VIDEO DESCRIPTION:
Melaka Prison Museum, St. John’s Fort & Melaka’s “Ghost” Island & The Floating Mosque – Bicycle Tour
Welcome back to Planet Doug! In this video, I’m hopping on my bicycle for a sweaty, sun-drenched ride around historic Melaka, Malaysia. But this isn’t a typical heritage tour. I’m heading outside the world heritage zone, away from the Melaka River. And one of those places tried to take me out.
First stop: The Malaysia Prison Museum. I’ve always had a strange fascination with prison life, so exploring a 150-year-old former British jail felt oddly like home. But despite the original prisoner graffiti, the caning demonstration video, and the actual hanging room, the prison museum felt oddly empty of prisoners and prison life. The prison buildings still stand, and they’re interesting to see. But the exhibits were more about the prison staff and administrators. The prisoners themselves were barely an afterthought. That made it less interesting for me.
Then it’s off to St. John’s Fort, a Dutch-era hilltop fortress where the cannons face inland for a very good reason. After that, I ride out to Melaka Island—a massive, partially abandoned development project that feels like a ghost town by the sea. Towering empty buildings, “for rent” signs as far as the eye can see, and absolutely zero broken windows? Malaysia is proudly respectful, even in failure.
Finally, I visit the popular Masjid Selat Melaka (The Floating Mosque). Beautiful spot. It’s also where I tripped on rocks, cut open my elbows and knees, and suffered a bleeding toe. The ghosts of Melaka Island had it out for me.
Don’t forget that a 3D Flyover Map comes at the very end. Watch that short video clip to see all the places I went.
Route in this video: Prison Museum → St. John’s Fort → Melaka Island (Ghost Island) → Masjid Selat Melaka
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Once again, welcome back to Melaka, Malaysia on a very hot, very humid, and very sunny Friday afternoon. I’ve got a couple of places I want to visit in the city today, and I’m getting there on my bicycle, as you can see. And the first place I’m heading towards is the Malaysia Prison Museum. I’ve always had a lifelong interest in prisons for some reason, in prisons and police and all that kind of stuff. Maybe I always imagined I’d just end up in prison someday and that would eventually be my home. And assuming the prison isn’t actually horrific, like a torture place, I’ve often thought I could find a certain level of even happiness in a prison. You know, I say that just because I’ve never had big ambitions in life. I’ve never sought big fancy houses or fancy cars or fancy hotel rooms and comforts. Back in the days before I was a YouTuber, shooting a lot of video and spending most of my time doing that, I would sit in tiny rooms around the world and read books. That was my greatest pleasure. So all I really needed was a single bed in a tiny windowless room and a bookshelf just jammed with new books to read. And then I was as happy as can be. And I didn’t care that much about food. I could eat the same food every day and that would be fine with me. So in a weird sort of way, I always wondered whether that personality and those habits would transfer well into prison. The judge is up there and he says, “Okay, Doug from Planet Doug, I sentence you to life in prison.” And I would just put up my finger. Okay. Judge, excuse me. Do I get a private room and do I have access to books? Yeah. And if the judge says yes, I’m like, “All right, I’m good to go. Show me to my room.” And I would sit in my little prison cell and read books for the rest of my life. Of course, that could be pure fantasy, but I’ve often had that odd idea in my head. And then in my lifetime overseas, a couple of times I visited prisons. I went to visit a prison. I remember in Peru the idea was just to see a local prison almost like a tourist attraction just to see what life is like at a local prison. But you could also get the names of foreign prisoners. So you could show up at the prison and say, “Oh, I’m here to visit this Canadian prisoner you have or American or European or whoever it was,” and you could go into prison and visit with them, find out if they need anything, bring them a care package. And I did that in the Philippines as well. I did that in Ecuador, maybe a couple other places. And they’re always fascinating experiences because a prison is like the extreme of a country if you know what I mean. It’s like an extreme situation in that country and you can learn a lot about it by visiting the prison. And here in Melaka, they took the big local prison and they preserved it and turned it into an actual museum. So that is where I’m going and I think it should be quite interesting.
I’ve never ridden my bike out in this direction in Melaka on this busy one-way street, so I don’t really know what I’m doing here. I think I’m on the wrong side of the road, but there’s so much traffic I haven’t been able to get over to the left.
I did a little bit of reading about this prison and it’s very old. Much older than I expected to be honest. It was built long before Malaysia existed, before Malaya existed. I think it was built by the British at the time of the Straits Settlements back in 1860 if I have the dates straight in my head. So 1860 to 2010, that’s a century and fifty years. And it’s been an active prison of one kind or another all the way up until 2010. There was a time it was a prison for adults, for regular inmates, but then there was a time when it was converted to a prison for juvenile detention for like 10 or 20 years. And then it went back to being a prison for adults all the way up until 2010. And then in 2010 it was converted into a museum.
I have to be very careful with my broomstick GoPro mount. If there’s very tiny spaces, I don’t want to whack people in the head with my GoPro.
As I said, I’ve never come out to this part of Melaka on my bicycle before. This is outside of the historic heritage zone. So we’re getting back into regular Malaysia, meaning a little bit of traffic congestion. Not much room for pedestrians or cyclists. This is normal life. The heritage zone is a nice change for me because it is so well suited to people who are walking and cycling. Most of the cities in Malaysia are not like that. So even these students, these young girls leaving their school, they’re having a hard time threading the traffic. And actually that makes sense why there’s a traffic jam here. The school just let out for lunch. And anytime you’re near a school, there’s a big traffic jam when it lets out because in the modern world kids get picked up. I’ve commented on that in the past. It’s so foreign to me. I grew up in Canada back in the 60s and 70s, and your parents just sort of open the door. Well, they didn’t open the door. They say, “Hey, time for school. Get out of the house.” And you go to school on your own. You ride your bike to school and eat lunch at the school. I had my peanut butter sandwiches, which were my favorite sandwiches, and at the end of the day you ride your bike back home. The idea of your parents coming to the school to pick you up would just be laughable back then. But that’s the norm today. Certainly the norm in Malaysia. So schools, they’re best avoided in the morning, noon, and mid-afternoon because you get traffic jams like this. Everybody’s picking up their kids. I guess I picked the wrong road. The prison is only like 2 km away from my hotel. I’m not entirely sure I’m even going in the right direction.
Maybe I can zoom past the congestion a little bit. Follow the scooters.
And the schools here strike me as being quite big too. Big populations of students. They’re not small.
From Sumatra, I’m so accustomed to local people shouting hello to me as I ride around here. The kids, the students are just saying goodbye to their friends. Every time I hear someone say hello or goodbye, I think they’re talking to me. So I’m like, “Oh, no, not me.”
All right. On the other side of the school.
I may have gone too far already. Time to check Google Maps. Find this prison museum.
I’ve arrived. Pretty easy to get here. It’s right on the main street that I was riding my bike along. There it is. Museum Penjara Malaysia. And check out that wall over there. If you’ve been watching my Melaka videos, you know why I’m excited about that. Looks like laterite. So they built the walls in the same style as the Portuguese A Famosa, the fort walls or the bastions all made out of laterite originally. So there’s the main entrance I guess. Museum Penjara and there’s a jail cafe, Cafe Kopi. In my experience a lot of these museum cafes are often closed. They build them when the museum is made because they’re very optimistic about how many visitors they’re going to get. And yeah, we got to have a cafe and then they end up with no customers and they eventually close, but we’ll see whether that one’s open or not. First thing I got to do is cross the street. There’s even a crosswalk here. I wouldn’t want to get arrested for jaywalking right out front of the museum.
Okay. So there’s a sign here. The Pudu Prison bathing pool. I had no idea about this, but apparently there was a bathing pool at Pudu Prison in KL. Quite a big one. 21 ft 5 in diameter, 5′ 8″ deep. Built in 1891. And they say they moved it from Pudu prison to here in 2011. But I wonder why. My understanding was this prison turned into a museum in 2010. So they brought it here not for the inmates but for the museum. Maybe I have my dates wrong.
There it is. Pretty high wall. Barbed wire up at the top.
This museum is probably one of these places where only foreigners visit. I could probably talk to a hundred people who live in Melaka and out of a hundred maybe one of them will have actually visited the museum.
I was warned online that it can get quite stuffy and hot in there because after all it is a prison with tight closed spaces. The place was not designed with air conditioning and comfort in mind. And I’m already just blistering hot from the bike ride to get here. So here is the original plaque when it was built in 1860 by the honorable Colonel Kavanagh the governor. I think it was called HM Jail, Her Majesty’s Jail. Here’s some of the laterite.
Just right here. One adult. Free entrance. Foreigner. Where you from? Canada. Canada. So it’s free entrance? Yes. Go inside. Scan. All right. Thank you. Well, that’s a surprise.
And I have to start with the summary of the history here. This is very cool. I like this. I’m pretty sure these must be like original doors. And they keep them here. And it’s actually air conditioned on the inside. Hello. Thank you.
Just through that way. Canada. Nice to meet you. Just traveling by myself. I didn’t know you were air conditioned inside. That’s nice. I’m in the museum now, of course. And there’s a photograph of the prison when it was built in 1860. Yeah, it looks like quite a friendly sort of prison. Certainly very different from my image of prisons. 1860. And a sign outside said it is the second oldest prison in the country. The oldest is the prison in Penang. An interesting display. A riot gun right here.
Handcuffs. Different sizes. And what they call a halter. A halter go around your neck attached to a rope and then I guess it has a little hole there where it could be bolted to the wall. Keep a prisoner in one place. And then for caning, rattan canes here.
School groups are luckily on the way out. I like that they kept all the doors in place. So when you enter the prison, you have to go through this basically an armored door, heavy steel door first, get through there and then there’s another door. And I remember when I visited the prisons like in Keo in Ecuador, every time I step through one of these doors, the guards would slam it shut behind me. And it felt very oppressive because I would go in through door after door after door and each door slammed shut behind me. And I started to wonder whether I was ever going to get out again. I was joking that I could be quite happy living in a prison, but that would only be according to certain rules. I’m thinking of a quiet, relatively civilized kind of prison where I just get left alone. And that prison in Keo in Ecuador was not like that at all. I would definitely not want to be in that prison.
Wow, a lot of photographs to work through here. So I’ve come through the outer door, the second inner door, and then as you go farther, look at this. Now we’ve got a double door. So this is definitely getting into the area where the prisoners would be held. You’ve got this heavy-duty gate and then a second gate on the inside with more of just a screen. So if you were a prisoner coming in being processed, with all those heavy metal doors clanging shut behind you, you’d certainly start to feel the reality of being in prison. And then here you finally get to your cell. And of course this is not what I was imagining when I was thinking I could be happy in prison. Yeah, I think even I would find this oppressive. I always say I don’t need windows, but wow, this would be oppressive in here. And see how narrow it is. It’s five feet across. And I can only imagine how many prisoners would have been stuffed in here. And that’s when things would start to get uncomfortable. This would be very hot, very humid, and of course you wouldn’t have any control of when you go in and out. That is amazing. That is so heavy.
In a way, you kind of wonder why prisoners need such heavy duty doors. It’s not like they’re putting Superman and The Incredible Hulk in this room. No normal human being could get through a door that’s even a normal door with a lock. This is definitely overkill. That is solid.
I keep seeing these mannequins and they keep freaking me out. From a distance out of the corner of my eye, I think they’re real prisoners or guards. And of course, bathroom facilities would be a real problem. Waste barrel and clean water. You’re stuck in this room. It’s not like you get your own private latrine.
And I read online that the graffiti that you see on the walls here, this is all original graffiti from the prisoners who were held in this cell. They left it as it is. So even a ninja turtle. So there’s what they get. The prisoner’s equipment: a blanket, towel, 1-inch mattress, toothbrush, plastic spoon, plastic mug, a water dipper, soap, some kind of storage, and sandals. And lighting. Who knows whether back in the old days there might not have been any electrical lighting at all. So this room would only have light coming in from over there. As far as creature comforts go, that’s it. 1-inch mattress on a concrete floor. But it makes me wonder how many prisoners were inside each cell. That would be an important thing to know. And I wonder how many prisoners were held in this prison in total. See all these cells lined up. They all look to be the same size.
So this is the section with all of the individual cells and one room is the bathroom and latrine. So they would have water here for bathing and there’s one toilet over there pretty much out in the open. So you get absolutely no privacy at all. At least if this was the original layout. At the end of this cell block, another metal doorway and into sort of a courtyard area.
And I noticed over here there is a kind of a library. Makes me wonder if these books were available to the inmates or not. And it makes me wonder about their daily schedule. How does that work? Like those prison cells obviously are not going to be very comfortable, but that depends on how many hours you spend in that cell. Maybe it’s a very rigid schedule. Block A. So maybe the prisoners are on a rigid schedule where they get woken up in the morning and then they have to go do something else, come out in the courtyard for exercise or classes. So maybe they only end up back in the cell at night for a certain number of hours. The prisoners probably had jobs as well. So maybe some of them worked in the kitchen preparing meals. Maybe others were doing maintenance. But I noticed out here there’s Block E. So I guess Block A was probably for the most dangerous criminals. That’s why that was the heavy duty part here in Block E. You can see the door is not nearly as heavily armored. And this is probably more of a communal space. They probably had prisoners just lined up here sleeping on the floor. A whole group of them. That’s what I’m guessing anyway. So far, this prison is just not really giving me any information. I want to know about Block A. What is Block A? Who was held there? What kind of crimes did they commit? What was their daily routine like? How were things under control? Like how many prisoners were held in this prison? How many guards worked here? There’s so far no information at all about the day-to-day operations. It feels a little bit more like the annual report of a prison. The rooms that I went into, like the display rooms with all the information and photographs, it was really of no interest to me. It was just photos of all the commanders of the prison over the decades and then like corporate sort of statements. And even at the very beginning it said the history of the prison and it was like a four paragraph definition of what a prison is. It was like out of a children’s dictionary saying a prison is a place where you are held and you are not allowed to leave. And it was like, I don’t know why that’s not the history of the prison. It was just very strange. But anyway, maybe there’s more information somewhere, but so far I’m not getting the experience here that I was hoping for. It’s interesting to see, but it doesn’t seem to be a type of prison museum designed for a person like me.
And most of the displays basically look like this, like you’re in the boardroom of a corporation, not really in a prison. And here is Block B. Interesting. They have like a curved door. I guess a guard could stand inside this curve and see everywhere in the room like nobody can be hiding around the corner. That makes sense for security reasons. So that’s kind of a cool touch. This is Block B. What is Block B for? What prisoners were held here? How many of them were in this room? And why was the door designed like this? These are the sorts of things I want to know, but they don’t have any information about stuff like that. Here’s another different type of block and it has the same round door. That is very heavy. But you can see how if a guard is standing inside that curve, they can see in all corners of the room. So nobody can hide and ambush them. That’s hard to open even when it’s unlocked. But this looks to be maybe solitary confinement. These individual cells here. You can just look through the little peephole. Cell door number seven. Isolation room door. So apparently this was transferred from Pudu prison as well. Room number 11 was dwelt by a high-profile criminal Wong Swee Chin or Boak Chin. I guess he’s a very famous prisoner.
This is one of the more unusual rooms here. It’s a video room, like a small theater. And video and photography is not allowed, but if I stand here, you can hear something. Of course, you probably figured it out by now, but it’s video of a caning operation. And as far as I can tell, it’s real. They actually made a film of an actual caning here. In that movie I guess there were four men in the prison being caned and it showed them getting their medical checkup first, take their blood pressure, make sure they’re healthy enough to be caned and then the video actually shows them the exact process. It shows it with real guards and real prisoners being caned. Some of them got three, some of them as many as 10. And in the video you can actually see the flesh splitting open and getting quite bloody and then they have to treat the wounds afterwards. But yeah, you’re watching that video and again it was very odd to find that in a museum. I thought there might be some more explanation, but really it’s just a 10-minute loop of four men being beaten with canes until they’re bloody. And then it just loops and you watch it over and over again. At least the room is heavily air conditioned. But this is the rig basically that they used. You can see this in the movie where they strap them down. It’s quite a bit more elaborate than the one they were using in the movie, but then they’re held down quite tightly and then there’s an opening here and that’s where they were caning them. But it was done with quite a bit of ceremony and they definitely took their time with it. So it wasn’t like 10 lashes to get it over with very quickly. It was very ceremonial. And the guy doing the lashing was a big muscular guy and he had a whole technique to hit as hard as he could and then there would be a pause. He would shout out one and then he waits and then the second one and then a long pause so the prisoner knows the next one is coming. Very strange film to be showing I think especially considering the number of children that go through here all the school groups. Quite a shocking thing to watch in a way. But again, I was expecting talk about corporal punishment. What was the thinking behind it? What prisoners were caned for what offenses? How was that organized? But they just show you the caning and then that’s it. There’s no other information.
Up here on the second floor. This whole exhibit is about capital punishment. I don’t know what the rules are in Malaysia actually, how common it is in modern times for capital punishment to be carried out, but it talks about the legal process here and then the final day of the execution, the process that the prisoner follows. And I guess this would be death row over here. And then in this room, they don’t want you to take close-up pictures, but this is where the hanging room. There’s a trap door in there and a noose, and that’s where the execution would be carried out in that room there. So this is all about capital punishment.
And up here on the second floor, they have a lot of displays about other prisons around the country. And then as I talked about mainly displays talking about all the various leaders, the heads of the prisons, the staffs, their medals, and the various uniforms that they wear. Almost everything in this prison is about the people who run the prisons, the guards and more like a corporate history than anything else. There’s really almost no information at all about the prisoners themselves. This is all about the prison director generals and then all of these posed photos, ceremonies at all the various prisons over the years.
My tour of the jail is done. I did pop into the coffee shop next door. Nice little place. I like it. Very casual, very laid-back. And I just got a cafe latte. On the menu, they did have something called like the signature jail coffee. And I tried to find out what that was, but I couldn’t make any headway. So I just ended up with a standard latte. But I enjoyed that tour because as I said at the beginning, I have a particular interest in prisons, prisoners, the life of prisoners, that sort of thing. But for the average person, I don’t know that that museum holds much of interest. It doesn’t really tell you anything. Doesn’t give you any history. Doesn’t tell you about the prisoners, about what their lives were like. Just a lot of formal ceremonial pictures of the prison system, the staff, the director generals, the guards. But still, you get to see the prison cells. You get to see the graffiti on the walls. You get to see an actual video of real caning, which is pretty unusual. And the capital punishment room where they hang the prisoners. So you get to see some pretty interesting things. Could be a lot better though. If you’re in Melaka and you don’t have time to come out here, I don’t know that you’re really missing a whole lot, but if you have the time and you’re interested, pop by.
I wasn’t terribly impressed by the prison museum. The prison itself, seeing the prison was cool. I like the coffee shop. That might have been the best part. My cafe latte. And St. John’s Fort is overlooking the prison. So that’s kind of a side benefit to coming to this museum. I can now visit St. John’s Fort just up ahead here around the corner.
There’s a hill on my right. That’s St. John’s Hill. And I think its history began with the Portuguese in 1511. They built a chapel on that hill. It was St. John’s Hill and they built a chapel up there. And then when the Dutch defeated the Portuguese back in 1641, they built the fortifications up there. So the Portuguese didn’t really fortify it that much. So I think most of the fort that we see up there that remains today was built by the Dutch later on.
I think I have to cross over this road. Quite a bit of traffic coming up behind me. And then we’re going to make a hard right-hand turn climbing up the hill. And they say that one of the interesting aspects to the fort is that people notice that the guns don’t point out over the water. A lot of the cannon, they point inland. So here’s the entrance to St. John’s Fort, Kota St. John. And the reason the cannon point inland is because the Dutch were mainly worried about attacks coming from that direction because when Melaka fell, the Sultan of Melaka, he retreated with a lot of his forces and joined forces with the Sultan of Johor. And then the Acehnese from Sumatra joined in and those forces were constantly attacking the Portuguese, the Dutch since the fall of Melaka. So they had to defend against armies attacking from inland. I think that’s the basic idea behind St. John’s Fort. And when the British took over Melaka, they tore down and blew up most of the fortifications there, but they didn’t worry about this fort out here. So I think they left it mainly intact. So it’s one of the main pieces of fortifications that survives intact from the Dutch and Portuguese era.
I wonder where the water was back in those days. I talked a lot about land reclamation around A Famosa, the Portuguese Dutch fort in Melaka. And I wonder if the shoreline up here receded quite a bit as well. It might have been a lot closer to the water than it looks today.
Right away. One of the things I like best about St. John’s Fort is the shade. I was reading online that there’s a lot of macaques here and you get warnings to keep your food out of sight or the macaques will come and take it from you. So I imagine there’s a bunch of macaques in these trees. But yeah, nice to have a hill like this still covered in trees. You get out of that brutal sun a little bit.
And there’s a sign that should give some information about the history of the fort. This is what that prison museum needed at least just a simple historical breakdown of its history. Basically what I said, St. John’s Fort. The local name was like Bukit Senjuang, but that of course is just a local way of saying St. John. So it’s St. John Hill and the Portuguese built a chapel here and it was destroyed in fighting with Acehnese fighters around 1628. And then after the Portuguese, the Dutch built the fortress up here. And then at the end it talks about how most of the cannon are facing inland rather than out over the water.
There it is. Kota St. John. It’s funny a lot of the architecture like the churches that I saw in Melaka in these fort walls. It looks Spanish to me which kind of makes sense considering their history. But it looks like the white walls and the shape of the archways kind of looks Spanish to me. And as always, if you go under if you dig underneath that white plaster, the coating on the outside, you’ll find that the walls are built out of laterite. So right here, the Dutch built a fort on this hill in 1760 to fend off attacks by the Acehnese and Bugis people from the south. The building materials were laterite stones and bricks from the Dutch era.
Now I’ve left the trees behind. No more shade. I’m out in the brutal sun once more. You don’t think of Melaka as a very hilly place, but it has a couple of hills. And every time you get a hill, it’s an obvious place to build a fortification, a defensive position. This is looking inland from over here. It says here that the Dutch made a wise decision building this fort on the hilltop. So because they could see enemies coming from far away, they were able to defend it easily and they were never subjugated by any power until 1824 when they handed Melaka to the British. And of course that handover to the British was part of an agreement. The British and the Dutch didn’t fight at all. The Dutch basically gave Melaka to the British to hold for them until they could take it back again. That was the basic idea. That is very cool. Coming around the corner, I wasn’t expecting to see so many cannon. Four of them right here and then a fifth one over there. Looks like there’s room for five, six, seven, eight, nine. At least nine cannon emplacements. But yeah, doesn’t that archway look Spanish to you? It makes me think of western spaghetti western movies. All the forts looked a bit like that to me.
Very picturesque up here. I wonder if all these trees were cut down back in the Dutch era because they would want a clear field of view for their cannon fire. So I imagine all of this hillside was completely bare back then. And on this side you can see the water. But again, it makes me wonder how much the shoreline has moved because this cannon from here I don’t think they’re reaching ships out in that water. I’ll bet the shoreline was far closer. Would have been right down below us maybe. And maybe all of that land there is reclaimed land, and the water used to be much closer than this. Makes sense to me because it’s pretty far away right now. I don’t think these cannon would be very effective at this distance.
It’s a beautiful spot up here. Very green, very lush. It’s nice to see some of the fortifications fully intact because this fort was never destroyed. So this is essentially what it would have looked like back in the original days. Kind of smaller than you might think. Every time I hear the word fort or fortress, I think of something much larger than what I see in real life. Wonder how many soldiers would be up here defending this place. There isn’t a lot of room. But I suppose they could have had barracks down here as well, right outside the fort walls. They could have had a lot of buildings down here as well. And they only needed to retreat behind the walls when there was an attack. So maybe they were probably living down here most of the time. And then if there was an attack then they could come up here and everybody would crowd in here just for the duration of the fighting. That’s my guess anyway. There you have it. St. John’s Fort.
Just leaving from St. John’s Fort. Might be able to see the last glimpse of it behind me up the hill.
And from here I have one more place I want to visit today and that is the island. There’s the Melaka Island which I believe is all reclaimed land. It’s an artificial island and I think they had big plans for it. They started building a lot of residential areas and commercial buildings all kinds of things out there. But then it all just kind of stalled. So I think it’s a little bit like a ghost town out there, but it’s right on the water. And there’s a beautiful mosque down there, which is thought of locally as a tourism mosque. It was designed to sit out on pillars such that at high tide it actually looks like it’s floating on the water. So it’s a very beautiful scenic spot, like a lookout spot to look out over the Melaka Strait as well as a beautiful mosque. And I think a lot of tour groups go out there. It’s one of the stops of a tour around Melaka particularly at sunset. And right now it’s nowhere near sunset time. Still mid-afternoon.
But I thought I would go out there, take a look at this island. I won’t be going into the mosque itself. I don’t think the mosque is even open at this time of day. Just look at it from the outside. Take a look at the ghost city on Melaka Island and take in the Melaka Strait. So that’s where I’m heading now. Three or four kilometers from here down to the coast and then kind of working my way back towards the historic district.
And up on St. John’s Hill, one of the historical signs talked about how the Portuguese intermarried with a lot of the local women. So there’s descendants of the original Portuguese colonists here. And I guess there’s a Portuguese settlement right over here somewhere, but I don’t think I’ll head out in that direction.
What a different feeling once you leave the historical zone when you’re out in normal Malaysia. The traffic is just nonstop. It’s relentless. Even in Melaka which I tend to think of as a quiet little town, but not out here. It’s a busy place. Just waiting for a break in the traffic. But I might be stuck here for the rest of my life. There we go.
I’m getting close to the island. I’m getting near the coast.
Just thought I’d climb up here because I think that’s one of the ghost town buildings over there just abandoned before it was completed. And you can see here on the mainland some huge buildings over there. And I have to kind of get around here. And then there’s a causeway out to the island just out in that direction.
Here’s a more clear view of this giant building over here. Or two of them actually. And then right beside it, another one. Land of giants, Malaysia. And now we’re about to see an island where the vision for more giants was abandoned. Here’s the sign Masjid Selat Melaka. Turning left here to head out to the abandoned island.
I can smell the water. And right now I’m on the causeway. There’s just mud flats here. All of this land could easily be reclaimed.
There’s a residential area up there on the right. Looks more finished than I expected. So maybe the tales of this being a ghost island are a bit exaggerated. Seems to be quite a few cars coming out here. And these residential buildings look occupied maybe. Down on the ground level I see a lot of signs with phone numbers. Basically for sale, for sale, for sale, for rent, for rent, for rent. So maybe most of this building is unoccupied. And there’s a billboard which has the master plan for the Melaka Gateway. That is quite a vision. Reminds me of everything you see from the UAE, places like Dubai. They had plans for docks for cruise boats to come. Big cruise liners could dock here. There’d be hotels right here and they could disembark and go right into their hotel. So it looks like a pretty good plan. Looks like they were planning for some man-made beaches as well. Now all I hear are crows. Crows everywhere.
I’m just going around that huge building that was never completed. There’s another big building off on my left. It’s just basically a cement frame and I think it got abandoned as well.
I’m always surprised to see things like this because I’m such a child when it comes to finances. When I see something this big, this sort of construction project. Look at that. Something this expensive, this much money poured into it and then they just got to this level and said, “Ah, let’s not bother finishing it.” Like, how much money was tied up in this construction? And somehow rich people and corporations out there, they’re all rich enough to just let it go. But it feels like that kind of a financial disaster would put entire companies bankrupt. People would go bankrupt by the thousands. But I don’t know. I see so many big projects like this that get started and then just abandoned.
It looks like they went as far as constructing the arc of the beach. I was just talking with a local guy there on a motorcycle and he said he was heading down to the beach, invited me to go hang out.
Got signs here that just show what they were planning to build. All of these residents or hotel rooms out over the water on stilts. But yeah, I guess this was going to be the luxury beach area. I don’t know if that sand is natural or whether they brought in that sand and made the beach. Doesn’t look very inviting from here.
Somebody out there with a jet ski, but it looks like he’s fishing from his jet ski.
On one side there’s the dream. Wind surfers, luxury dwellings on stilts and then the reality is on the other side. Endless for rent signs. Everything here is empty and abandoned. Nothing but phone numbers trying to rent out this property. But who in the world would put down the money to buy or rent one of these storefronts? Nobody really, unless you need some very inexpensive office space or something like that.
I’m definitely getting the ghost town vibe. Look at this. There’s nothing here. Nobody here. Couple of these very old cars. Got a kitty cat over here. Hey, kitty. Two of them. Beautiful cats. Look at this. Everything here is empty. Completely unoccupied. I don’t see a single open door in any direction.
There’s a classic view off in this direction. Look at that. All these unoccupied buildings and that giant unfinished building. Reminds me of some of the developments near Port Dickson where they had high hopes for that area. And then the crowds they were expecting didn’t materialize and a lot of the buildings were unfinished or now abandoned.
The mosque is one bright spot here. Very popular with visitors like me. Looks like they had big plans over here too. A prestigious development by Arab City. Wonder if that was going to be a hotel or a residential area.
And I think this area over there with the trees, that park area that’s right beside the mosque. And I could be imagining things or projecting, but it seems to me that what you’re seeing here actually reflects a certain character, a positive character in Malaysia. Like all of these buildings are abandoned, but not one window is broken. I don’t see a single broken window. I don’t see any graffiti anywhere. No tagging. So there’s a real respect for property. You don’t see the vandalism that you might expect. It’s pretty surprising. I would normally expect a development like this abandoned to be quite torn apart, smashed windows, graffiti, and garbage everywhere. But it’s really in good condition. And as I said, I think that speaks to a certain positive trait in Malaysia.
I smell that durian. Lots of durian.
Just wondering what’s down here. Anytime I see a little opening that I can follow down to the water, I’m going to take it. Check out this beast. You see those in downtown Melaka. The Melaka duck tours. It’s a boat and a truck, an amphibious truck.
I’m glad I came down here to get a nice view of the mosque, the floating mosque. So there’s the Arab City, the waterfront side of it. Beautiful location. They’re right on the water. And then beside it is the floating mosque. You don’t quite get the floating feeling right now because the water isn’t high enough, but it’s quite beautiful nonetheless.
This would be the place to come to get your sunset photos. These people are here early, but I guess you can climb up there and then you’ll get the sunset right behind the mosque. You can see the difference. I was talking about the main mosque in Melaka. This is a more modern construction. It has the classic dome shape.
It seems like I’ve discovered the secret place where everybody comes to take their pictures, sunset pictures of the mosque. So I’m going to lock up my bike here and walk out onto the stone pier. But my adventures with kickstands continues. I now have two of them. Of course, they work relatively well, but here I am parking my bike, and I end up cutting my toe wide open on the kickstand.
This is the secret place to get your selfies with the mosque. And a lot of people climb up onto the stone quay here.
Now I get to mix all the blood on my toes with the sand. And today is Friday, so that it makes sense that there would be a lot of people coming out to the mosque on a Friday.
Arab City would have a nice lookout point up there. Can you imagine if it was open the sunset pictures you could take from up there? All the guests would enjoy that very much. Blood and sand jell-o. I seem to cut my toes quite a bit. It’s not entirely my kickstand’s fault. I seem to stub my toe quite a bit these days. Keep cutting them open on bits of metal and bamboo, all kinds of things around the world. I always seem to be bleeding from my toes. But what a view from here of the ghost island. You can see the shoreline, abandoned building there, abandoned complex here. But hey, one survivor, one beautiful survivor. The mosque still holding on.
The ghost island has it out for me. I was walking along the rocks there and all these people were taking selfies. So I thought I would be kind and then step off the rocks onto the sand and then walk around them so they could take their selfies. And I loosened my sandal because of the cut, but I guess I should not have because the sandal was so loose it got caught on the rocks and I fell head over heels. So now I cut open my elbow. That’s all cut open. I don’t know what I hit on my way down. Little bit of a scrape on my knee, but other than that I kind of survived. I hit pretty hard. I had to do a somersault to lessen the blow when I hit the ground. I better tighten my sandals so I don’t trip again. And considering that the ghosts are out to get me today, I better use the rope to go back down carefully so my feet don’t slip out from under me going down the rocks. But yeah, you can see the rocks are steeper than you’d think. I think a lot of people would end up slipping here.
Took me a few minutes to put myself back together once I came out to the road. I was just covered in sand sticking to me everywhere. Here’s the entrance to the mosque. I won’t be going onto the grounds, but here are the tourist visiting hours if you’re interested. Today’s Friday, so 2:30 to 4:30. It’s 3:30 right now, so it is open to visitors. And then from 5 to 6:30 and at the entrance they have suitable clothing that you could put on. But I’m so hot. I’m just drowning in sweat. I have no interest in taking the time to change clothes and go in exploring.
That little laneway that I just stumbled across, that was definitely despite falling over on the rocks and going for a tumble in the rocks and sand. That was the secret to visiting this mosque. If you didn’t know about that little laneway, you probably wouldn’t get a very nice view of the mosque at all. Because on this side, it’s completely blocked off. That was the only spot where you can go down to the water and get a nice view.
So I’m just going around the edges of Ghost Island. It’s continuing here. You can see all of these buildings here on the far side completely empty as well. Not a single open door. That’s quite a structure right there.
I stopped for a while with some paper towels to wipe off all the sand and all the blood and all the scrapes all over my body. And now that I’m riding, I can feel them in the wind. All the stinging from my elbows and my knees and my feet. But again, I’m impressed with the lack of vandalism. And they’ve got no broken windows at all. No graffiti. And no garbage strewn everywhere. Got a landscaping crew up ahead. Very well-kept ghost island. Just heading over the causeway. Leaving the island being serenaded by a hundred crows or ravens. I always forget which is which.
I like the idea. I mean, even though the whole thing appears to have failed, at least at first, I like the name of Melaka Gateway. And someone pitched that idea to me in a boardroom and said, “Yeah, we’ve got this Melaka thing going on, world heritage city. Let’s build this island out here with docks for giant cruise boats. Call it the gateway to Melaka.” Can’t lose. Seems like a good idea, but for whatever reason it didn’t work. At least not yet.
I suppose I could find a better, more scenic place to end this video for today in Melaka. But I’m on my way back to my hotel and I just stopped off at a 99 Speedmart to get my one liter of ice cold Dutch Lady milk. In terms of a cold drink, this is the best value I can find. Down by the mosque I could have gotten a coconut shake or some fancy drink like that, but it costs 15 ringgit and you get like 6 ounces of liquid. Tastes good, but for a third of the price maybe I can get an entire liter of cold delicious milk. So that’s why I came here instead.
I’m having a hard time catching my breath recovering from the heat. And it was mainly because the cycling in the city is so difficult. It’s so easy walking around the heritage zone. But as soon as you leave that area and you’re riding your bike out here, hitting all of these crazy intersections, one-way streets. I had to get across a highway system here. And there’s no way to get across on a bike without walking my bike through the middle of the highway, carrying it over the divider and then somehow running across the other side of the highway, walking along a drainage ditch, hopping a fence. It’s just crazy. But I finally managed to get back into the city again and I was just exhausted just from the heat. So I’m feeling a little bit faded. Can’t catch my breath. I’m trying to sit here and just relax.
But I’m not back at my hotel yet. And I figure I’ll just end the video here with my liter of ice cold milk. I enjoyed that. The museum, the prison museum, St. John’s Fort, the ghost island. I was definitely haunted by the ghosts there. My toes bleeding again. I can feel all the scrapes from my fall there. And then that beautiful mosque out over the water, the floating mosque. That was very nice. Really enjoyable. So good day here in Melaka despite the heat. And if you stuck with me all the way to here, well, that makes you a member of the Planet Doug Crunch Club. Shout out to all you guys. Put CC in the comments to let me know you made it all the way to the end of the video. And shout out to all my supporters out there through the Malaysian Touch ‘n Go e-wallet, through the Buy Me a Coffee portal and the Planet Doug Patreon all of my members there. Shout out to all of you guys. Thank you for the support. And right after this conclusion, I will have the 3D flyover map so you can follow along with me on the map to see exactly where I rode my bike, how I went to all these different places. And then that will be the end of the video. So that’s it. Shutting down here. And as always, see you next time.