the Holiday Inn hotel. The Explorer Texas Chicken Jollibee Chicken Joy right here in Jollibee.
And I’ve hardly turned a single corner where I haven’t seen a sign pointing me towards a McDonald’s that reminds me when I was cycling like heading towards Melaka and one other time too. I think it was when I was heading towards Seremban and then ahead of me on the highway, I would see a sign that says, you know, McDonald’s announcing a McDonald’s coming up. So of course, I’m out there in the blistering heat and I’m thinking, you know what, ice cold Coke inside an air conditioned McDonald’s. That sounds pretty good to me. So I see the sign and I’m thinking, “Oh, there must be a McDonald’s soon.” I finally get to the sign and the one here for Melaka. I got to the sign and it said McDonald’s 15 kilometers ahead. I was like ah they teased me, you know. It’s like from 15 km away from the city, they already start advertising that there’s a McDonald’s here. I thought the sign was going to say, you know, McDonald’s 500 m ahead or 1 kilometer or something like that, but no, it’s way out in the middle of nowhere, 15 km away. And they’re advertising a McDonald’s here in the city. I say, “Well, I assumed there’d be a McDonald’s in Melaka, so quit teasing me with your McDonald’s signs. It just never ends.” Another pretty long, bustling kind of strip mall. There’s more Asam Pedas right there. A Ramly Burger place.
Oddly enough, I haven’t come across any 7-Elevens in my neighborhood. There’s one on the map, Google Maps. It’s marked, but it’s supposed to be right here in this complex up ahead, but I haven’t been able to track it down.
I’m getting very close to my neighborhood with my hotel, so I’m starting to recognize things.
Check out that amphibious truck over there. Looks like it can drive on pavement and then drive into the water and float. It’s a boat and bus, I guess. Must be a tourism like river boat cruise. But yeah, the 7-Eleven is supposed to be right inside here somewhere. But I’ve walked all over this neighborhood. Hello. And closest I could get was that to KK Mart over there, but KK Mart is at the bottom of the list of places where you want to go as a convenience store. 7-Eleven and 99 Speed Mart are both above the KK Mart in the hierarchy. It’s like the last place you want to go.
So yeah, here I am again. Just right outside these you kind of have to know what this food is. It’s probably too complicated for someone like me. And it’s all fish based. And I’m not a fish guy at all. But they have these prepared dishes like this. So I guess you grab one of those and then you just sort of grab a bunch of things there to go along with it. But that is all a little bit too complicated for this country bumpkin. I wouldn’t appreciate it and it would probably strike me as being too much work. I like my food to be simpler than that. So here’s another one. Asam pedas. I had to look it up last night to figure out what the heck it is, but yeah, it’s very similar with all the complicated dishes there that you put together. I would need a guide to help me through the experience.
One of these streets is mine. There’s the Holiday Inn. Another landmark that can get me home. My hotel is down one of these streets. I think it might be the next one.
I think this is my street. It has quite a range of sort of small hotels here. I don’t know if I’d quite call them boutiquey, but there’s this one, the Smart Hotel. There’s mine, the blue one, Holy or the Makota Vibe Inn. Got the Orchid Cafe and Lounge. Laundromat, which is handy. The hotel, good to stay. The Oo Z hotel. Yeah, there’s another one down on the corner there. Another one there. The 707 hotel. There’s like easily a dozen of them within a block of here, I think. Oh yeah. There’s two more right down there. I don’t think any of them would be places to get excited about. They’re all places. Oh, there’s another one there. The Tower Hotel. They’re just places where you’re looking for a relatively affordable place to lay your head for the night. Any one of these places would be suitable for that as long as your expectations are low.
So the door to my paradise is here somewhere. Hot and sweaty, I’ve returned. An interesting thing about a lot of the towns that I’ve passed through, even here in Melaka, like I was just outside there and there’s a family getting back into their car and the kids kind of were very happy to see me. They’re like, “Hello, hello.” You know, so I think for them coming to Melaka, it’s kind of a treat just to be able to see foreigners. So whatever small town they’re from, they wouldn’t see foreigners all over the place like you do here in Melaka. So it’s actually kind of fun for them to spend a weekend in Melaka. And part of the attraction maybe is yeah see people like me because the town is full of foreign tourists. All right. I got to struggle to get into Fort Knox here.
There we go. And now you got to get your incredible. Maybe if I put my hand up here that’ll be easier. Oh yeah, that’s the trick. Just push on the corner that’s stuck. There we go.
You’ve seen Planet Doug Studios. You’ve seen Planet Doug workshop. You’ve seen Planet Doug errand boy, Planet Doug Cyclist. Welcome to Planet Doug Cafe, which is essentially the same as Planet Doug Studios, except when it’s Studios, I’m leaning against the headboard with my laptop on my lap. When it’s Planet Doug Cafe, I’m sitting on the bed. And if I’m lucky, and in this case I am, I actually have a table. I can pull the table up to the bed. And now undo all the careful packaging that they did. So yeah, there we have container number one. Oh, sauces. Lots and lots of sauces. Got to have to fight my way through those rubber bands. And then I’m assuming there’s going to be some kind of bread in here because when I got to the restaurant, the overwhelming aroma was of toast. I smelled toast basically. So I guess yeah, they were making this the chapatis or what variety of bread that is, I couldn’t tell you right now. Got some more sauces and some cucumber slices and laksa I’m assuming. Yes. So yeah, laksa kind of a noodles and egg and more sauces and veggies. And I believe you take all of this, you pour it in there, and you have laksa basically. Yeah, that’s a lot of flavor for Planet Doug to deal with.
Usually for someone like me, all the flavor in here, that’s probably all the flavor I need. I don’t need extra. I don’t know what to do with all the flavors. That’s more flavor there than I need for a week of meals. All right, let’s get this apart. Still nice and hot. Piping hot. So that’s good. So I mean, if I’m doing this wrong, apologies, but as far as I know, you just pour this into there. And now you have laksa.
There’s a lot of see probably chicken. Now let’s get rid of this. This is kind of what I was talking about in the piece of video that may or may not have audio that when you stay in a low-budget room, you just sort of you really get an you get your exercise in because every time you’re moving, there’s such little space. You’re so worried about tripping over something, knocking things over. You’re just sort of so careful all the time.
Anyway, let’s open up these sauces hopefully without making a mess. I believe these two came with the bread and this came with the laksa. Or maybe this was who knows. It’s all very these ones anyway are all very bright red. Very, very saucy. Just curious what the sauce tastes like. This one. Spicy, but I don’t know what spices exactly. Equally spicy. And this one. I know that flavor, but like some kind of a dal. I think and then the laksa sauce itself.
But yeah, I mean I don’t know if I’m a wimp or what I am. I mean I’m not capable of handling like the super spicy dishes of the world. I mean, I could handle them, but I don’t enjoy them. So I’m not scared of these sauces, but I honestly just don’t need it because there’s so much flavor in the basic laksa sauce. I mean, this is I mean, it’s so flavorful that that’s all I need. I don’t need to add this or that to be honest, but so it’s kind of wasted on me.
It has yeah, soy basically tofu. Oh yeah, maybe that was all tofu. Yeah, it wasn’t chicken. That was all tofu and noodles and bread.
This is very good. I really like the flavor of the bread. That is really, really good. Noodles are good. Yeah, the mystery benefactor for this meal actually contacted me yesterday when I first arrived and was offering to send me a meal to my hotel. And it was probably something like this that he had in mind, but at that time I just come off the road. I’ve been cycling for 5 hours or whatever it was in the heat. And when I do that, I just have no appetite at all. There’s no way on earth I could have enjoyed the meal like this yesterday when I was still, you know, recovering from the hot day of cycling. But spending the night here in a day, you know, I’ve had time to recover and my appetite comes back. So I can really enjoy this now.
I forgot to take a picture for my mystery benefactor when I opened everything up and everything was neat and tidy. I was supposed to well, I felt like I should take a picture and send it to him. But now that it’s all a bit of a mess, that’ll be okay. He can get the idea. Looks like I’m enjoying the meal anyway, considering how quickly I’m devouring it. So yeah, that’s it. I’m just going to shut down the camera and enjoy the rest of this meal.
This is where I’ve been locking up my bike here in Melaka. And they said that this door, they never use it. No one goes in or out this door. It’s just permanently locked. So I could put my lock through the gated outer door.
But I’m not going anywhere in particular on my bike. I’m just heading to a neighborhood bicycle shop to try out a new type of kickstand.
There are actually quite a number of bicycle shops here in town, but there’s one just two blocks away or three small blocks away just up this alleyway here. And I popped in there the other day to see if they had anything in the way of kickstands. And he didn’t have much. He did say that he did have a like one of those double kickstands. But he only had one of them and he just sold it to a friend of his like a couple days ago, he said. But he had one other type of kickstand. It doesn’t jump out at me as wow, this is the kickstand I really want, but it could be just a holdover. It’s the kind of kickstand. Well, I’ll show it to you in the shop. It mounts underneath the bottom bracket. And I’ve never used a kickstand like that. It’s a single one, you know, similar to the one I’m using where the bike leans over. I still have this ongoing feeling that on Planet Doug, I have bad luck when it comes to the little things. So when I try to go down the alleyway, that’s when the truck is blocking the alley. When I go to the bike shop, that’s the day they’re closed. Right. So I’m going around the corner here thinking, “Ah, is he open? Is he open?” Ah, looks like the front door is open. So maybe my sense of bad luck is just imaginary.
So there’s the shop. Eco Green Bike Station is the name right there. And I’m hoping he’ll have time that we can just put it on and see whether it will work or not. And I’m assuming it’s not going to be expensive. So I could probably just purchase it probably 20 ringgit at the most. And then I can give it a try and if it doesn’t work at all, I mean, I can use it for a little while while keeping my eyes open for a better one. So he remembers me. He knows that I’m interested in kickstands and for the style that he has, you need this opening here to mount it. So that’s this style here.
Does it need rubber on here? Anything to protect it or because of that one also can. How much is a kickstand like that? This one 30 ringgit. Okay. 30.
You don’t mind if I shoot a little bit of video for my YouTube channel? No problem. So he’s cutting a piece of rubber to go in there. Just seems like a good idea to put a little bit of a rubber barrier, protect the metal, and maybe not crunch down on the chain stays quite as much. Oh yeah, nice little job. He cut a hole in the middle for the bolt.
Yeah, we’ll see how this works out. I mean, everything has to work together. So depending how far out it sticks, you know, it can’t interfere with the pedal. But look, there’s almost no room here at all. So but maybe. Yeah, I guess it’s coming from here. Yeah, I guess we’ll find out in a minute whether this style can fit in here or not. And he said it cost 30 ringgit this one. And it’s worth the risk. It’ll probably save me more money than that in the long run from damaging my bicycle further with this kickstand constantly failing. Now, he does sell this one as well, this exact same model, but yeah, I’ve been bitten pretty badly by that one. I’m not going to try it again. Or it could be that the kickstand goes directly underneath. I think this is called the chain stay. Maybe if it goes directly underneath that, then it won’t interfere with the pedals.
Yeah, it actually looks good. It goes underneath the frame of the bike. Doesn’t stick out to the side at all. Yeah, it’s not easy to get a Allen key in there.
Okay. Yeah. To access the bolt, he has to remove the derailleur or get it out of the way. So he’s suggesting for now just leaving this one on and having two kickstands is better than one. But we can give that a try. I can always just remove it myself later if I feel like it just gets in the way. I have a feeling it’ll just be in the way all the time. But so that was a relatively painless. We’ll see how it goes. It’s not the kickstand of my dreams or anything approaching that. And the installation is a little bit off, but I can dial it in myself over time. Yeah, I’m wearing long pants right now, which was a bad idea. Because yeah, I don’t like to get the bottom of my pants caught in the derailleur covered in grease. I just want to see whether the front derailleur is in the right spot. Yeah. To remove the front derailleur or at least adjust it, unscrew it, and move it up to get it out of the way. I just want to make sure. Yeah. So far so good.
No, it’s not lined up properly. Kind of I was kind of worried that would happen. As soon as he indicated he had to remove like change the position of the derailleur, I was like, “Ah, no, no, no, no, no.”
On the way down. It’s not clicking into the second sprocket. Yeah. Then it goes all the way back down. It’s only going from the first to the third. I think I’ll just go back to the shop and get him to make the adjustment. He can do it faster and easier with his tools.
Do you mind trying a small adjustment because on the derailleur it doesn’t change gear properly now. The position doesn’t seem quite right. The front derailleur. The front one. Yeah. It when I go I can go up to number three. But now when I click to go down it doesn’t go down. Okay. It goes all the way from three to. Yeah. Now that. Yeah. This one that that one doesn’t because your this one touching very hot. Oh yeah. Yeah. I didn’t notice that. Yeah. I have that long stick for my camera. Yeah. It gets in the way. Yeah, I can take the camera off so it doesn’t get broken. No, we brought the bike inside. It’s air conditioned in here and he has more access to all his tools. But he also noticed that one of the brake pads on the rear was brushing up against the rim too tightly. So he’s making an adjustment there. And then we’re going to dial in the front derailleur so that it’s changing gears properly. But yeah, this will sound way too inside baseball for non-cyclists. But one problem with this new type of kickstand is that with the one on the rear, you can lean the bike over and lift the wheel off the ground and then spin the pedals and it’s sort of like an informal bike stand. But this one, when you put it down, it interferes with the movement of the pedals. So you can’t lean the bike over, lift it off the ground, and then spin the pedals because this front, the center kickstand gets in the way of the pedal movement when it’s deployed. So it’s a different design, a different style. All right, adjustments have been made.
So we’re down in the smallest sprocket right now. Let’s climb up one. Yep, that works smoothly. Climb up to number three. There we go. And now this is the kicker. Down one. Yep. Down to number two. And down to number three. Back up again. Yep, more or less dialed in. And the rear tire, the rear wheel is spinning more freely now. I probably rode all the way to Melaka with the brakes practically engaged.
Now, here I am at a KK Mart. I want to go in for a cold drink. And that involves parking my bicycle with my new kickstand. And we’ll see if it falls over.
I’m finding that the bike is a little bit too upright. If the wheel spins, it has a tendency to flop over in the other direction. So I need to shorten this a little bit. Just a tiny bit.
Yeah, that’s much better. Luckily, I happen to have a spare Allen wrench just sitting in one of my bags here. So far so good. The bike didn’t fall over. Right now I have a lot more confidence in this style of kickstand than in the old one, the horrible one.
And with that quick trip to get a new kickstand, I guess that brings this video to a close. It was a little bit of an unplanned impromptu video. As I said, I was sitting here in Planet Doug Studio. My first day in Melaka, I hadn’t even gone outside. I hadn’t seen the city. I hadn’t done anything at all. All I did was ride my bike here and then spend the night in this room. And then the whole day, the whole following day, I was just sitting here in Planet Doug Studios with as always my laptop on my lap and editing video. But then a friend of mine and Planet Doug supporter contacted me about this meal, I could go pick it up. So I thought, oh, rather than waste that opportunity, I grabbed my GoPro and I just went for a walk through Melaka. And yeah, those were my first impressions of the city. Basically, more not really about the history side of Melaka, but in the end, it was more my impressions of the modern city of Melaka with all the hotels and shopping centers and all of that. Yeah, my plan is to go out, of course, and explore the historical side of Melaka. That’s what I’m here to see. But I didn’t see much of that on this particular day. And man oh man, I had so much trouble with technology again. And it goes back to the days that I was cycling to get here because I started using it’s a really long complicated story that I’m not going to get into, but I ended up using a lavalier microphone, like a wired microphone that was connected to my Rode Wireless Go in my pocket. And I guess I was sweating so badly that I damaged my lavalier mic. So when I went out to shoot this video, I was using the lavalier mic, but half the video that I shot had no audio. It just kept disconnecting. There’s something wrong with my wired lavalier mic now. So it just goes on and on. Just Oh, yeah. And I’m recording this conclusion, by the way, with my Olympus camera. I have a mirrorless camera with me and I brought it with me on this trip because I imagined I was going to be using it to shoot more cinematic B-roll. And that just hasn’t happened. Like in all the time that I’ve been on the road on this trip, I have not used the Olympus hardly at all. So it’s really been dead weight just carrying it around with me. And that’s why I decided to put it on the tripod just to record this closing to the video. I just wanted to show it some love and remind myself that it exists. And thinking back, I realized the problem is accessibility. There is this kind of a truism that I don’t have a whole lot of time for, but it is true in its way that the best camera is the one that you have with you. And when I was out there riding my bike, I had the camera with me, but it was inside a pet bag, kind of behind a zipper, wrapped up in a waterproof bag, wrapped up in cushioning. So there I am riding my bike and I might pull over to the side of the road and I want to take video of something interesting like a beautiful Malaysian traditional home. And what I ended up doing, I realize now is I disconnect my GoPro from the broomstick. I untwist it, unlock it from its quick release mount, and then I aim it at the side of the road. It’s like, “Oh, look at that beautiful house.” And that is when I was supposed to be using the Olympus because the Olympus would give me better video quality and I have a zoom lens so I can zoom in a little bit, get closer to those things. That’s how I imagined using that camera. But I never got it out of the bag because it’s too much trouble. There I am straddling the bicycle and how in the world like I got to get off the bike, put down the kickstand, the broken kickstand. The bike’s going to be at risk of falling over. I got to walk around to the pet bag, unzip it, get out the bag holding the camera, unwrap it, unwrap the next layer, take it out of its case, turn it on, then get the shot, and then put it away again. And that is so much trouble. Yeah. I just never bothered. It’s just too much trouble. So I realize now that in order to use this Olympus, I have to be able to access it more quickly, more easily. And to do that, I would have to have like a small handlebar bag. And then this camera goes in the handlebar bag. And then when I stop the bike, I don’t have to get out the I don’t have to disconnect the GoPro. I can just open the bag, boop, take it out, shoot, put it back in again. So I think that’s what I need to do. But then that raises the problem of one more item of value in another bag that is open to theft, right? So I pull up at a like the in the video before this one, I stop to get a coconut shake and an avocado shake, but then I park my bike, lock it, and then I walk away from the bike. And I can do that because then I take the time to lock up the pet bags. I put locks on the zippers and some of the pockets are still exposed. Anybody could walk up to my bike, unzip a pocket, oh, what’s here, and just steal everything. There’s no way to 100% keep a touring bicycle safe. But if I have my Olympus camera sitting inside an exposed handlebar bag, well, now I have to deal with that. I got to take the camera out, bring it with me, or put it in. You see what I mean? It’s just more and more stuff. So I don’t know exactly how to deal with that, but I would like to use this Olympus more. If I’m going to carry it around with me, carry the extra weight, well, I might as well have the benefit, right? And speaking of using a bigger camera like this Olympus, recently I was watching some YouTube videos from a travel vlogger who specializes in more, he’s a cyclist, but he specializes in cinematic videos. So he might go to like Argentina for 2 months and he makes one video about his entire time in Argentina. So what he does, he mainly rides his bicycle and then he shoots video whenever he sees something amazing or beautiful or cinematic and after the at the end of 2 months then he sits down and writes a script and he takes all that beautiful footage and then reads the script as a voice over on his laptop and then he makes a video that way. And something I noticed because he had a like mine is a micro four thirds camera. The size of the sensor which kind of dictates some of the video quality. He was using an APS-C camera which has an even much bigger sensor. And what he did was carry the camera on his body the entire time. So while he was riding the bicycle, he had his full-sized camera on a strap around his body. It was almost like a harness. It seemed to be a little bit tighter to his body. And then the camera was like on his side or something. So all day long while he’s riding the bicycle, his camera was dangling from like a shoulder strap attached to a waistband. And then every time he saw something, he didn’t even have to open a bag. He would just grab the camera, take it up, film, and then just let go and it just hangs at his side. And that was, you know, the one way that he did it. But he wasn’t shooting video with a GoPro. He wasn’t recording audio while he was cycling. He didn’t use an action camera at all. And the only way he could have easy access to his camera all day long was to have it basically hanging around his neck on a strap the entire day. And yeah, that’s kind of one way that you can do it. But I have so many things dangling from my neck already. Microphones, reading glasses. I’ve got lavalier mics. I’ve got a key that I use to unlock all my little padlocks, sunglasses, a hat, all these things. I can’t imagine having the Olympus draped over my body at the same time, but yeah, it’s something to think about.
So yeah, that’s the end of this video. First impressions of just wandering around Melaka, getting some tasty laksa from a local restaurant. Bringing it back here and then buying a kickstand for my bicycle. And the video of course ended up being a lot longer than it was supposed to. That is the Planet Doug experience that you signed up for. And of course, as always, if you made it this far in this long video, that makes you a member of the Planet Doug Crunch Club. Congratulations. You’re now a member of the Crunch Club. Put CC in the comments to let me know that you watched the video all the way to the end. That makes you one of my favorite people, of course. And my other favorite people, anyone that is supporting me through Patreon, through Buy Me a Coffee, through Malaysia’s amazing Touch ‘n Go e-wallet. Thank you very much to all of my supporters out there. I appreciate it very much. So that’s it for this video and yeah, as soon as I get a chance tomorrow morning, I assume I’m packing up with all my cameras and I’m heading out into Melaka for the history experience and do more of a deeper dive into what’s out there. And I have my eye on the main museum of Melaka. I always like to start with a museum first. Go through a museum, get some of the history jammed into my head, get a feel for where I am, and then I can move on from there and understand where I am better. So that is coming up tomorrow and in the next video. So that’s it. Shutting down. See you next time.