VIDEO DESCRIPTION:
Melaka on a Monday is a completely different world compared to the bustling crowds of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The weekend tourists have gone home, the party is over, and the city basically shuts down for a rest day. Perfect time for me to do what I do best — walk the whole way instead of taking the easy option.
I started at the mouth of the Melaka River on the strait and followed the river all the way up to St. Peter’s Church (the oldest functioning Catholic church in Malaysia) and then all the way back. Along the way I got to experience a quiet, peaceful Melaka: beautiful riverside walkways, friendly pedestrian bridges, and best of all — an incredible amount of wildlife!
I spent a long time watching a whole family of river otters hunting fish, vocalizing like crazy, plus some seriously big monitor lizards and even a cheeky macaque that nearly climbed on my head. I also discovered why the river used to have drawbridges, explored tree-stump walls, pondered some complex tree lighting systems, walked through a traditional Malay village, and stumbled across an abandoned monorail attraction.
I was tempted by the river cruise boats for my return journey… until I found out it was 50 ringgit for a one-way trip. So of course I just kept walking..
Would you walk the whole Melaka River like this or take the boat? Drop a CC in the comments if you made it to the end (you know who you are, Crunch Club members).
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Good morning and welcome to Melaka on a Monday. And Melaka on a Monday is a very different place compared to Melaka on a Friday, Saturday, Sunday. I just spent the weekend here in Melaka going out exploring as I always do. And on Saturday night, I went out into the busier streets just to see bustling Melaka, the nightlife when the whole place is lit up, lights everywhere, music everywhere, thousands and thousands of visitors pouring into the city from Kuala Lumpur, from all over Malaysia. And then Monday comes along and the city takes a day off. This is the rest day for everybody. All the visitors from the weekend have already gone home or are on their way home. Everything kind of closes down. All the museums, which I love. Monday’s a terrible day for museums because museums take Monday off for the most part. So if you ever want to visit a museum, you can just forget about Mondays. And yeah, everybody was so busy here. Everybody who works at a hotel, a restaurant, cafe, food stall in the market, the trishaw drivers, they were probably going nonstop 24/7 Friday to Sunday. Monday, everybody’s tired, everybody’s exhausted, everything closes. And the only person out wandering around in that brutal midday sun, well, it’s someone like me.
This is the world, this is planet Doug right now and my idea for today was to visit St. Peter’s Church and I’ve been hearing a lot about St. Peter’s Church. It is the oldest functioning Catholic church in all of Malaysia. I think it was constructed back in 1710. And it has quite an interesting history. If I remember some of the things I read about it, I’ll talk about that maybe a little bit later. But instead of just going directly to the church and just saying, “Oh, here’s the church.” And then that’s it. What I decided to do may not be wise given the power of that sun is I decided to walk along the river to get there. So I’ve got the destination St. Peter’s Church and I’ve got the journey. So the journey is going to be my walk along the Melaka River on a Monday. It’s already been full of interesting things. I started my walk way down at the mouth of the river like right on the Melaka Strait. And as I was walking along the Indomal fast ferry that goes back and forth to Sumatra just happened to come up the river and dock. So yeah, they left from Dumai this morning and brought people here. So I took a ferry like that one just a few days ago.
With that sun beating down, let’s see how easy it is to follow the river the entire way. I may have already hit a dead end here. I’m not sure. Or no. Yeah, I’m kind of curious what the walkway is like. Like, can you go the entire distance? And right here, this might actually be the beginning of the official Melaka River walkway. I thought maybe these were government buildings and my way was going to be blocked, but it turns out no, there is a walkway.
And yeah, it seems to start and end right here. Yeah, this is interesting. A dredge obviously. So they would be dredging the bottom of the river and then loading it up here and taking it away, keeping the river navigable. And that relates, of course, to the video that I shot recently about the A Famosa fortress built by the Portuguese and then expanded by the Dutch back in the 1500s and 1600s. And when I was investigating that, I was confused about why the walls of the fortress were so far away from the Melaka Strait because when it was constructed, and you can see that in all the old maps in the museums, the wall of the fortress was built right along the water. It was like right along the shore. So there’s the Melaka Strait, here’s the shoreline, and there’s the wall of the fortress, which makes sense. But now when you look at it, it’s far away from the water. And that was a real mystery to me. But of course, the answer is that over time, a river like the Melaka River, it brings silt down from the hills, down from the mountains, the flowing river will deposit silt and then the river delta grows and grows and grows. Basically, the land grows out into the Melaka Strait. And then of course there were major land reclamation projects that built on that natural silting of the shoreline and the river delta. And then they reclaimed a whole bunch of land. So all of this everything around me right now everything I’m walking on all of this used to be water. This was the Melaka Strait. All of this is reclaimed land. None of this would have existed back in the 1500s. And in fact, the mouth of the river is like, I don’t know, a kilometer behind me. I started my walk way back at the mouth of the river, the shore of the Melaka Strait, and it’s way off in that direction on the other side of the highway. So, all of this is brand new land that didn’t exist back in the days of the Portuguese and the Dutch. And in fact, we still have a long ways to go before we even reach where the original mouth of the river used to be. So technically, yeah, we’re still walking on the ocean right now. This is all new land.
One of the first major sites walking along the river, the Samudera Museum. As with all museums, I think it is likely closed today. They wouldn’t get enough visitors today to make it worthwhile to pay the staff to keep it open. I don’t think. And of course, everybody needs a break. So, I think even this museum is not open today. Oh, just made a liar out of me. There’s a staff member right there. So maybe being one of the major attractions here, they actually open on Mondays. There you go. Yeah, they are open.
And this is another big difference from Saturday night to Monday midday Melaka. All I know Saturday night when I was walking along the river in the dark, I think every single riverboat cruise was operating. So all of these boats were just practically thundering up and down the river in both directions. There were so many boats on the river at that time. It actually created ocean waves. I was looking out over the river. It was like, man, what how can there be so many big waves? And the boats going back and forth just naturally created a big wave pattern. And one thing I started thinking about was whether that kind of intense boat traffic affected the river otter. One of the days that I was walking along the river, I saw two big river otters frolicking in the water. I think they were hunting for fish. And I was reading up on that a little bit and how there was a time when there were no otters at all in the river. The river was too polluted. There were no fish. So there was nothing to support the otters because they need fish to survive. That’s what they hunt. That’s what they live on. But in recent years there’s been an effort to clean up the river. The marine population has come back. There are schools of fish. I’ve seen a lot of them here. And now it can support otters again. And otters are just amazing animals. So I was amazed to see those two otters. But then when I was watching all of the boats like this one ahead of me just coming up the river. It’s going much slower today. I think on Saturday night they appeared to be going really fast. And there were so many of them. Like I said, it created so many waves in the water. And I wondered whether that also affected the otter population. Like I’m not sure what kind of effect that would have. There’s no way I don’t think otters could have been out there in the water with so many boats going back and forth. So, they probably adapted to coexist with all the tourism boats. And I think I could take one of these boats. That’s what a smart person would do to take one of these boats to get to St. Peter’s Church. But on planet Doug, we walk.
This is interesting like in terms of the differences between Saturday night Melaka and Monday midday Melaka. You might if you’re just walking around in the daytime you might not pay any attention to this. But when you come out at night you see that every tree in the historic district is covered in lights. And that’s what these are. So those are all strings of lights going up and down the trees. You can see them over here as well on all of these trees along the river. Look at this one. And of course, lights need power. So, we’ve got this quite a complex power system here. We’ve got some kind of a power box here feeding into these ones, one per tree, I guess, and then feeding into those boxes and controlling all of the lights. Yeah, at night all of these would be lit up. It would look very beautiful, I guess, from one of these boats. Huh. I’ve walked down here before and I guess I’ve glanced at these light boxes, these electrical boxes, but I never really paid attention to them. But now, you know, thinking about all the ways this city is lit up at night. Oh, here are some of the waves I was talking about. That one boat going by created some waves. And imagine a boat like that going by every two minutes in each direction. Yeah. Created a lot of waves. Yeah. Every tree covered in lights, dripping with lights. And of course, Middelburg Bastion. I knew I would be passing by the bastion again.
Yeah, the ability to walk around like this is one of the great features of Melaka, at least the historic downtown core. It’s very accessible to pedestrians, which isn’t always the case in Southeast Asia.
Of course, I noticed these tree stumps on my previous walks, but I never really thought about them until now. There’s a set of one two three four five six. A whole bunch of trees obviously were very large trees and then I guess they were getting older and the city decided it was time to cut them down. But of course, you can’t really remove the stumps because the stumps are just embedded in the wall following the river all the way right down there. Yeah. So they just become a part of the city. The tree stumps. Yeah, you can’t tear these out because the entire wall would collapse if you tried to remove them. But yeah, they’re very picturesque.
I’m surprised there’s so many boats running, but yeah, I guess they do have visitors and even with only a few passengers, I guess it still makes economic sense to keep the boats running a little bit. As always, back in Dutch Square, the Stadthuys right there, clock tower, and the dancing panda.
Oddly enough, one of the things that stands out to me the most from walking around Melaka at night, the thing that really stuck in my head was the screaming ghost. And now I wish I’d kind of investigated a bit more or gotten some close-up video because there was a drink stall just down the road there. And well, even when I was far away from Dutch Square, I was all the way up at the top of Melaka Hill at St. Paul’s Church and I kept hearing a loud piercing scream. It sounded like somebody was on a roller coaster, like screaming in fright from a roller coaster or something. I thought, “Oh, maybe they have a traveling carnival down there with rides and people are screaming.” But it turned out it was a kind of a marketing ploy. This woman at this drink stall had dressed up like a kind of like a ghost. A very traditional image. I think a woman with long black hair wearing white and then she had all this white makeup on. Looked quite terrifying to be honest. And then every once in a while like she’s dealing with a customer or just standing around and then she would suddenly let out this piercing scream. It was just like scaring people half to death. I thought that was quite interesting. And then she actually during the night she left from the drink stall and she came right up here. So, right where this fence, this lamp post is, she was sitting on here just sort of hiding and then when people came by, she would just scream at them and then really scare them. I don’t know. That screaming ghost or whatever creature she was supposed to be really stuck out for me. Yeah, I’m thinking about the trees and the stumps. Here are some trees on the river that are still here. I noticed these as I was walking around in the dark because on either side of this bridge, there’s a tree here on one side and then those huge trees on the other. It’s very picturesque.
Monday midday Melaka is also quite different of course because the trishaws are not quite as bright, loud and vibrant as they are at night. Yeah, the actually the ones I’m looking at right now, there’s a Spider-Man one out there. You can see it’s been worn out by the sun a lot. Colors are not very vibrant anymore, but at night with all the lights, they look very, very different. And I remember walking along here and I shot some video of this tree in particular because it had the lights coming down like a waterfall. All the lights coming down and down. Looks very different at night compared to the daytime.
I’m surprised it needs this many control boxes, but I guess every strip of light has a different mechanism controlling the pattern that the light follows. But yeah, that’s a lot of electronics for one tree. And look at all the spotlights. Very elaborate lighting show just for one tree.
Another big difference, of course, is that at night these the lower walkways basically turn into restaurants. So, I was walking along here and I just thought, well, yeah, I’m going to walk next to the river. So, I naturally came down these steps thinking, “Oh, I’m just going to walk along the river and then I turned the corner and this entire area was jammed with tables and basically it became a restaurant. I guess connected with this cafe up here, Cafe Tujo.” Anyway, so I was already committed walking along here, but then I felt like I was kind of intruding on people’s meals because I had to like go in and I had to wind back and forth to get through all the tables. And I thought, “Oh, I probably shouldn’t walk along the river right now cuz I’m going to be bothering people.” So by the time I got to this end, I realized, yeah, you can’t walk down here. Not on a Saturday night. So when I got up to the top, the rest of the way I just stayed walking on the upper level cuz this whole area down here as well was completely jammed with tables, everybody having a meal all along there. And I don’t know if it’s entirely true or not, but it seemed like they separate the two sides of the river. That is the beer side. Like if you want an alcoholic drink, you want a cold beer, that’s all over there. And on this side, I don’t think there are any bars. So, yeah, cuz Malaysia is not a big beer drinking country for obvious reasons. So, maybe they decided, well, so many foreign western visitors be nice to have a couple of bars. So, yeah, you can see Heineken and more Heineken. So, these are basically bars, but they’re all grouped together on one side of the river. And I’m guessing that was a deliberate choice to sort of segregate them basically, so you don’t have all these restaurants mixed in with bars. They put all the bars basically in one place. Kind of makes sense. Once again, I’ve made it as far as Victoria Bastion, San Domingo Bastion. At night, of course, you can’t see the walls, the foundation of the A Famosa Fortress, but in the bright daylight, you can see all of the laterite foundations exposed.
And my walk is continuing up the river. And there are going to be a few bridges along the way. And I think these bridges originally were draw bridges and they were actually part of the fortifications of A Famosa. So they had the fortress walls and bastions and cannon protecting it. And the local population all lived across the river on that side and the fortress was over here going around Melaka Hill and then they could raise the draw bridges which basically was another layer of protection for the fort because any attacking forces coming from that side of course yeah they’re blocked by the river and all of these bridges in the past they would have been draw bridges. I was just reading the sign about this particular bridge, the Chan Kun Chong bridge right over there. And apparently this bridge itself was built in 1908, replacing the old drawbridge. And they talk here about how the bridge being a draw bridge was also to allow boats to go up the river because a boat going up the river would have a tall mast and of course they couldn’t go underneath the bridges. So that’s another I never thought of that. It’s another reason why they were draw bridges to allow boats to go farther up the river. They could raise the draw bridge and then the boat could go through and then they lower it again. Never thought of that.
I don’t know if this is coming across clearly on my GoPro, but yeah, here’s the river and St. Peter’s Church is right here. So, if I wanted to go directly there, cuz I’m here at this bridge, I could just walk straight up the road. But my plan is to follow the river as much as I can and then get to St. Peter’s Church here. There’s also an interesting place here. This is Kampung Morten. It’s a traditional Malay village right in the heart of the city. So, my walk will probably take me in that direction as well. See a little bit of Kampung Morten.
And if I’m feeling really energetic, I could go from St. Peter’s Church over to Bukit China, this hill here. And as far as I know, that is the largest Chinese cemetery outside of China. Like setting aside China, this is the largest Chinese cemetery in the world. So I suppose that’s worth taking a look at. I originally had the idea to go to Bukit China on my bicycle, of course. But yeah, everything here in Melaka is so compact. It isn’t really necessary to have a bicycle to go far afield. If you don’t mind the sun, you can walk just about everywhere. Of course, there are all kinds of really nice cafes and restaurants along the river shore. I just passed by this one which looks quite interesting with apom balik. They have some seating on balconies up there. And I’m not sure what they need the basket for, but they’re using the basket to raise and lower items. Oh, I guess this is how it works. An order has been placed. He rings the bell and he’s gone in to get the order, whatever it is. I guess it’s the modern version of a dumb waiter or elevator.
So, I guess it’s part of the tradition that the customers themselves raise it, but they didn’t put anything in the basket. So, I don’t know why it’s being raised. Oh, he’s sending something down. Okay. She’s very carefully lowering it back down. I don’t know if it was a food order or it was for her. I don’t know what’s going on here. Or maybe it was just a present. They paid their bill and they’re leaving and they get a little bonus apom or something. I don’t know. Anyway, that’s very cool. And then right beside it, Van Kang Cafe. Yeah, I mean, you could spend a month here just trying out all the different restaurants and cafes in Melaka. And then right beside this one, check this place out. Kind of a garden. Yeah. Garden restaurant outdoor seating atas. So that’s an atas restaurant. Very nice.
Another bridge. Jambatan probably Kampung Jawa. Oh yes, this is Melaka’s Chinatown. I just remembered that as you follow the river in one of the bends of the river, I saw it marked on Google Maps that this was Chinatown. Yeah. And it jumps out at you right away. Actually, let’s climb up on the bridge. I suppose when I come back, it would make sense to come back along the other side of the river. That’s assuming the sun hasn’t finished me off. Yeah. So, there’s the Chinatown district, I think. Through there. I was just talking about the sun shutting me down. It hasn’t yet, but it did shut down my GoPro. I was running it too long and it overheated, which yeah in this weather, in this sun. Yeah. No GoPro is going to stand up to this heat. And just when the GoPro shut down, one of the main things I was hoping to see appeared, the otter. They’re not on the river right now, I don’t think, but I just happened to be changing the battery on my GoPro. Then just as I was doing it, a whole family of otters came out from underneath out of that like a drainage tunnel there. And then they were fishing. I could see a school of fish that they were hunting. I saw one of them catch fish and then they swam across to the other side and they were underneath in the shade there and then they went in through that tunnel and then I saw them also swimming along and they came out over here and then they seem to be moving up the river. But the really cool thing about them was how vocal they were. They were communicating to each other with really loud barks, shrieks and barks. Really penetrating sound. Yeah. I didn’t realize that they were so vocal, but they were clearly communicating with each other as they were hunting for fish. Oh, there. One of them is coming back is underneath the in the shade there underneath the walkway. I filmed them a little bit with my Olympus luckily while my GoPro was shut down. I happened to have my Olympus with me and I tried to get some video, but they’re very mobile creatures. They move very fast, very fluid. So, and then they go underwater and then you never know where they’re going to pop back up again.
Yeah, otters one of the most beautiful animals on the planet. They’re so graceful in the water. Let’s see if that particular otter pops up over here somewhere. I wonder what their underwater vision is like in a river like this. How clearly can they see down there? Well, this one was swimming quite a distance. Hasn’t come up for air yet. Yeah, I don’t think it’s going to. It’s probably going to come up on the other side of the bridge. Oh, just caught a glimpse of one. Oh, there’s another one. See, it’s going inside the tunnel there. Yeah, you could be surrounded by these and if you’re not paying attention, you would never even see them cuz they spend so much time under the water out of sight doing a lot of a Oh, yeah. That one has a fish. Don’t know if you caught that. Feels like their home is over here. Every time they catch a fish, they come here. You see that one there? It’s much bigger than I thought they would be. They’re big animals. Oh, there’s another one there. Caught a fish. Man, they’re really successful hunters. These fish don’t have a chance. Look at that. Three of them. At least three of them that I can see. This is one of my favorite. Really cool to see those otters living so close to this big human population. They seem to be getting along pretty well. And beautiful laneway over here with all the lanterns. And then check out this display here with this plant. Oh, hear that sound? That’s the otter calling. So loud.
I found a little bit of shade. Oh, what a relief. And the otters are heading up the river with me. Yeah, four of them right here. Seems like easy hunting for them. I mean, there must be so many fish down there. They’re catching fish so easily. Oh, look at that. That is a monitor. I think a monitor lizard. Not a big one, but a monitor lizard right there. I wonder if he will hang around long enough for me to get out my Olympus camera. I was crouched there at the side of the river for so long that that lizard became quite accustomed to me and started walking along and came right up to my feet and then he thought, “Oh, maybe I shouldn’t, you know, I don’t know what this creature is.” And it turned around and then waddled away from me. I remember reading that the otters and the monitor lizards, which can get quite large here, like five feet, six feet long, very big, they actually compete with each other for the fish here for the food source. So, there’s a little bit of a battle that goes on between the otters and the monitor lizards.
Still just walking along the river. Very brightly colored buildings over here. Very nice. Something I’ve noticed I’m glad to see is that cycling is allowed here. Cycling and walking. So, they have a sign here for someone on a bicycle. I haven’t seen a single bicycle going up and down the river at all. There’s not a whole lot of room here. So for cyclists and pedestrians to coexist, I think you’d have to be a very considerate cyclist, slow down and walk your bike if it gets busy, things like that. Yeah. And I think further up the river there’s like ferris wheels and amusement parks. I think the river boats often end their journey at this kind of an amusement park up ahead. I’m not sure if I’ll probably end up going that far. I’ve arrived at the Jambatan Pasar, the market bridge, and just as I was walking up here, an otter barked at me from right here really loud. Made me jump. Really startled me. But then it went underneath and then I think it popped up back here. Look at this beautiful spot for otters. A hidden cove back here.
Oh, look at that monitor lizard over there. Do you see that one? That’s got to be five feet long, maybe six with the tail extended. It’s an interesting area right here by the market bridge. I’m looking at it just past the market bridge. And I say it’s interesting because you got this walkway with all these signs along it. And as you’re walking along, you feel like the signs, there’s nothing on the other side of the signs. But I just happened to glance behind the signs. And that’s when I found this big area back here. So, the walkway is actually out in the water, and it created this beautiful lush lagoon back here. I don’t know if you can see it, but there’s a big monitor lizard kind of in the middle of the frame there. And the otters come back here. I was taking video of that monitor lizard and he wasn’t moving at all, but now he’s gone out for a swim. And there are macaques here as well. Well, I got some video of a macaque. I was shooting video through all these cracks here and I had my head stuck through one of the cracks and I heard all this noise. Next thing I knew, there was like a macaque practically standing on my head. Yeah. Little ecosystem back here. And what strikes me is if you do go on a river cruise, of course, from the boat, you’ll see all these advertisements, but you’re not going to see the otters and the monitor lizards and the macaques. Those are all hiding back here.
Market Bridge looking up the river and then back down towards all these advertisements at the side that I was talking about. And then there’s the lagoon behind the signs. Little bit of an animal welfare center. Little protected area almost. More of the walkway built out over the water. And this caught my eye. I don’t know if those are all part of the root structure of these trees or are they other plants altogether. I have no idea what’s going on here. Reminds me of like mangrove. That could be what it is.
The Hungua Bridge, Jambatan Hungua. And I’m amazed to see how well designed this is for pedestrians. I’m not accustomed to having walkways go underneath the road. Normally pedestrians in my experience are just an afterthought. And when you run into a bridge like this, you’d have to go way inland, find some roads, back roads, and then work your way all the way around back to the river. But here in Melaka, look at that. It’s like a pedestrian cyclist highway. And speaking of fish for the otters to eat, look at that. I don’t know if you can see them or not. Yeah, a school of a couple hundred fish there at least. These ones are a bit closer. Yeah, look at this. Like a beautiful tunnel going underneath the bridge.
I haven’t heard any of the distinct cries of the otter for a while. I may have left them behind for a little while. Another scenic bridge, the old bus station bridge. Very cool. And then from here, the river does a tight S bend up ahead. And I’m going to follow the full S bend. I think there’s an amusement park inside one of the bends. Yeah, here’s the old bus station bridge. Very, very nice. Oh, yeah. I think there’s the ferris wheel that I was talking about. So, it’s kind of an amusement park right here.
Nothing like a river to make a city interesting and livable. I continue to notice the difference between Saturday and Sunday Melaka and Monday Melaka. Look how quiet it is. Very little movement anywhere. Yeah. Right here you can see that the river is doing a sharp curve inward to the left and then it’s going to curve back around again. So nice S bend. Really nice walkway here. And bridge after bridge after bridge. There’s two more of them directly ahead there.
Oh, this is an interesting Oh, it’s not really a bridge. It’s a trolley or train track. Huh. I was wondering about that because the stairs here were so steep and there’s no way to get to them. But look, it’s actually not for pedestrians, but it’s supporting a train of some kind. And I wonder if it’s still running or whether that’s an old like Melaka attraction that doesn’t operate anymore. I have no idea. I don’t think I’ve ever seen any video or photos of this in Melaka. And there go the tracks. Looks to be in good condition. Painted. Looks like it could be operational, but I don’t know.
I’ve been keeping my eye open for monitor lizards as I’m walking along, and I haven’t seen any really big ones. The one in that sort of lagoon, that was pretty big. Pretty good size, but not nearly as big as some of the others I’ve seen near the mouth of the river. But I just came across this guy relaxing down there. He definitely noticed me walking along, became wary, turned his head around to keep an eye on me. I don’t blame him. Apparently, this is monitor lizard paradise along here. Every one of these root structures or mangrove, whatever it is, has a resident monitor lizard sitting on it. And this is the biggest one I’ve seen so far. Look at that guy. Huge. And I would say even a little bit obese. That is a fat monitor lizard. Too many fish for him. I wonder if the guys that drive these boats up and down the river, they know some of them by sight and where they would often hang out. Like, do they know that this big fat guy is here all the time or not?
I was just thinking that it’s going to be pretty hot and tiring to walk all the way back, but it never occurred to me until just now. I could take one of the boats back, right? Why not? I’m such a dummy. It never even occurred to me that I could just hop on one of these boats to go back. Yeah, I remember looking at Google Maps. There was a big fancy hotel here, the Swiss Garden. Swiss Garden Hotel in the bend of the river and it has this monorail track going alongside it along the river. I was going to say I’m surprised they don’t have their own river boat dock, but they probably do. It’s probably right over there. That’s when the boats probably stop there. People from this big hotel can get off and on the river boats. I’m still walking beside this very large, very tall hotel, the Swiss Garden, I think it’s called, something like that. And I happen to look across the river and there’s Kampung Morten, the Malay village right in the heart of Melaka. So that would be that neighborhood over there. Yeah, it looks very familiar to me from all the time that I spent in places like Port Dickson and even KL of course with Kampung Baru, very famous village like a traditional Malay kampung right in the heart of Kuala Lumpur. I imagine it would be very similar in tone to a Kampung Morten. But I’m on the wrong side of the river right now for that. Maybe when I come back from St. Peter’s Church, I can pop over the river to that side and walk around a little bit. We’ll see. It’s a beautiful stretch of the river. The walkway right here is really nice. I guess it was developed probably because it sits right beside that big fancy hotel. So, they put some money into this walkway. Really nice shaded from the sun. And right here, I stumbled across a historic site. That’s always the best way to discover a historic site. You just stumble across them. So, this is the ruins of St. Lawrence’s chapel built in the year 1700. A Catholic chapel built as a substitute to the St. Lorenzo or St. Lawrence’s Chapel, which was a Portuguese chapel that was built outside of a Melaka fort. Looks like according to the history here, it predates St. Peter’s Church, built in 1700 as opposed to 1710 for St. Peter’s Church. And then when St. Peter’s church became the main church of Melaka. This one was just abandoned and it rotted away. The walls fell. It wasn’t maintained and that’s why it looks this way today. And apparently there are some tombstones, some grave sites in here of some historical figures. Yeah, I imagine it looks very very different at night. I’ll bet. Yeah, there’s lights set up here. And here in the daytime, this is what you see. Yeah, very small footprint, but that would make sense since this goes all the way back to the 1700s.
Head back to the river. And on my left, I think we’re going to be passing by. Oh, it even has a huge sign right here. Kampung Morten. I know that Kampung Baru in KL has a reputation for very high land value because it’s basically village style property, but right in the middle of downtown KL. So land is quite valuable there but they’ve just maintained it as basically residential homes like a kampung and I wonder if Kampung Morten has the same reputation as Kampung Baru where the land value in there would be extremely high. From here though right now anyway the houses look far more elaborate much more restored. They almost look like museum pieces from here. Kampung Baru has a very rough lived-in look. These look very preserved or restored. Yeah. Beautiful from a distance.
And since I’m here and there’s this gorgeous bridge right here, the Morten Bridge, I suppose I’ll walk across just to take a look while I’m here. Crossing the Morten Bridge. And right on the other side of the bridge, you can instantly get a sense of what makes this neighborhood special. Especially if you spent any time out in the Malaysian countryside, you instantly get the kampung vibe in terms of the architecture, the yards. But what’s interesting, what’s jumping out at me right now though is I don’t see a whole lot of walls. Like so many of the compounds, like houses in Malaysia are surrounded by high walls, like almost like little fortresses in themselves, but these ones right here are actually exposed. And I did say that Kampung Baru had a very lived-in feeling. When I was looking at the houses over here, I commented that they look much more restored and more like museum pieces, but I guess that’s only right there. These obviously have a much more lived-in look, more history here, which I like. And then this house here. Yeah, basic obviously some people live here now. It’s nice to be able to see the yards and see the houses without being completely surrounded by walls. But here, yeah, this is more traditional for what I think of as Malaysia, a gate. And this is a homestay. Ah, yeah. Very interesting. This part of Melaka stands out in contrast with the other neighborhoods that I’ve been walking through. And they do have some walls and gates here, but it just feels more open than I’m accustomed to. A lot of homestays. So, these older houses have been converted into homestays. Yeah. Beautiful homes. The old right here. Old and traditional and the relatively new. The giant hotel towering over Kampung Morten.
I’m not seeing as many stilts as I normally would see. A lot of these houses are built on the ground. I thought a lot of them would be built up on stilts, but I’m not seeing well, yeah, a little bit. There’s a kind of a stilt structure over there. Ah, so this is the area that was on the other side of the river. You can see the river on this side. And that’s the beautiful section that I was talking about with all the shade, all the trees and the shade alongside the hotel. And there’s the other side, Kampung Morten. Yeah, very nice. It’s really beautiful walkway on this side of the river as well. Really nice walkway, very wide. And then you get to walk right beside these traditional kampung homes. I guess there is still some like architecture built up on stilts. You can see them here, but maybe in these houses the stilts are just covered up. So you just don’t see them as much. But I think this house is sitting on the ground. So I guess yeah, the wooden ones would be up on stilts perhaps. And then these more probably newer cement homes are actually on the ground itself. Yeah, you can see how wide the walkway is over here. Beautiful planters on the side. And up here on the left, there’s a classic example of what I think of as a kampung home. Wooden shutters and built up on stilts. Wonder if this is also a homestay. Looks like it could be, but I don’t see a sign. Ah, Merdeka. It’s quite something.
I’ve left the river. It’s behind me. Maybe 50 meters and I hear church bells. It’s 3:00 in the afternoon right now and I think those church bells are coming from St. Peter’s. Oh, maybe not. Or perhaps yeah, San Pedro’s, which would be St. Peter’s, of course. But yeah, there’s a tower there. Clock tower with bells. And I think St. Peter’s Church is right over here. But now that I’ve left the historic center of Melaka and the river behind, it feels a little bit more like Malaysia all of a sudden. By that I mean, how the heck do I cross the street? It’s suddenly I’m suddenly reduced to a typical pedestrian in Malaysia. I have no idea how to cross the road. So, I guess this is St. Peter’s Church back here. And to get to it, you got to do the Malaysian pedestrian way. Just run, close your eyes, and run across the road. Yeah, there’s a sign here. Main entrance. So, it’s got to be yeah, just over here on the right. I made it across alive just barely. I had to run for it.
And I don’t know a great deal about the history of this church other than perhaps what I’ve already mentioned. I think it was constructed completed in 1710. The church grounds are on my right. And I did on Google Maps the church is listed as being closed. Oh yeah, right here. So I was right. We’re closed on Monday. So those are the opening hours. Tuesday to Friday, 9 to 3. Main gate will open at 9:00. Anyway, you can read that. And what all I can do is put my GoPro through the fence through the gate and show you the main building right there. To be honest, even if it was wide open, I don’t know that I would even go inside the church myself. I’m always reluctant to go into houses of worship and treating it like a tourist attraction. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a Christian like a Protestant church, a Catholic cathedral, Buddhist temple or a mosque. I visit them, but I tend to take in the architecture from the outside. I don’t like to go to the interior and treat it like a tourist attraction, walking around in my shorts and sweaty t-shirt and my cameras. So, I don’t mind that it’s closed to be honest. Coming here was more about the journey to get here, the photos I’ve seen online. Yeah. The interior of the church looks quite beautiful. And I think there are some significant tombs on the inside. Some grave sites with tombstones, very similar to St. Paul’s on Melaka Hill. So, it would be nice to go inside, but for once, when it comes to opening hours, Google Maps was right. It really is closed on Monday. And I don’t know a huge amount of the history except that of course with the Portuguese when they conquered Melaka in 1511 Portugal is a Catholic country. So they built Catholic churches. But when the Dutch conquered the Portuguese I think in 1641. Do I have that right? I just double checked. Yes, I was right. The Dutch defeated the Portuguese and took over Melaka in 1641. And the Dutch, of course, were Christian Protestant. And again, I don’t know all the details of this history, but a couple of things I read indicated that the Dutch banned Catholicism. Catholicism was not allowed and the Catholic churches were shut down. And it remained that way for a long time until there was a time there’s a whole bunch of fighting going on in Europe. I think it was the they called it the Spanish succession or something like that. And during this fighting the Dutch and the Portuguese were allied against the French. So suddenly the Dutch and the Portuguese made an alliance and the Dutch were still in control of Melaka. But because of that alliance they lifted the ban on Catholicism and the Catholic faith was allowed to be practiced in Melaka again even though the Dutch were Protestant. And it was at that time in the early 1700s that this church was built and it was completed in 1710. And I can just barely get my GoPro. Here we go. Through the fence. Oddly enough, I mean, it doesn’t look that old to me, you know, like dating back to 1710. The building itself doesn’t look that old, but it has a Spanish architectural flavor to it, doesn’t it? Yeah. From here, it looks that way to me.
But that is the basic history story of this church that I know. So anyway, it was a very good thing that the walk to get here was so fascinating with the otters and the river and the restaurants and the riverside walk, the monitor lizards, the macaques because yeah, the church is closed. So if this was my main goal for today came all this way for only for it to be closed, but that’s okay. I don’t really mind. So, I think what I’m going to do is continue following the river and try to find a spot where I can take a boat to go back. I assume they offer one-way trips. So, I’m going to see if I can get a one-way ticket, hop on one of these boats to go back to my starting point. And that’s how I’m going to end today’s small adventure. This is something new I haven’t seen before. A river boat for cleaning up the river water. It’s like a small garbage barge. Looks like they’re looking for any garbage in the river. And the guy has a net and he’s scooping up everything that he sees that’s in the river.
Crisscrossing with the river boats, tourist boats. I still have no idea how the boats operate. Like, is every boat a different company? You buy one ticket. Is it only good for that one boat or you just buy a ticket, you just hop on any boat that happens to show up? I have no idea. It’ll be pretty easy for me though, just because I’m not trying to get a boat to take me to a bunch of tourist attractions. All I want is a boat to take me all the way back to the beginning of my walk. And yeah, just do something different for my return journey.
And this monorail is still continuing. Goes a long ways, but no train has come along it. No monorail. So I’m assuming it’s out of service now. I’ll have to find out what exactly this was and when it stopped running. Pretty sure if it was still running, I would have heard about it and I would have seen a train today. Still walking alongside Kampung Morten over there. And it looks like I’ve arrived at the main river port at the upper bend of the river. So I think this is where you would get a ticket for a boat going back. All the boats that just passed me going up river, they just turned around right away and started heading back down the river. But yeah, look at all these boats. I’m sure one of these will transport me back.
This is kind of cool. The monorail right beside this traditional apartment building. Yes, sir. Hello. Any of you? I would like to take one of the boats back to the center. Just one way. Just one way. Red building, right? Right building. You want one way or two way? Just one way if possible. One way. Where you want to go, sir? Just back to like Middelburg Bastion. Just back to the center of the historical section. So you want one way or two way are also same. Oh, okay. So it’s the same price. Oh, okay. One drop there or here or Well, how much is it? I guess. 50 ringgit, sir. Oh, 50 ringgit. Oh, okay. That’s quite a bit. All right. And all the ticket is the same for all the boats? Yeah, they’re all the same. All the same. Okay. All right, I’ll think about that. Yeah, I’ll just walk. Thank you.
Well, I guess there’s a reason why boat cruises are not my thing. I just thought you could hop on the boat and go back, but it isn’t like that at all. It’s like a two-way cruise, and it costs 50 ringgit. So even to hop on one of these boats and just take it back the like it’s to me it’s a relatively short distance. So for me to get on the boat and go back would cost 50 ringgit and I’m like wow that’s I don’t know it’s not worth it to me anyway 50 ringgit for that. I thought there’d be all like a whole variety. You could pick different types of boats, fancier ones, cheaper ones, one way hop on, hop off, but according to the woman there, it’s just one price and you can take it there and back. But it’s a roundtrip ticket. It’s a roundtrip tour, not just transportation. So, it’s 50 ringgit. So, yeah, I guess I’m just going to walk back. I’d rather spend the 50 ringgit on a whole bunch of cold drinks. I can get a lot of cold drinks for 50 ringgit. That’s the cost of staying in a hotel for a night. And since I’m still young, still have young legs. Yeah, I’ll just walk back on the other side of the river. A bit unfortunate. I thought it’d be kind of fun to ride on the boat and it would be, but not for 50 ringgit. That seems a bit excessive for like a like in Bangkok you can go all up and down the river for like just riding on a city bus. So yeah. Anyway, I got some miles left in my legs and I think I’m just going to turn around and walk back along the other side, I guess. Yeah, I have to say I’m kind of surprised at the price. I didn’t expect it to be so high, especially like yesterday, like last night. Well, it wasn’t yet. It was Saturday night when I went out walking around at night and these boats were just jammed. All these boats were full and were just like back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. 50 ringgit a person, man, they must be making a fortune off of these boats. Of course, I think that 50 ringgit that would be the foreigner price. It would be cheaper for Malaysian, but I didn’t look into that. I don’t know what the price would be for a local person. But yeah, I’m surprised so many people would pay that much for such a short ride. You don’t really go that far. You just The boat ride would be over just like that. All right. Oh, I was thinking about going to the cemetery, but I don’t think so. I think everything I’ve experienced along the river, that’s a nice theme, you know, for this video and for my walk today. And go heading inland from here to the Bukit China Cemetery, that big hill. Yeah, I probably wouldn’t and yeah, I’ve been walking more than long enough since I’m walking all the way back again. I think I’ll save Bukit China for another day or another visit to Melaka. I’m already back at Hungua Bridge and I remember from this point a lot of the riverside walkway is under construction. So I don’t think I can continue easily on this side. I’d have to keep going in and then back and then out and in. Yeah, it’s all like this is blocked off, right? And it’s all under construction. So I think I’m going to walk back over to the other side.
And I feel pretty good about deciding not to take the boat back. I mean, if it was a one-way trip for 10 ringgit or something, I would have done it. But I also didn’t know how long I’d have to wait, like even if I paid the 50 ringgit. How long would I have to wait until a boat would show up that I could get on? Cuz they kept saying it was a special, you know, roundtrip tour. It wasn’t like you just hopped on whatever boat showed up. And I’m already practically back. I’m not even a fast walker. I’m a very slow person. And already, you know, I feel like I’m already back at downtown just about. And I’ve only been walking for less than half an hour, about 20 minutes to get this far. So if I bought a ticket, I’d still be sitting there waiting until a boat is ready. And I have no idea how long that would take. So, it’s actually going to end up being a lot faster walking than taking the boat. And so far, in all the time that I’ve been walking going back, I haven’t seen a single boat going up river or down river. So, there’s been no boats at all that I could have caught. I’d still be there waiting.
And I did try to buy a cold drink at the dock at the place where you buy the tickets for the boats. They had like a vending machine, big sign, cold drinks. And I didn’t really trust it. I’m pretty sure the design of it and sitting out in the sun, the drinks wouldn’t really be cold, but I thought I would get one anyway. But the it’s like one of these touchscreen controls and it was so burnt out from the sun, you couldn’t read it. Like I was pushing the buttons and there was no way I could find the drink that I wanted and punch in the right numbers and things like that because the whole screen had been completely burnt out by the sun. So yeah, I’ve seen a lot of vending machines like that in Malaysia when I was cycling along the coast a little bit around Port Dickson. I’d often see one of these vending machines like or in like even in the MRT system in KL and they go, “Oh, get a cold drink.” But then the machines were always either not working or the drink I wanted was sold out or yeah, something would always go wrong. So, the vending machines have always been a bit of a wash for me. But I am back in the very beautiful section of the river. So, I’m glad that I’m walking again. These are all the lights that act like waterfalls almost. The light comes sprinkling downwards, all these trees. So, yeah, I think if you’re going to pay for the river cruise, I think definitely go for the nighttime cruise and then you get more bang for your buck, I think, because I think walking during the daytime is far more interesting than being on the boat. But at least at nighttime on a Saturday night, you get all the excitement of seeing all the lights, seeing all the people in the cafes and restaurants at the side of the river. So, I think the night cruise would be better. And this is the area where I first came across the large group of otters. I was filming them from on top of that bridge there and then they followed me all the way up the river for quite a while. It seems like mid afternoon they disappear. I’ve walked almost the whole length of the river again and I haven’t seen or heard a single otter. And the monitor lizards seem to be hiding as well. I haven’t seen any of them.
I haven’t seen a river boat go by either. There was one boat that was like a private boat connected to a certain hotel, I guess. But in terms of the river cruises, yeah, not a single one has gone by. So, had I bought my 50 ringgit ticket, I’d still be sitting way back there at the beginning of the ride, beginning of the river. I’d still be waiting for the boat to show up. So, yeah, a rare moment on planet Doug where I made the right choice and decided to walk back instead of waiting for the boat. Yeah, there’s the St. Francis Church. The San Domingo Bastion is right there. Yeah, it always feels like you’re going when you go back, you go a lot faster. Mainly because at the beginning of the day on the way out, I have so much more energy for exploring. So, I would stop every few feet to look at something, to take video of something like this little shrine here or taking video of the otters and the lizards and the boats and on and on. So, every few feet I would stop. So, the journey out takes what feels like a really long time, but then you turn around and come back and zoom, you go back really, really quickly. There’s the Atas restaurant. Yeah, this is the area I was talking about. You can see that the riverside walkway is all being rebuilt and repaired. So, you can’t walk on that side anyway. So, I had to walk over to this side and I’m back. I beat the boat easily. I think it’s been 30 minutes, 35 minutes to walk from there back here and not a single boat has gone by me. So, yeah, a very wise choice to walk back instead of waiting for the boat. And as you can see, yeah, I’m right back in the main part of Melaka. Jonker Night Market Street is right over there. There’s the main bridge, the Mamee Monster. And I scanned this QR code and this I think it’s different. So, this is a water taxi and that when you scan that QR code, it takes you to a schedule for this boat. But I think this boat is different from the river cruise boat that I was at. And then you’ve got things like this Melaka River Cruise. So I have no idea. There seem to be all kinds of different boats and I have no idea which is which, how you buy tickets for each one, where they go, what they do. It’s all kind of confusing to me, which is one of the main reasons I always end up walking everywhere because things like buses and boats and everything else are just hard to figure out. So, by the time you’re done figuring it out, you might, if you just started walking, you would have already arrived at your destination just like this.
Yeah, maybe I was wrong about most of the museums here. I said that on Monday they would all be closed, but that one, the Malaysia Youth Museum, it looks to be open as well. Though that woman is pushing on a door and it’s not opening for her. So maybe, who knows? Maybe it is closed. Dutch Square once again. And I’m just about back. There’s the International Ferry Terminal across the way. I don’t know if that’s the same dredge that I saw on the way up, but that is a dredge. Busy clearing silt from the bottom of the river, keeping it open so the boats can go up and down. And right up ahead here is the beginning of the walkway. This is where I started my walk. Basically, I technically I started my walk on the other side. You can see the highway up there. I started my walk way down at the Melaka Strait right at the original river mouth. But if you’re talking about walking along the boardwalk of the river itself, sort of the tourist-oriented walkway, this would be your starting point. And this is where I began my walk. And I figured I might as well come right back here to end the walk.
I found a bench here at long last. A bench at the very end of my walk. So, I imagine that again was a fairly long video here on Planet Doug. And if you watch this video all the way to the end and you’re listening to me now, you know what that means. That means you are a member of the Planet Doug Crunch Club. And yeah, put CC in the comments to let me know you made it all the way to the end of the video. And someone mentioned that I should have a crunch club elite for people who watch the video all the way to the end or subscribed to Planet Doug and liked the video. And I guess that makes you a part of the Crunch Club Elite Society, the CCE Club. But yeah, if you’re a member of the Crunch Club, maybe you can answer a question for me. Would you do that walk? I kind of looked at Google Maps, made a bit of a just an adjustment to try and figure it out. I think it was about maybe 3 kilometers there, 3 and a half kilometers maybe. So, a round trip of 6 km total in the hot sun walking up the river and back somewhere between 6 7 kilometers, probably closer to seven, I would think. Would you do that walk? Would you attempt it? Would you enjoy something like that? Or would you go for the boat? Are you smarter than me and you would take the hop on hop off taxi and just hop up the river bit by bit by boat? You tell me which way would you go? Would you be crazy enough like me to do that entire walk on foot? You can hear. Yeah, I’m struggling because of the heat.
Yeah, that was a bit of a walk, I must say. But for me, if I had to do it again, yeah, I would walk every time. 10 times out of 10, I would do that walk instead. So much more interesting to go slowly, see the otters, the monitor lizards, the macaques, all the bits of wildlife along the way. I really enjoyed that quite a bit. And as always, shout out to anyone who is supporting Planet Doug and my adventures through the Malaysian Touch ‘n Go e-wallet. You can see the QR code up here and at the end of the video. Thank you very much for your support through Touch ‘n Go. It really makes these small adventures possible. And a shout out to everyone on the Planet Doug Patreon who are supporting me with a monthly donation through the Planet Doug Patreon. I appreciate that very much. And of course my buy me a coffee posse, my coffee posse. Anyone who has bought me a coffee through the buy me a coffee website, you can see the QR code for that as well. Thank you very much for your support. So that is it. Coming to the end of this video and I was recording today’s walk through Strava. So assuming everything got recorded properly starting after this conclusion, you can see the map director Strava Club the Strava map 3D flyover map to show you the route that I followed with little inserted photos. And then come the end credits. So stick around for those if you’re interested. So anyway, I saved 50 ringgit on the boat. So I’m going to take that 50 ringgit and go buy a ton of cold drinks, bring those back to my hotel, put those back and get dehydrated once again. So anyway, thanks for coming out with me on this walk. Hope you enjoyed that as much as I did. And as always, I’ll see you next time.