VIDEO DESCRIPTION:
Good morning from Melaka! 🇲🇾 Today, I rode my bike 10 km out of the historic city and stumbled upon one of the coolest surprises of my entire Malaysia trip — a massive 67-meter French Agosta-class attack submarine sitting on dry land!
In this video, I take you on a complete guided tour inside the FS Ouessant, a genuine retired French Navy submarine that was used to train Malaysian submariners before they received their own Scorpene-class subs. Walk with me through the torpedo room, tight sleeping quarters, control areas, periscope mechanisms, galley, engine room, and more.
This place is packed with history, engineering details, and that classic claustrophobic submarine atmosphere (though I think I would be surprisingly comfortable in the bunks!). I also share the fascinating story of how this French vessel ended up in Melaka as a museum.
Plus, stay until the end for a bonus practical guide with tips on visiting the Submarine Museum (ticket prices, parking, vending machines, facilities, etc.).
If you love military history, unique travel spots, or just cool industrial adventures, this one is for you!
🔥 What surprised you most? Drop a comment below!
👉 Put CC if you watched till the end (Crunch Club) or CCE if you’re an elite member who liked & subscribed!
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Good morning. Welcome back to Planet Doug and welcome back to Melaka, Malaysia. And I was just thinking that when I was thinking about spending some time in Melaka, I had certain ideas about what I would experience there. Of course, I was thinking about mainly the historical Melaka because Melaka has such an amazing history, an amazing story to tell. You learn about the history of Malaysia, the Melaka Sultanate. So, I think about the history first. And then of course, if you’re thinking about coming to Melaka, you’re probably thinking about the history and all the good food up and down Jonker Street. You’re probably thinking about the Melaka River, taking a cruise boat up and down the river, beautiful scenery, walking along the river, cycling along the river, taking a ride in one of those colorful and musical trishaws. You are probably not thinking that one morning you are going to wake up, get on your bicycle as in my case, ride out of the city about 9 km and then go on a tour of this. And what is that you might ask? That is an Agosta class 67 m long French submarine. And you can go inside this submarine on your own and tour around the interior. And I can tell you, I haven’t even gone inside yet. I’m still outside the barbed wire fence. And from here, it looks massive. And it looks absolutely fascinating. And you would probably wonder instantly, why is there an Agosta class French submarine sitting on the land outside of Melaka? Well, there is a fascinating story about that and I’ll dive into that in just a minute. But first, we have to buy a ticket. And there is the ticket counter over there. And once I go inside, we’ll get a closer look at this behemoth. I mean, look at it from the front. This is the FS Ouessant. So, that’s the name of it. It’s a French name, of course, because it is a French submarine, the FS Ouessant. I had to do some digging to try to figure out the pronunciation. And as best I can tell, that is how you say the name. It’s actually named after an island in France off the coast of France called Ouessant. A lot I get a lot of British usage and English calls it, but the French pronunciation is Ouessant and as I said, it is an Agosta class attack submarine. Very, very cool. Very exciting to be standing here outside of it. So, let’s buy ourselves a ticket first.
Good morning. Morning. How are you? Good. Just a ticket for one. And I’m actually a senior citizen. Senior citizen. Yes. Still about 63 years old. Okay. 10 ringgit. Can I pay with a touch and go?
Took a while to scan, but I did it. Okay. Okay. Wait. I give you. Okay. Okay. Thank you, sir. Thank you very much.
All right. I have my ticket and as you can see at the sign up there, it’s 20 ringgit for foreigners like non-Malaysians, 10 if you qualify as a senior citizen. For Malaysians, it’s 10 and five.
As always, there’s the soundtrack of much of Malaysia, Southeast Asia. Angle grinders, leaf blowers, that sort of thing.
And there it is, the FS Ouessant. As I said, 67 meters long. I think that’s 220 ft, 210 ft, something like that. And the closer you get to it, the more massive it looks. And you just can’t help but imagine what it would have been like or what it is like today to be inside a submarine like this. This one, I think, goes down to a depth of 300 m. So, can you imagine being 300 m deep in the water inside this? No windows, no way to look outside, see where you are, totally reliant on instruments to figure out where you’re going. Absolutely crazy. So, yeah, this is an actual submarine from the French Navy. I think it was built in the 70s and then it served in the French Navy as an active part of their military and attack submarine and then it was retired. So how in the world did a retired submarine from France end up right here on the outskirts of Melaka? Well, in the early 2000s, Malaysia decided to start its own submarine service, its own submarine force in the military. And when they went looking for a place to buy their submarines, they looked at all the options, of course, and they settled on purchasing two Scorpene submarines from France. And when they purchased these two Scorpene class attack submarines from France, it came with a training program. And much of the training of the Malaysian submariners took place in simulators and aboard this submarine. So, as part of the training program for the Malaysian sailors, the submariners that were going to operate the Scorpene class submarines, they actually went aboard this submarine. It’s a different class, of course, the Agosta class, but the training in this submarine would give them a very hands-on kind of experience about what it’s like just walking around inside a submarine like this, living inside one, and operating actual controls. So, in fact, this submarine was never active in the Malaysian Navy. It was just part of the training program when they bought two Scorpene class submarines from France. And then when the purchase was completed and the Malaysian personnel were fully trained, the Ministry of Defense decided to move this submarine to Melaka and put it on display here and create a museum. And Melaka seemed like the natural choice for this museum. I mean, it could have been anywhere in Malaysia, but they chose Melaka because of its history as a maritime center. And of course, its location right on the Melaka Strait, which we can’t see right now, but the Melaka Strait is just over there.
Wow.
This submarine is one of the many surprises for me in coming to Melaka. And I think it would be a major surprise to most foreign visitors. I think most of us tourists coming to Melaka, we would have no idea that Malaysia even had submarines in its navy, but it does. And these two submarines that they bought as I’ve said Scorpene class which is sort of a French word related to scorpion which is supposed to convey a sense of stealth and fast attack you know the nature of submarine warfare. So it was like a Scorpene class in French. So Malaysia has these two Scorpene class submarines and they’re in a base in Sabah. So that is where their submarine base is located, sort of the northern tip of Borneo. And they put this training submarine, the FS Ouessant, here of course on the mainland in Melaka just so it’s more accessible to visitors than having it way out in Borneo. But man, I just cannot get over the look of this thing. It really makes me think of a whale from the outside, like this bulbous nose. It really does feel like a whale to me. I was waiting to begin my tour until this guy finished his work, but I think he’s going to be doing this all day long. That is just what you have to deal with as a casual YouTuber like myself. Yeah. Let’s move around to the front of this thing and then you can get a sense of the nose of it towering above us. That is amazing. It puts me right in the heart of all the submarine movies I’ve ever watched. You know, I can hear the captain shouting down periscope and then you’ve got these blades. I don’t know what they’re called. Maybe we’ll learn what they’re called. But of course, they would control the depth of the submarine. You angle those and then the submarine would go down or up. Basically acting the same as similar devices on an airplane flaps I guess on a plane. Then you raise and lower the flaps things like that and then of course the periscope. The periscope would come up and the sailors would get in through the top right. So, at the top of this conning tower, there is a hole, a round hole. We’ve all seen them in the movies. And you raise the hatch and climb down through a long ladder. It would be amazing if as a tourist you could do that, right? Go into this submarine through the original entrance. But, of course, they can’t do it that way for tourists. So, they cut doors in the side. So, this is the entrance here. and then the exit on the other side. But of course these doors would not be located on the original submarine.
So here at the submarine museum, that’s what you would call it in English, I guess, the submarine museum. They don’t have a separate building like there’s no museum building with exhibits but underneath the submarine. So here’s the front of it and the entrance and they have exhibits on the inside but here underneath it they also have some information. This is all about the founding of the museum and this was something I was curious about because they had the Ouessant there’s you can see the name of it there SMD. So, it was in France, but they had to bring it to Malaysia. And I wondered, did they drive it across the ocean? Because it was a functioning submarine, but that is a long journey for an old retired submarine to make. But they didn’t. They actually loaded it onto a ship as you can see here. Can you imagine the size of this ship that has to hoist this beast onto the boat? And then there it is unloaded onto the transport barge. And then January 1st, 2012, the submarine museum was open for public visits. And this is a list of all the crew members, all the submariners of Malaysia. And then right underneath here, there’s a lot of information about this is the two submarines that I mentioned that Malaysia purchased that are currently in use right now, the Scorpene class. And they were named after the first two prime ministers of Malaysia. So the first one was KD Tunku Abdul Rahman and the second one is KD Tunku Abdul Razak. So named after they kind of have a nickname. They call them the prime minister class of submarine though that’s not an official name. And they talk about the missions of the submarine, what they’re used for. There’s a torpedo coming out. And this talks about this submarine in particular, the SMD Ouessant Agosta 70 class. And it talks about how when Malaysia purchased the two Scorpene class, it came with a training package as well. It was part of the contract and included in the contract. It talks about all that here was this boat, the Ouessant, and that they could use it for training purposes. So, since Malaysia had never had any kind of a submarine before, look at this. That is rock hard, man. That’s crazy. But yeah, Malaysia had never had a submarine force before. So, this was all brand new to them. So rather than take crew and training them on the brand new Scorpene, they trained them on this one and then eased them into the brand new more modern Scorpene class. But yeah, operating one of these submarines has to be incredibly complex and it would take psychological training, physical training to put up with the pressure of being trapped inside the small space out underwater. You can’t just send anybody out there. So, they have to pick their submariners very carefully and train them very carefully. So,
let’s head inside. Quite often with a museum like this, what I might do is go through the whole museum first without running the camera and just sort of learn everything, look carefully at every exhibit, and then go through a second time while shooting video. So, at least I know what I’m talking about. But in this case, I think going inside is going to be such a surprise to me and it’s going to be so cool and interesting. I’m going to film as I see everything for the first time so we can explore this submarine together and get first reactions to everything. So, I may not understand everything I see first time through, but yeah, let’s head inside. And it might be very dark on the inside. I don’t know how well my GoPro is going to work. Oh, it’s air conditioned right there. You walk through this thing, there’s like a wall. Hot, cold, hot, cold. It’s like crazy difference. Wow, that’s something else. As soon as you step in, you’re in the torpedo area. Oh, okay. Well, looks like these curved areas of course would be where the torpedo would sit across all of these and then it looks like I don’t know if these move up and down. Oh, that guy freaked me out. I thought it was somebody real or me. Yeah, like I’m just curious how heavy these torpedoes are and then how they get them from here into the tubes. So, we’re right at the very front of the submarine. So, here are the two torpedo tubes. Oh, there’s four of them. Oh, look. One, two, three, four of them. That’s crazy. And they’re all pointing out the front of the submarine, which makes sense. Man, oh man. Oh, man. There’s so much to see. I barely know where to look. Look at that. There’s the sleep. So, I guess some bunks up here. Every piece of every bit of space is used. So, sailors would actually be sleeping right here in the torpedo room. Huh, man. How do they get up there? I don’t see any kind of a ladder.
Torpedo launching platform. So, somebody stands here and hits a button to launch them.
Yeah, they’ve got some cool atmosphere in here. They’ve got the sonar beeping. Again, very familiar from World War II submarine movies. You hear that? Every time you hear that beeping, you instantly think you’re inside a submarine. And in this case, I am. Very cool. Oh, look at that. Okay, there’s a whole bunch more down here. More torpedoes. More torpedoes. Just torpedo storage everywhere. Wow.
I suppose an engineer or a submariner or a sailor would pick out a lot more details, more interesting things, but man, it just looks like a very complex set of industrial stuff. I couldn’t even guess at the purpose of most of what I’m looking at in here. And what the heck is up there? There’s like a hatch. Where in the world does that go? I have no idea.
And they don’t want you to climb up there to find out. I’m not about to try.
It’s actually got a higher ceiling than I was expecting. Everything I read about this museum and the reviews, everybody talks about how surprised they are at how cramped everything is, but I’m actually having the opposite reaction. Maybe I’m accustomed to tiny tiny low budget hotel rooms or something because I, you know, look at the head space. It’s like 10 ft high. There’s so much. It feels roomier than I was expecting, which is not what I’m supposed to be feeling. Everyone tells me I’m supposed to get in here and feel how cramped it is. And even the sleeping quarters, I’m told I’m supposed to be amazed at how small and cramped it is. But I don’t know if you do a lot of traveling in your life, this doesn’t seem, you know, if you stay in capsule hotels. I mean, this is a bit narrow, but I’d be perfectly happy in there as long as I can lean against that back thing, have a little light so I can read a book or watch a YouTube video. Here, we’re getting a little bit narrow, you know, on that side. The submarine, there’s the curve of the roof. So that berth over there has got less room. But man, I can set up in here, park my bicycle down here. I’m happy as can be. This can be my hotel room. They could rent these out for $2 or $3 a night. And I’ll settle in for the night. But yeah, look at all the pipes and gauges.
Can you imagine keeping this operational be a full-time job just making sure this thing doesn’t leak?
But yeah, I like these little bunks, you know. I’ve been on trains and buses trying to sleep on them and my bunks on those were far less comfortable than this looks. Yeah, nice comfortable mattress. Nice thick sheet. Hey, I’ll move in. I wonder what the rate is per night. The going rate. Yeah, of course. Emergency buttons everywhere. Things to pull in case of emergency. things to spin around to control the flow of steam and water. And yeah, there you go. Climbing up the hatch up there. Very cool. And of course, once you’re inside a submarine, you start thinking about compartmentalization where if one part is flooded, you want to be able to close the door so that your section isn’t flooded. And now as we go to the next section of the submarine, here’s this huge door which hopefully will keep the water from flowing from one compartment to the other.
This is so cool. Can you imagine? Like just imagine sitting in one of these and actually driving this boat underwater and all you have to know where you are are these screens in front of you.
Crazy steersman area and whole bunch more controls. Oh, another seat over here. Couple of seats. Look at all those switches and dials, lights. That is crazy.
And yeah, this must be the periscope tube here. I’m thinking something must go up and down on this mechanism here. I think this would be raised and lowered. Yeah, I don’t see the actual periscope that you look into. Maybe it’s around somewhere as well.
So, this is the computer room for launching torpedoes.
Do not open this door.
Do not enter this area. Yeah, here’s computer controls.
Once you’re inside here, now you understand why it would be so helpful to have a spare submarine like the Ouessant to train on, right?
There is a lot to learn, a lot to get familiar with.
A map area here. You can imagine the captain and his first officer figuring out where they are and their route. Check out all of the gauges and controls over there. That is wild.
And again, maybe I’m just accustomed to tight spaces, but it doesn’t seem unreasonably tight and claustrophobic to me. I guess I’m just accustomed to tight spaces without much room to maneuver. This doesn’t feel that unusual to me. And this idea of like caution, mind your head in Asia, I do that all the time anyway because everything all the doorways and things are too low. So for me, making sure not to hit these pipes and things, that’s just normal behavior for me.
They have a poster here. All the different classes of submarines.
Man. The complexity of this thing is kind of mind-boggling.
Give you a sense of the head space. I can aim the GoPro at me for a minute or two. But yeah, I mean, lots of headroom. This is more spacious than my hotel rooms. So, commanding officer’s bedroom. So, of course, this would be ideal having your own space. I guess we can go all the way inside. Don’t see a sign saying we can’t. Oh, yeah. Luxury. Your own sink. You’ve actually got shelves. Little table right here.
Do not spit. I guess when people see a sink, they want to spit in it. Don’t worry, I won’t be spitting. But yeah, comfortable little bunk here. Lots of closet space storage.
It’s funny that they have to have a sign telling people not to spit. Like the sight of a sink just makes people start wanting to spit into it or something. No worries for me.
Oh, little meeting room.
The bedroom and dining room for crews. And I think this submarine had a complement of 40. So 40 crew would be on board this. And I guess maybe all my talk about how spacious it is. Maybe that would change if you suddenly put 39 other people on board and then suddenly perhaps it would start to feel more crowded. Another crew sleeping area I guess over there.
Okay. Bedroom for crew. So, we can go in here and take a look. So, this is where the Yeah, look at that. Comfy. Makes me want to lie down and take a nap. Huh. Climb up here. Edit some YouTube videos. All I need is an electrical outlet and Wi-Fi and I can live here comfortably. Look at that beautiful spot. Of course, once you lower this one above you, there’s not quite as much room as before.
Oh, yeah. On this side there’s three of them. Four of them. Okay. One, two, and this one lowers three. And that one four. So, yeah. Then things are starting to get a bit tight. Definitely.
Oh, look at that. Yeah. Seating area over here for dining. Haven’t seen anything like a galley, like a kitchen yet where you might do your cooking. Aha, there it is just saying. Where’s the galley? And here’s the galley. So, this is where the cooking would happen, I guess. Must be an oven and a stove, sinks.
There’s the exit. Ah, okay. More cooking area over here. Okay.
Oh, there there’s the cook.
There’s more. Oh, this guy freaked me out, too. I thought it was a real person again.
So, what is this area back here? I wonder what they’re in control of. A lot of switches and dials. Okay. Machine control. Okay. So, this is where it’s a diesel electric by the way. Which yeah, makes sense. If this was a nuclear powered submarine, it would be a whole different ballgame. But this is a diesel with electric. Like it underwater it would run on batteries, but it of course it has a diesel engine to charge up the batteries and for driving the propellers when they’re on the surface they can fire up the diesel engines. Only when they’re underwater they need the switch to batteries. So I guess this is where they control the engines.
But I wonder if Oh, okay. Okay. I was going to say, where are the engines? And they’re back here.
There we are. Okay. So, there’s the heart and soul. There’s the engine room. Very, very dark, of course, on my GoPro. And you can’t go back there. I think that would be a little bit dangerous for casual visitors. There’s a lot of sharp edges and there’s no headroom back there. You have to be very careful walking around.
Very, very cool. I can jump ahead to the Planet Doug review. Absolutely. Thumbs up. Planet Doug approved. If you are in Melaka and you even have the vaguest interest in something like this, something technical, industrial, military, yeah, this is very interesting for me. Well worth visiting and really interesting display.
Very cool. And step outside.
And then here we are. Oh, there’s a family coming in. Yeah, you’d really want to keep an eye on your kids going in there. There’s a lot of dangers, I think. Tripping in particular. There’s a lot of tripping danger. I really wish we could climb all the way up there. That would be the icing on the cake if you could actually climb up the ladder to the top of the tower and poke your head out from the top there. That would be yeah, that would be amazing. But no, that is not part of the tour.
It’s my 360 camera. I’m going to go through the museum again and take more video. Ah, okay.
I’ve gone through the entire submarine museum with my GoPro, but I thought I would fire up my 360 camera and just walk through it again and see if the 360 camera can capture some unusual angles as we walk through. So yeah, I was going to just do it with the camera, but maybe I’ll do some narrating as well. Talk about where we’re going and why I’m sticking my camera in this or that direction. But yeah, the 360 camera might offer kind of a unique perspective because I can put it places where my GoPro can’t go. Like I’m walking as you when you walk through the main door as you saw in the GoPro walk through, you’re in the torpedo room where you’re the heart and soul of the whole submarine. You’re out there to be an attack sub and you need to launch missiles. So, this is the key place. So, yeah, there’s the torpedo tubes. I noticed on the outside of the submarine the doors for the torpedo tubes, they’re actually rectangular and they’re welded shut. I was kind of hoping that they would be open and you could actually see like a torpedo sticking out or something, but so there’s a closeup of one of the mannequins here, and he would be in charge of launching these torpedoes. I was really hoping there would be at least a mockup. Like, they don’t have to have a real torpedo. Obviously, they can’t have explosives in here, but it would be kind of cool to have at least one actual torpedo on display just to give a sense of scale. And then down here underneath is another area where they can store torpedoes.
And Oh, yeah. I wonder how many total cuz you can’t really estimate how many torpedoes they would have because I don’t know how long they are. Are they the entire length of this room or half the length? Yeah, I’m not really sure. But this is Yeah. Two layers. torpedoes down on that layer and then torpedoes here on this layer and then up above the torpedoes is where you have this sleeping area. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 maybe 13 berths up here at the front. It’s way more than I was expecting.
And this I think is a part of the periscope assembly though. I was reading this morning that what we remember from World War II war movies, like submarine movies, the periscope had two handles on the side and the captain would pull down on the two handles and then raise and lower the periscope. But in these submarines, it doesn’t have that structure. And in fact, the periscope system is much more complex than just one periscope. That is kind of like a pair of binoculars. There’s actually multiple units that can be raised up above the submarine, not just one.
So, here’s a Oh, okay. So, I never figured that out before, but this is probably the periscope control area here where it goes up and down and raises and lowers the periscope. That’s probably what this area is for.
Yeah, I see a couple of tanks over here. And that makes sense because you need oxygen, right? So there’s so many systems here, pipes, gauges, controls, and one of the things they would have to control is air. I never even thought of that until just now, but they have to carry oxygen in tanks and have enough to go under the surface for long periods of time. Yeah, that could be what’s happening over here. There’s a whole bunch of tanks there could be holding oxygen.
And a bedroom and dining room. So, I imagine the table can be lowered and all of these Well, maybe not. There’s a bed up there at the top, a bunk that can be lowered.
And if they ever have a YouTuber on board, I can sleep on the couch. They can put me on the couch. This whole hallway is lined with newspaper articles. just sort of a random assortment of stories about the French submarines and navy and stories about Malaysia’s navy and submarine and buying two French Scorpene class submarines. I’ve had a couple of families go through while I’ve been going through the museum and then I have to make way for them, you know, so they can get past me and things like that because I’m moving so slowly. And then you do start to get a sense of how cramped these quarters could be. But that’s partially because I’ve got GoPros dangling from my pocket and a knapsack and so I’m not exactly streamlined for going through a submarine right now. If you’re just here with in your regular clothes or crew uniform, you know, it’d be a little bit easier to move around than it is for me with all my camera gear. So, there’s the inside of the galley on one side and the other galley here.
Now we’re at the very back where the engine controls are. So this is the engine control area.
I’m starting to notice a lot more details now that I’m going through a second time. Like all the phones, you’d have to have a communication system, right? And you see a lot of these phones on the wall in all the different departments. And finally, the engine room.
And it’s very dark back there, but I can put my 360 camera back there a little bit. Get some video from in there.
Being very careful not to drop my camera because if I drop it back there, I’m not going to be able to get it back very easily.
So, that’s where the engines are. And I maybe the batteries as well. I don’t remember seeing anything that looked like a huge battery.
And my first time through I missed this. So there’s an actual ladder right heading up to the turret to the tower perhaps. Probably has two. And it’s very dark up there. There’s no lights, but you can see the wheel that you would turn to unlock that, open it, and then climb the rest of the way to the top of the tower.
Look out over the water and see where all the enemy ships are.
There you have it. That’s the end of the submarine.
Yeah. Now you step out into the heat.
Very cool. I enjoyed that very much. I documented with my GoPro, 360 camera, smartphone, Strava app.
I’m like a one-man documentarian team.
One last look at the Ouessant from the outside on the 360 camera. I have two selfie sticks attached to my 360 camera. And let’s see how high up we can raise it. Get a view of the submarine museum. See if it looks any different from all the way up there.
I think that was my last walk through the museum. I’ve gleaned as much detail and information as I can probably get out of the place. And here at the front is what I was talking about. Those rectangular doorways that are welded shut. Those would be the torpedo launching tubes. And yeah, four of them huge. It’d be interesting if one of those was open and you could actually see inside and even have like a torpedo sticking out the front. I think that would make it look extra cool. So that’s definitely one thing I would add to this museum. It needs a torpedo for scale. And in fact when I was reading about this class of submarine it said that it had torpedoes and missiles. So like surface to air or surface to surface missiles. So it could launch missiles as well but I didn’t see anything like that on board. So a little bit a few things they could add. And then connected to the submarine display are couple of jets. I think this one is a Skyhawk. I was chatting with a man from New Zealand and then he knew he recognized that he knew it was a Skyhawk. Yeah. So up here it says it’s a McDonnell Douglas A-4 Skyhawk. At least one of them is. Maybe one is a Skyhawk and the other one is a Tiger. I’m not sure.
So with the waist in the background. I think that’s where I’m going to end this video. That was amazing. So glad I stayed yet another day in Melaka to come out here and see this. When I first knew about the submarine. I’d seen it in another YouTube video. The guy who rode his motorcycle around Malaysia, he stopped off at the submarine, but I didn’t really get a sense of its significance. I thought it was just a random submarine. Somebody bought it and turned it into a tourist attraction. I didn’t realize that it was actually part of Malaysia’s history. And I didn’t know the whole story about Malaysia buying two modern advanced attack submarines from France. And then this submarine, the Ouessant, came as part of the contract, part of the training package and was used to train Malaysian sailors, the Malaysian submariners. And soon as I learned that story, then I realized, yeah, I had to come out here and check it out for myself. Well, I hope you enjoyed that little tour as much as I did. Yeah, that was very, very interesting for me. Very exciting. And if you made it all the way to the end of the video, shout out to the crunch club. My crunch club members. If you made it to the end of the video, means you’re a member of the crunch club. Put CC in the comments to let me know. And as somebody suggested, if you watch the whole video, subscribed to the channel, and like the video, well, that means you’re a crunch club elite. Put CCE in the comments to let me know. Yeah, I’d appreciate that. So, that’s it. Shutting down. Shout out to everybody that has been supporting me lately with donations through touch and go, through buy me a coffee, and who joined the Planet Doug Patreon, and through PayPal. Yeah, that’s been very very helpful for keeping this journey going and helping me make these videos for you and for myself. Yeah, I enjoy doing it so much. So, that’s it. Shutting down. I’m also recording a Strava map, like I have Strava tracking everywhere I go today. So, right after this conclusion, stick around. You’ll see that map, kind of a 3D flyover map showing you everywhere I went. Because after this tour, I’m going to ride my bike around this area a little bit and do some exploring. And after the video credits, there is going to be a bonus video for all of you Crunch Club members who know about it. Stick around for the bonus clip. So, that’s it. Shutting down. See you next time.
Bonus video clip for all of you Crunch Club members. What I thought I would do just to add some more value to this video is just talk a little bit about the practicalities of coming out to the submarine museum. So, it’s located about 9 or 10 kilometers north of Melaka along the coast. Easy to find on Google Maps. Just type in submarine museum. It’ll pop up. It’s near Klebang Beach or Kebang Beach. Klebang. Something like that. A very famous beach area near here. So look for that as well. And opens at 9:00 in the morning. They have a parking area over there. So you can get here, park your car safely. And I did see a cafe over there, Subs Cafe, but it didn’t look to be open. Definitely today it’s not open. Maybe other days it is, but I would not count on it. So, I don’t think there’s any kind there’s really no kind of dependable cafe or restaurant here. And there’s the ticket booth. I talked about the prices earlier for foreigners. 20 ringgit. If you’re 60 years old or older, it’s half price, 10 ringgit. And there are washrooms here. So, right over there, there’s a white building with some bathrooms and there are some vending machines, but whether you can count on them or not, it’s a bit of a mixed bag because they do have vending machines here. But these two only take money. So if you don’t have the correct change or the coins, I got a bottle of water out of it. And it was ice cold. So that good. And I thought I could get a drink here because it does take touch and go. You know, I can get a drink with the power of touch and go, but everything seems to be out of stock. Everything is red all the way across. So this machine seems to be empty. So that’s what I mean. I find the vending machines in Malaysia are mixed bag. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t. You can’t absolutely depend on them. So, I would bring your own water if you are going to spend some time here and you want a cold drink. Yeah, I’d bring your own water just to be safe. Then there’s the submarine there. I think anybody of reasonable physical fitness can get through that without too much trouble. A really elderly person or if you have mobility issues, it might be a bit of a struggle getting from one end to the other. And as I said, young children, you definitely want to keep an eye on them. There’s a lot of tripping hazards in there. It’s all metal. It has kept pretty much all of the original equipment, so heavy machinery and electronics and cables and wires. So, you definitely have to keep an eye on your kids. And then over here is the other part of the museum, the two jets that are quite interesting. And then here they seem to have more vending machines. I saw the guy when I came, he was operating this ice cream machine. He was refilling it. So in fact, I’m going to try to get an ice cream. I’m very curious how it works. I’m going to figure that out in a minute. They accept a touch and go. Do it now. You know, Ali Pay, WeChat pay, and I don’t know how that works. Oh, I guess it would be from the screen here. $4.90. So, I’m going to get an ice cream with the power of touch and go. You can get a submarine museum medallion, a souvenir for your kids. And again, here’s another example of what I’m talking about. If you see a vending machine in Malaysia, don’t get excited. If you see it from a distance and then you get close, it could be completely empty. And just to round out the practicalities, I see one more machine over there, but I don’t know what it does. Oh, more museum souvenirs. So, let’s see what is on offer over here. Oh, I just didn’t notice this until just now. Oh, they have a big display here about the Tiger 2 and the Skyhawk. So, there’s a lot more information about the Royal Malaysian Air Force. Oh, so this is also Melaka UNESCO World Heritage City Premium Souvenirs. So, I guess these are all medallions, but not just for this place. There’s all kinds of different medallions in there. You can see the images engraved on each coin. Many of the historic sites here in Melaka. And you can pay, you can only pay using one of these scanning some kind of a code payment with ewallet, debit, and credit card. No cash. One thing though, it seemed the whole screen here appears to be burned out, so you can’t really see anything on that screen. So, it’s another example of the vending machines are a hit and miss in Malaysia, so don’t count on them, even though they do have them here. But, yeah, I managed to get some cold water. And as part of the practicalities bonus video clip, I’m going to see if I can get an ice cream or not using the power of the touch and go.
Start.
Let me grab the GoPro. So, it brought down a cup. It’s dispensing the ice cream. Then, it’s moving over there. Maybe that’s where it gets the Oreo topping. And then I assume this door is going to open and I can get my ice cream.
There we go. And they reminding me that the spoon is under the cup. Oh, there it is. Is that worth nearly six ringgit to be honest? Definitely not. Well, you know, you have to take everything into consideration. I mean, you go to Mishe, you can get a really big ice cream for two ringgit. So, compared to that, it’s not good value. But here you get to eat it next to a submarine.
So yeah, that makes it worth it. So that’s it for the bonus clip. Just covering some of the practicalities out here. Now shutting down for sure. See you in the next video.