VIDEO DESCRIPTION:
Exploring the beautiful streets of Malacca (Melaka) on foot while uncovering the fascinating “lost history” that most visitors completely miss.
In this walking tour video, I dive into the stories that aren’t clearly told at the tourist sites — from the incredible lost treasure of the Flor de la Mar (one of history’s greatest sunken treasure ships with 60+ tons of gold), to the real story behind the Portuguese conquest of Malacca that lasted 40 brutal days, the legendary warrior Hang Tuah and his magical kris, and the famous founding legend of Parameswara and the mouse deer.
You’ll also see how geography has completely changed since the 1500s (reclaimed land, the old river mouth, and the strategic importance of the bridge), why so much of Malacca’s rich history feels hidden from foreign visitors, and plenty of scenic walks through Jonker Street, Kampung Pantai, historic alleyways, and more.
If you’re planning a trip to Malacca or just love Southeast Asian history, this video will give you a much deeper appreciation for this UNESCO World Heritage city.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
I’m getting towards the end of my time in Melaka. I’ll be leaving shortly, hopping on my bicycle and doing some cycling around the rest of the country. In particular, cycling up the east coast of Malaysia. That’ll be the first major part of my bike journey, I hope.
And on one of my last days here in Melaka, I don’t have any big plans. I just have two ideas for today’s video. On the one hand, it’s just going to be a walking talking video. There are a lot of streets around the old part of Melaka that I haven’t walked down. So, just to have someplace to go while I talk, I’m going to be walking down Jonker Street and then heading off onto all the little side streets on either side of Jonker Street just to explore that area a little bit and see some of the little laneways and alleyways that I never came across until now.
So that’s one aspect of this video. And the other one, for me probably the more important one, is to talk about what I’m going to call the lost history of Malaysia. The lost history of Melaka.
And I usually don’t like this idea. It’s a YouTube trope to put lost, secret, hidden in every video title. It doesn’t matter where you go. You can go to the most famous landmark in the country, the most famous place, and in order to get people to click on your video, everybody thinks they have to put secret, lost, or hidden in the title. You know, the hidden secrets that nobody knows about, the lost place, the place where nobody goes.
But in this case my time in Melaka has been dominated by this idea that the city is not very good at telling its own history. And I’m just guessing here but what I think happened is that whoever designs everything here in Melaka is thinking about Malaysian visitors. And Malaysians already know the stories. They grow up with them in school. They’re second nature. They’ve read books about them. They’ve watched movies about them, children’s books, all kinds of things. Historical documentaries maybe. I don’t know. But I think Malaysians just know the stories. So they don’t need it to be laid out in simple terms.
So a lot of the history here is on a symbolic level. They just show you something that is an image, a symbol of this major historical event, but they don’t even break it down for you. They don’t trumpet it. They don’t market it because they assume you don’t need it. You know the story.
It would be, this is kind of a ridiculous example, but I was thinking of this in terms of the West where in terms of pop culture, we all know who Superman is. Superman the character. I grew up with Superman comic books. I know the legend, the history, the story, the origins of Superman, Krypton, Kryptonite, everything. You know, Superman as a baby being put into a spaceship, escaping from the planet Krypton minutes before it explodes, going to Earth, growing up as Clark Kent. I know the story as well as I probably better than I know my own. So if somebody puts up a Superman statue at a tourist attraction, they don’t tell you about Superman because they don’t need to. You know the story, so all you need is the statue. Oh, look, there’s Superman.
And here in Melaka, I’ve come across the same basic idea over and over. So if I stumble across places that fit that pattern, I’m going to talk about them in this video.
And luckily, because I planned it that way, one of them is right behind me. This is one of the most famous sites in Melaka. And I’ve actually told this story already on the day that I visited this place, but this is the Samudera Museum. And this ship, very impressive looking thing, is a replica of a Portuguese ship called the Flor de la Mar. And there’s actually a museum inside that ship. There’s actually three museums here. The ship is a museum. There’s a maritime museum over there. And then a Malaysian Navy museum right here. And when you buy a ticket here, you get access to all three of them. But this is the one that people think about because they see it here. It looks so dramatic.
So I think most westerners like me buy a ticket, go into that ship, walk around, look at the exhibits and then we leave and that’s it. But there is a secret history to that ship which is actually the most interesting thing about that ship. And for some reason the Malaysian or the Melaka tourism authorities don’t highlight it. Unless you go digging and read between the lines, you won’t even know it.
And the story, as I’ve already told in my previous video, is that the Flor de la Mar is one of the greatest, if not the greatest lost treasure ship in history. After the fall of Melaka in 1511, the Portuguese conquered Melaka, the Melaka Sultanate fled from the city and then the Portuguese looted the place. They looted the city and at that time of course Melaka was one of the major trading ports of the world. It was an extremely wealthy city. And into this ship, the Portuguese loaded up. I mean, historical estimates vary, but I think most people agree that about 60 tons of gold was loaded onto that ship along with many, many more tons of treasure that they looted from the Melaka Sultanate here. They went to all the palaces door to door. Basically took everything they could get their hands on which amounted to 60 maybe even 90 tons of gold all the treasure they could find loaded it into the Flor de la Mar. That ship was supposed to take it all back to Europe and then it sank off the coast of Sumatra.
I don’t know if anybody really knows what happened. I keep reading that it ran into a reef during a storm and it sank. So that ship with all of its treasure sank off the coast of Sumatra and has never been found.
So I couldn’t believe it when I found out about that story because it doesn’t have a sign anywhere saying the lost treasure ship of Melaka. 60 tons of gold. Like this story is there I guess but they don’t really make a big deal out of it. So I think a lot of western visitors could come to Melaka, spend a week here or a weekend, go to all the famous places and they will leave not knowing that they saw one of the greatest treasure ships of history. And it means that all of the treasure of Melaka is still at the bottom of the Melaka Strait somewhere off the coast of Sumatra. And I find that an amazing story and yet it’s not really put on display here in Melaka for visitors like me.
If you’ve watched my previous videos from Melaka, you knew that this was coming. This is one of my favorite places in Melaka, the Middelburg Bastion. I made an entire video about tracing the path of the old Portuguese fort A Famosa, like walking the route where the walls of this famous fortress used to be connecting these bastions together. So you got the Middelburg Bastion and then there’s another bastion right over there and then there would be a wall connecting them and then the wall continued all the way around Melaka Hill that you see up there.
And for me, this is another part of Melaka’s lost history because I think most Western visitors, maybe in this case, even a lot of Malaysian visitors will come here, look at the bastion. Oh, cool. Look at some other ruins, the bastions. They go to the last remaining gate, Santiago, which is called A Famosa on all the tourist maps, the last remaining original gate of the Portuguese fortress. They look at all these places and what they don’t realize is that when these were built, when they were the active defenses of the Portuguese settlement here, the water came right to here. This fort, the wall of the fort was built right on the shore of the Melaka Strait. So right here you would have seen a wall and then right beside the wall the water would have been right here. This would have been the Melaka Strait going off in this direction. And all of this land that your hotel was on, your restaurants were on, that this museum is on, that giant tower, all of that land, none of it existed back in the 1500s. This is all reclaimed land which is something that most people don’t realize and that’s really important because if you want to understand Melaka itself the conquest of Melaka by the Portuguese the Dutch presence everything it depends on maritime trade and maritime power which is all about ships and ships on the water but where’s the water?
So none of this history made any sense to me until I understood that this used to be the water right here. So this bastion with its cannons, they were firing at ships that were right here on the water. And when you start reading about the history of Melaka, that fact becomes more and more important because if you don’t realize that, then a lot of what you’re reading doesn’t make any sense.
And something else that I learned, another lost secret of Melaka related to this idea is that the Melaka River used to be much wider than it is today. So originally right here at the Middelburg Bastion, this would have been the mouth of the river. So on all the maps you see today, of course, and in the way that the city is now, the river goes off for a kilometer in that direction. The mouth today is way down there. But in the days when the Middelburg Bastion was being constructed, this was the opening of the river. So this was the Melaka shore, the Melaka Strait shore, and then this was the entrance to the river, and that’s why this massive fort was built here.
And if we go around the corner, we’ll see a very important bridge that I’m going to talk about soon. So that bridge is the key to Melaka. Everything about the conquest of Melaka, the Portuguese victory is about that bridge and its importance. And it was far more important in history because, as I said, this was the entrance to the city. This was the entrance to the river, the entrance into the city. And the very first bridge was right there. And in those days, the bridge was much more important because the river itself was much much wider. There was a much bigger gap between that side where all the people lived and then this side where the sultan’s palace was located. So even before the Portuguese arrived, this side of the river belonged to the rulers. So the sultanate palace and all the government buildings were all located on this side of the river. Big wide river with sort of swampy areas, very very difficult to cross and then there was one bridge there connecting the two and the bridge was the key to the whole city and the Portuguese knew that and they had the key to unlock that bridge and then eventually defeat the Melaka Sultanate.
So, I don’t know whether I went off track a little bit there with this particular piece of lost history, but the idea is basically that the river used to be much much wider. This was the entrance into Melaka. This was the river mouth right behind me. And over here in front of me, this was all basically ocean. This was the Melaka Strait. And that’s why the fort is sitting here in the middle of nowhere because it used to sit right on the water. But everything has changed geographically since then.
I have the bridge I just mentioned, the key to Melaka right behind me. And on the other side, on the wall here, right behind me, there is a sign, a kind of a historic sign meant for tourists to look at, to read, and learn about the history of Melaka. But this is a very good example of the lost history of Melaka. Because if you look at this, well, it’s a painting. I called it a sign, but I mean it’s a painting or some sort of a graphic. And it’s right beside Zeus Coffee here. I remember on one of my first days coming to Zeus here to get a cup of coffee to sit by the river and I saw this graphic and I went, “Oh, look at that interesting graphic.” And then I went about my way. I had no idea how important this image is.
And again, I think the local tourism authorities, they assume that all Malaysians, they know this story. So they don’t need it explained to them. All they do is show it and then the average Malaysian looks at that graphic, that painting and goes, “Oh yeah, I know that story.” And they move on.
So but to me, it is one of the pieces of lost history of Melaka. For a foreign visitor like me, all across the top should be huge letters saying the founding of Melaka. Because that’s what this is all about. And I didn’t even know this until I did some reading. I mean, I looked at the original sign here and it says Parameswara looking at how one of his hunting dogs was thrown into the river after being kicked by a white mouse deer. Later on he named his empire Melaka after the tree Pokok Melaka in which he was sitting under.
So I did read that on a later visit and I kind of went oh I could never say that name Parameswara and I kind of made a mental note but I had no idea who this guy was cuz it doesn’t tell me. And his hunting dog was kicked by a little mouse deer and something about a tree. Anyway, I didn’t put it all together. I even looked at the graphic and I kind of made a joke about it because it made no sense to me. This tiny little creature and it kicks a hunting dog flying backwards into the river. It’s like, how can such a tiny creature do that? It all felt kind of nonsensical to me.
But it turns out that that is the entire point. The point of this story is how can such a tiny creature, this mouse deer, overpower a powerful hunting dog? It doesn’t make any sense. And that is what led to the founding of Melaka. And this man Parameswara, he’s not just some guy. He was actually a prince from Palembang from an empire that is now what we call Sumatra today and he is the founder of Melaka and he was like in exile. He fled from a whole bunch of fighting, fled from Palembang and then he crossed over to this peninsula, landed in Muar and then made his way up the coast in this direction and then one day he happened to be sitting here resting underneath a Melaka tree and he saw the mouse deer and his hunting dogs attack the mouse deer and then to his amazement the tiny tiny mouse deer overpowered his hunting dogs.
So Parameswara, he took that as an omen that there was something very special about this place. There was something about this place that means even someone small and relatively weak, someone who isn’t powerful, like someone who is small can still overcome powerful enemies. So he decided to found his new kingdom right here. And he called it Melaka because of the tree that he was sitting under when he made this discovery when he saw when he got this revelation about how special this place was.
I don’t know how accurately I told that story. Obviously this is something that happened 600 years ago. A very long time ago. So historical records are not exactly detailed, but that is basically the legend of Parameswara and the founding of Melaka. And to my opinion, that’s an amazing story. It is such a great story. It tells you where the name Melaka comes from. It tells you who this person is, the founder of the city, and it tells you why he founded it here. Because of this omen where he saw a smaller creature overcome a much more powerful enemy and he took that as an omen. And of course the rest is history and he started from very small beginnings and built one of the great empires of Southeast Asia all because he saw the mouse deer.
So with that incredible story, why not have it more clear, right? The founding of an empire, the omen that founded an empire, the founding of Melaka. But I think for most visitors like me, Westerners, we would see a nice painting and that’s it and we would not understand the meaning. So that’s another piece of the lost history of Melaka.
It’s another very busy day here in Melaka. We’re actually in the middle of a holiday period. It’s another holiday that kind of snuck up on me. Turns out there’s several holidays all happening at the same time. So Malaysia put them all together and turned it into another long weekend. So we’re getting a lot of Malaysian visitors. All the hotels are fully booked. It’s one of the reasons I have to leave tomorrow. On a weekend, hotel prices generally double. They go from like weekday prices to weekend prices. The price of your room doubles and then when it’s a holiday weekend like this, it often triples, which is what’s happening to my hotel. So it’s time to make an escape. Can’t afford to stay here for the weekend. All the river cruise boats are doing good business.
It’s funny that World Tourism Day 2025 is still everywhere. I guess that was a big deal and they painted advertisements for that day everywhere. But I guess it’s more expensive to paint over them than to just leave them up.
And a final thing about that story about Parameswara and the founding of Melaka, that Melaka tree, it’s a common tree here. I never even knew that until I started reading about the story and I don’t know what exactly they look like. I read up on it this morning. It’s like, okay, what does a Melaka tree look like? How can I identify it? So I’m hoping that as I walk around today, I can see a Melaka tree and go, “Aha, that is what the city was named after.” The Pokok Melaka, something like that.
Yeah, the hop-on hop-off cruise is still a bit of a mystery to me. I even tried to look up their website and get information about them. But I just couldn’t find out much. I still don’t even know how you’re supposed to get a ticket for them, how much they cost, where the boat goes, how long it takes before you can come back. It’s all kind of a mystery to me. Yeah, they just seem to have a driver, but they don’t have any staff like helping people board and selling tickets and things like that. Or maybe he does that. Maybe the driver does both duties. I don’t know.
Another big piece of lost Melakan history centers on that wall mural that you can see right across the river there. There’s a woman posing for a photo beneath it. You see that man there? Looks like a very tough warrior and he’s reaching for a dagger, for a keris that is on his belt. And given those clues, I’m 99% sure that that is a drawing, a painting of the famous legendary warrior Hang Tuah.
And that dagger that he’s reaching for, the keris, is a very famous one called the Taming Sari. And I talked about this at length in three different videos. So I don’t really have to go into it again in detail.
My point is that Hang Tuah and his four childhood friends, the more I read about his story, the more interesting I find it, the more details I uncover. The story of Hang Tuah and his contemporaries is contained in some very famous old literature from Malaysia. And of course, there is discussion about whether he was a real historical figure or was he just legendary, a myth kind of thing or was he kind of a symbol of a whole bunch of different people that they pulled into one and made up this historic figure. They’re not 100% sure, but the point is that Hang Tuah, Hang Jebat, Hang Kasturi, the two other ones, Hang Lekir and Hang Lekiu, something like that. They’re a huge part of Malaysian history and Melakan history.
And even here, like in Melaka, you see paintings of Hang Tuah. You can go to see the mausoleum of Hang Jebat, Hang Kasturi. You see the names everywhere. Here’s Hang Tuah Street, Hang Kasturi Street, Kasturi Walk in KL that I keep mentioning. And yet, I’m pretty sure that most Western visitors who come to Melaka will come here, see this name everywhere, see the paintings, and they will have no idea who this person is. They don’t know the story because it’s not on display anywhere. And I think again tourism authorities, the people who make the museums, they just assume you already know the story. So you don’t, sort of like my Superman thing.
Hang Tuah, he is the Malaysian version of Superman or of Thor. Thor might be a better example because Hang Tuah had the Taming Sari, the keris, the dagger which had magical properties. It was a powerful weapon and it pretty much bestowed on the warrior who wielded it invulnerability in battle. He can’t lose as long as he has the Taming Sari. It’s very very close to this is why I think of Thor’s Mjolnir, right? Thor’s hammer, King Arthur’s sword, the Excalibur, and now you have the story of Hang Tuah and he has his dagger that makes him invulnerable in battle. And that is such an amazing story.
And then you dive deeper into it and the legend goes that Hang Tuah and his four friends, the five of them grew up together studying the local martial art silat and became great fighters and then moved up through the ranks until Hang Tuah became the Laksamana of Melaka. He became the grand admiral of the fleet of Melaka. And then of course then you get into the whole story with what happened with his childhood friend Hang Jebat. And I talked about that story at length. And it’s like a Shakespearean level drama involving a weapon that bestows on the bearer invulnerability. It’s an amazing story. It is just so much fun and so interesting and full of history, full of ideas and thoughts.
And I think most foreign visitors to Melaka will come here, sample a few street snacks, maybe visit a museum, leave, and they’ll never actually come across this story presented to them in a way that they can understand because I think Malaysians don’t need it explained to them. They all know the story. And I just find that to be another of the secret history of Melaka that most western visitors like me, we never come across.
Oh, I’ve been walking along the river telling my stories, the secret stories of Melaka, the lost history. And on this side of the river, you can’t continue. They’re rebuilding the boardwalk. I just wanted to show how busy it is. There’s the Baba & Kaya cafe and that has the Apam Balik bucket or basket and then they have a tradition where they ring a bell and then the Apam Balik goes up and down in the bucket. You can see a lot of the tables are full over there. Yeah, it’s a very busy weekend, but that’s as far as we can go on this side.
Jonker Street is off in that direction, two or three blocks. I’ve crossed over the major road, crossed two bridges. And apparently, I’m in a district called Kampung Pantai. And Pantai, I think, means beach. So I’m not really sure why this is a beach village, but we are on the river.
And this is one of the areas I wanted to sort of walk around a little bit because yeah, I haven’t been down here, I don’t think. Certainly didn’t do a deep dive into all the little laneways. So that’s what I’m doing now. And if another story, the lost history of Melaka, occurs to me, I will tell that story while I walk around here. I certainly have one more to tell. It’s actually the biggest one and it’s the one that gave me the idea to put all these stories together into one video.
But let’s just walk down here for a minute and take a look around. What a great neighborhood.
Melaka World Heritage City. So it looks like this little laneway is important. You are here at 13. I found 13 on the map, but it didn’t actually tell me where I was exactly.
Powerful sewage smell down here. Hard to breathe. Kampung. Okay. Makam Hang Jebat. That is the mausoleum for Hang Jebat is in this direction. So yeah, I don’t know whether this goes anywhere interesting. Oh, just got to get away from this sewage smell.
Back on that street in Kampung Pantai. Always being followed around by the friendly mommy monster. Yeah. Everywhere you go in Melaka, look up and this is what you’ll see. Very historic shop fronts, homes, beautiful temple.
Some fascinating hotels at triple the price for this holiday weekend, I’m sure.
Actually, now that I think about it, this neighborhood ties in pretty nicely with the lost story that I wanted to tell, the biggest one. So maybe I can start telling that story here. And I’m thinking about that because of all of the shop fronts which look quite historic, part of the various trading communities that were in Melaka.
So I will leave you to look around me at the shop fronts and at the interesting architecture as I tell this last story. And I can aim my GoPro ahead of me as well. You can see how busy it is. So much traffic even in these tiny laneways. I guess this road must be one of the ways that people can get around Melaka. There are a couple of these tiny laneways that serve as the main highways inside the city.
But this other story relates to basically the fall of Melaka. How the Portuguese defeated the Melaka Sultanate.
And I’m willing to bet again that most Western visitors don’t know the true story. I certainly didn’t and I’ve been to all the museums. But when you visit the museums and you get some of the basic facts like you know the founding of the Melaka Sultanate, how it grew into a world trading center, its connection with the Ming dynasty in China, the visits of Zheng He of course and it became a center for all of the other empires and kingdoms and countries of that era. So here in Melaka there was a big Chinese merchant community, a trading community of Chinese traders. There were Gujarati, I believe they like Muslim Gujarati people here. Javanese, Bengali, like name any country you can think of or people from that time and they had a trading center here and they had ships going in and out. It was a world trading center.
So we know all of that. And then of course in 1511 Alfonso de Albuquerque, a Portuguese ship captain who was leading a fleet. He showed up in 1511 and then there was a battle and he defeated the forces of the Melaka Sultanate and the Sultan was his name Sultan Mahmud Shah at the time. He retreated. He was defeated. Fled from the city with what remained of his forces and the Portuguese took over Melaka and held the place for 150 years something like that.
Just as a quick aside, I find that I’m actually just in my wandering I happen to be on Jalan Hang Lekiu. So that’s one of the brothers in arms connected with Hang Tuah. So this is where I am in the city right now. Number four, Hang Lekiu. And right over here, Jalan Hang Kasturi, another of the five brothers in arms. So you see these names everywhere you go.
And given that brief background, accurate or as inaccurate as it might be, I think if you ask any western visitor to Melaka, well, what happened in the Portuguese conquest of Melaka, they would tell you, well, a bunch of Portuguese ships showed up. And the Portuguese were big. The ships were big and powerful. And they had powerful cannon. So they had superior weaponry to the Melaka Sultanate and then with their ships they opened fire with their cannons and then just defeated their enemy and they just won. So I think most people think of it as a one-day battle. The ships showed up, blasted away with their cannon and then they took over the place.
I think even if you go to the museums and you read all the history, you get that impression, right? Because that is just how it is talked about. They just sort of skip ahead. Portuguese showed up in 1511. They defeated the Melaka Sultanate and then they took control.
I have to stop with a personal note right now. By the way, I have to interrupt my story cuz I just noticed that I walked by the Traveler’s Diary Guest House. And if memory serves, I think this is where a friend of mine stayed right here. You know him on YouTube as the American Hobo. He was cycling all through Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Thailand. And when he was in Melaka, he stayed here for a few days. And at one point, he was staying here at the Traveler’s Diary. And I recognized the outside. He’s back in the United States now. And so the American Hobo is not cycling anymore. He’s riding around the United States on a train. But I remember he talked about leaving from his guest house and right beside his guest house was this alleyway full of street art. He was a big fan of street art. So everywhere he went in Malaysia, he was always seeking out these alleyways that had all of this street art. And I remember he featured this alleyway in one of his videos where he was cycling around Melaka. So I’m glad I came in this direction.
I wonder how far it goes. Oh yeah. Okay. Right beside Traveler’s Diary, you can rent a mountain bike. 15 ringgit. I guess that’s per day. 48 for a motorcycle. City bike for 9.
Let’s just see how far this alleyway goes. It’s very cool back here for want of a better word. Very quiet alleyways and you can turn in different directions. If I spot more street art, then I turn left or right.
I have no sense of direction anymore. I don’t know where I’m going or where this will lead. Just sort of following the twists and turns.
Oh, that’s an interesting shrine. I don’t often see one like that with a large slab of black rock like that. It’s interesting.
And this alley is exiting onto another street right here.
I said I don’t really know where I am. It doesn’t really matter because I’m not trying to go anywhere in particular.
This might be the street where I started where Traveler’s Diary is located. Feels like it.
I left off with my story, the lost history of Melaka, with this idea of just asking you if you were in a game show and you had to answer the question, you know, just how long did the battle for Melaka last? I think most people would say one day, maybe two days. It’s like the Portuguese arrived in their ships one day, they anchored, set up their cannon, and then the next day they launched their attack and they won the battle. I think most people, most Westerners would conclude that.
But in reality, the battle for Melaka took 40 days. It was a long, brutal battle. Very, very challenging on both sides. A 40-day battle with all kinds of amazing drama and twists and turns.
And I hinted at the beginning of this video or near the beginning that that one bridge that I pointed out was the key to Melaka. And that is because, as I said, the river was much much wider in those days. And on one side of the river was the Melaka Sultanate, the palace and all of the government and the wealthy and the leaders of the Melaka Sultanate all lived on one side of the river. And then this was all on the other side. So this is where all of the trading was happening, all of the merchant class that was all based here.
So what Afonso de Albuquerque figured out is that if he could take over the bridge, he can cut their forces in half. So the sultan would have troops on one side and troops on the other side and he would be controlling the bridge and the bridge for him was the key to his strategy and was the key in the end to his victory.
So the first major attempt that Afonso de Albuquerque made actually failed in a way because he landed a whole bunch of troops. He had somewhere between a thousand maybe 1,400 soldiers. But he landed a whole bunch of boats on each side of the bridge like on the north shore and the south and then they attacked the bridge and they actually drove the defenders back. But it was a major battle with losses on both sides. It’s something that would be definitely worthy of a major Hollywood movie. And they managed to take the bridge. But they were suffering cannon fire against them, poison darts, all kinds of things and the heat, of course, the heat of Malaysia. And then even though they won the bridge, Afonso realized they couldn’t hold it. There’s no way they were going to be able to just keep the bridge overnight. They were too tired. They had been beaten so badly during the battle. Even though they won possession of the bridge, there’s no way they knew they couldn’t hold it. So then, even though they won the bridge, they retreated back to their ships.
So that alone is a story I think most Westerners have never heard. I had never heard of it until I started doing a deep dive into the history.
And so Afonso de Albuquerque regrouped back on his ships. And another really important element to all of this is that he had local allies in the battle because as I said there were many different nations and empires in Melaka at the time and they formed part of the government of Melaka. So there were Gujarati traders, the Javanese, Tamil Hindu, Chinese. Well the Sultan at that time Sultan Mahmud Shah had made enemies amongst the Chinese and the Tamil because his rule was not always in their favor. And you have to dive into the history of that guy a bit more to learn everything about him. But he was not fully supported in the Melaka community. So a lot of them, the Tamil Hindu and Chinese in particular, they actually supported Afonso de Albuquerque and had been helping him with giving him information about Melaka’s defenses and how best to attack.
My walk, by the way, has taken me to this point. And yeah, I know this area very well except from over that direction. That’s the river right there. One of the bridges I passed by on foot and on my bicycle. And just one street inward, we have another historic site here in Melaka. This is the Kampung Hulu Mosque or Masjid Kampung Hulu. I think it dates back to the early 1700s. Has quite an interesting history. Just thought I would point that out since we happen to be walking by. Yeah, there’s the whole history of the mosque right there. Built in 1720 or 1728. The oldest mosque during the reign of the Dutch and refurbished in 1892. So again it has that distinct Melaka style the rooftop of the mosque.
And I was just saying that in this story of the fall of Melaka the Portuguese had help from local people from the Tamil community, Chinese and several others. He got information and supplies from them. And then he came up with this idea to use one of the local boats that they called a junk, like a big local boat with a very high superstructure. And he converted it into what you might call like a siege engine. And he put onto this ship his best fighting force, loaded it up with cannon and other weapons, and then drove that ship ashore on the beach right beside the bridge. So now he had a fortified elevated position from which he could fire at his enemies on the bridge and on both sides of the bridge. So it gave him an immense strategic advantage. Basically an elevated protected point from which he could locate his forces. And they just fired like for day after day after day they held that position on the boat and fired at the opposing forces on the bridge. Then after many many days of that kind of softening up the enemy, then he felt confident enough for another big assault and then landed all of his boats and his troops ashore. And then came the next major battle in which the Melaka Sultanate forces were actually defeated this time and the Melaka Sultanate could see that he was losing and they retreated from the city and gave it up to the Portuguese.
Anyway, the details really are not that important. I’m sure I got some of them wrong and there’s a whole lot more to that story than I just laid out. But the point is I think that most visitors to Melaka just imagine the battle was sort of a formality. But it was nothing like that at all. It was a major battle relying heavily on strategy and yeah just went on for 40 days. So they basically the Portuguese laid siege to the city for 40 days until they finally managed to defeat the Melaka Sultanate.
And the Melaka Sultanate were fully armed just like the Portuguese. They had gunpowder weaponry and their own cannons for a long time already just like the Portuguese. So in fact when the Portuguese took Melaka they found brass cannon and cannonballs and weaponry that were superior in workmanship to the ones that they were using. So the Melaka Sultanate was basically what I’m saying is the story was not about a more advanced militarily advanced European power just walking over a local force. It wasn’t like that at all. The Melaka Sultanate was also armed with all kinds of modern weaponry, cannon, artillery fire, things like that. So it was a major battle between two powers and that went on for 40 days before the Portuguese won.
And I think that part of Melaka’s history also, it’s not on display anywhere. Like when I think back to all my visits to the museums, all they ever said was, “Yeah, the Portuguese won the battle and took over Melaka.” And they don’t go into the details of this incredible 40-day conflict before Melaka finally fell. So yeah, it’s another interesting part of Melaka’s lost history.
I reached kind of the end of the main historic district. Turned around and I’m heading back in again. A lot of people showing up today. Got all these parking lots here. Everybody’s competing for customers. I’m not back at my hotel yet or back at my neighborhood, but as far as the walk and the video is concerned, I think I’ll draw it to a close there.
I think that’s enough little stories of the lost history of Melaka to kind of make my point about how so much of the history here just doesn’t get communicated to like a casual visitor like myself. You really have to do your own research to uncover all of this fascinating history.
My walk has essentially brought me back to the beginning of Jonker Street. Everything is very familiar to me now. Back on the old stomping grounds. Turn left up here takes me back to Dutch Square.
And that’s the main gate to signal the end of Jonker Street down here.
And then this direction takes us back to Dutch Square. There’s a lot more interesting stories, history about Melaka that I could include in this lost history summary. I mean, for example, even that 40-day battle that I just talked about that few people seem to know about, as far as I can tell from the reading I did, it wasn’t even the Sultan himself who was in charge because by that point, the Sultan Mahmud Shah had retreated from public life.
Oh, we’re passing by the mausoleum for Hang Kasturi that I was talking about at the very beginning. And this one doesn’t really have the history at all. So that’s another very good example that Hang Kasturi, one of the most interesting figures of Malaysian history. His mausoleum is right here. And yet, other than the sign giving his name, it doesn’t tell you anything about him. So again, the average western visitor would never really learn about him.
But yeah, the sultan himself had done some pretty terrible things during his rule, and he was feeling a lot of remorse over what he had done. He wasn’t the greatest ruler as far as I can make out and he retreated from public life and he gave the reins of politics over to his son. So in fact it was the sultan’s son who was mainly in charge of the Melaka Sultanate forces that were fighting the Portuguese. It was the son that was leading them not the sultan himself. And that again is I think something that just gets simplified in history. People just skip over it because ah it’s too complicated to explain and they just talk about the Sultan and leave it at that and they don’t tell people that it was actually his son that was in charge at the time.
Yeah. Again, I could go on and on. There was a real interesting set of people of historical figures that were involved in the battle for Melaka.
I made it down Jonker Street across the bridge and through Dutch Square. Couldn’t really record anything there. Way too crowded, too much music, too much going on. But I made it out the other side winding down the video.
But it occurs to me that I don’t think I’ve seen a Melaka tree yet. I haven’t looked that carefully, but I don’t think I’ve come across a Melaka tree yet. If I see one before I get back to my hotel, I’ll point it out. Though, I’m not sure I would recognize one for sure if I saw one. Still keeping my eyes open for the Melaka tree, but I’ve seen quite a variety of trees. So you don’t realize how many different types there are here until you start looking at the trees deliberately, but I don’t think I’ve spotted a tree that I know for sure is the Melaka tree. So we’ll see if that happens before I get back to my hotel.
But yeah, I think that is it for today. Just touching on a topic that has been on my mind, the lost history of Melaka, the things that the average tourist may not know when they just come here on a casual weekend tour.
So if you made it this far into a Planet Doug video, yeah, shout out to all you guys. Put CC in the comments to let me know you watched the video all the way to the end. And I don’t know for sure, but this could be my last little bit of exploration here in Melaka. There are a few things I haven’t seen yet. You know, Portuguese settlement, some more of the coastline. I haven’t done any video at least about the food here. So I could always stay longer and do that, but we’ll see what happens. I think I’m on my way out. So that’s it. Shutting down. See you next time.