VIDEO DESCRIPTION:
👇 THE MUSEUM NOBODY KNOWS ABOUT IS RIGHT NEXT TO MELAKA’S BIGGEST ATTRACTION! 👇
In this video, I’m taking you to one of Melaka’s best-kept secrets – the Royal Malaysian Customs Department Museum (Muzium Kastam Diraja Malaysia). It’s completely FREE, located RIGHT NEXT to the famous Melaka River Cruise boats, and almost nobody ever goes inside.
WHAT YOU’LL SEE INSIDE:
🚨 Real smuggling techniques (hollowed-out shoes, secret compartments!)
💊 Opium pipes and drug paraphernalia (seized by customs!)
⚔️ Banned weapons – including kris with Quranic inscriptions!
📜 1400s Melaka trade history with the FOUR harbor masters (Shahbandar)!
🇬🇧 Colonial-era “Spot the White Guy” photos (it’s a game now!)
📟 Vintage typewriters, adding machines, and ancient tech!
🏍️ A motorcycle that smuggled 50kg of TIN!
🐢 Confiscated endangered animal trophies!
🍶 Illegal alcohol brewing equipment!
📱 Banned electronics from the 80s and 90s!
WHY THIS MUSEUM IS FASCINATING:
Melaka was THE international trading hub of Southeast Asia back in the 1400s – and this museum connects that incredible history all the way to modern-day customs enforcement. You’ll learn about:
– The Undang-Undang Melaka – a “crowdsourced” legal code written by ship captains!
– How the Portuguese ruined Melaka’s economy by raising taxes (oops!)
– The four Shahbandar who managed traders from India, China, Arabia, and the Malay Archipelago
– How customs officers used bicycles to patrol the docks!
*PRACTICAL INFO:*
📍 Location: Right next to Melaka River Cruise terminal (walk 100m!)
🕐 Hours: Tue-Fri 9:30am-5pm | Sat-Sun & Holidays 9am-6pm
🚫 Closed: MONDAYS (classic museum move!)
💰 Price: FREE FREE FREE!
MY HONEST REVIEW:
I spent over TWO HOURS in here and was the ONLY visitor the entire time. The museum is WAY bigger than it looks from outside, with well-organized exhibits, amazing historical artifacts, and genuinely interesting displays. Two thumbs up from Planet Doug! 👍👍
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Yeah, I can almost guarantee that you haven’t been to this place in Melaka that I’m visiting this morning. And that’s because it is a relatively unknown museum. I’m aware of it because I’m always on the hunt for museums. I enjoy visiting them. And in my time here in Melaka, I’ve ended up doing a pretty deep dive into the history of the place. And museums are a great place to go. And as I’ve been walking around, I keep seeing this museum over and over and over and I keep making this mental note, I got to go there one day. And then I forget about it. And then I think, oh yeah, yeah, I got to go there. And then I forget about it. But today is the day. And I’m visiting what I think is the free museum, the Royal No, it is the Museum of Royal Malaysian Customs Department. It’s kind of a hard name to remember. But the Museum of the Royal Malaysian Customs Department, and I don’t know very much about it. I looked at some of the information on Google Maps, but it is essentially what it sounds like. It is a museum about customs, the history of customs. And I assume that leads into a lot of smuggling. Like when you’re dealing with customs, they’re trying to tax things coming into the country. They’re trying to put duty on them. They’re trying to keep out things that are illegal. So, it is the job of the Royal Malaysian Customs Department to stop people from bringing in things without paying duty, without paying taxes, bringing in things that are illegal. And I think this museum has some interesting exhibits about just how people try to cross borders into Malaysia and keeping things hidden in their luggage, in their vehicles, whatever they do. So that should be interesting.
My original idea for visiting this museum is that I become really interested in Melaka’s history and its history going back to the Melaka Sultanate is all about international trade. It was a central maritime international trading port and of course to do that you have to have a highly developed system for regulating that kind of trade and Melaka was quite special in that regard and so I’ve gotten a bit interested in how the Melaka from the 1400s how they thought about trade how they organized it, how they dealt with other countries, other kingdoms, things like that. So, I do have this sort of peripheral interest in this museum in the sense that Melaka is all about international trade and once you’re dealing with that, you’re talking about customs, duties, taxes, what’s legal, what isn’t legal. And quite interesting about this museum, I think I’m getting very close to it. I don’t even know where the entrance is, but to give some context, there is the part of the Melaka River International Ferry Terminal over there. My hotel is off in this direction. This whole area of course consisting of all reclaimed land. And there is the Flor de la Mar, the maritime museum. It also has a lot of information about international trade in Melaka’s history. And what’s interesting is that one of Melaka’s biggest attractions is right here, the river cruise boats, which I still haven’t done. I keep thinking about hopping on one of these boats, but I’ve been up and down the river so many times in so many different ways. It feels like a river cruise is not going to show me anything that I haven’t already seen before. It’s certainly not going to tell me anything I don’t already know. But for a video, it might be fun to hop on one of these boats, stick my 360 camera out the window if they’ll let me. Or it doesn’t have windows, but you know what I mean. Hold the 360 camera out to the side or up above, get some video from the perspective of the river. So that might be interesting.
So anyway, this is very very well known, this spot here with all of these river cruise boats and every visitor, foreign or local that comes here knows all about this. And yet right beside it is the customs museum. I think it’s even in this same building. There’s the Melaka River Cruise and I think the Customs Museum is inside that same building. It’s like a giant warehouse. So, yeah, it’s a very good location for that because as you walk along the river in this direction down here, I walked by all of these buildings that are government buildings to do with customs. There’s like the official modern Malaysian customs is all along the river shore here. So, we’re in the right neighborhood for this experience. This might be it right here. Ah, I stumbled across the entrance. I was going to go for this big walk. I thought I’d be walking around and around, but I think this is the entrance right here. Royal Malaysian Customs Department Museum. There it is. And in Malay Museum Custom, and I believe it’s open just for information in case you do want to come here in the future. There it is. Tuesday to Friday, 9:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Saturday, Sunday, and holiday 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. So, opens a bit earlier, closes a bit later, and Mondays closed. So, that that’s a key thing when you’re a museum person like me, Mondays are the days you usually want to avoid because Mondays, museums tend to take that day off. Not all the museums in Melaka, but some of them follow that custom and they close on Monday. But yeah, here it is right here. So, it isn’t the same warehouse as where the river cruise is located. Yeah, it’s actually a much more colorful, brightly painted, well-cared for building than I was expecting. I didn’t think it would look quite like that. But yeah, there’s the building right here. And if you come down to the Melaka River cruise and you take one of these river boat cruises, hey, hop out of the boat, walk 100 meters in this direction and check out this museum, which I think is free. So yeah, let’s head inside. And there’s the sign I like to see. Buka open.
Hello. Hello. How are you? Just Oh, okay. register online. Yes. Okay.
Oops.
I’m not used to this keyboard. Okay. Okay. Canada. Okay. Canada and I just get confused on my computer. My mouse the buttons are switch left, right, the other way around. Yeah. So, I always use the wrong one. Okay, thank you. Thank you. So, through here. Okay. Okay. Of course, I can’t even get through the lobby without inserting a certain Planet Doug style. It’s just that they have the registration on a laptop out there and you had to use a mouse in order to do it. And I just I flubbed it. It was like I’d never seen a laptop before. But that’s because my current laptop mouse is broken. And what I’ve had to do is use software to switch the buttons. So the left button is now the right button and the right is the left. So I have muscle memory for right clicking on the left side and pointing on the right side. So when I use someone else’s mouse, I do the wrong thing all the time because I now am accustomed to my own the way my broken mouse works. And my particular laptop has a big keyboard with a number pad on one side. So my hands get placed on the keyboard in a weird position. I have to push it off to the left. So their keyboard is normal sized and I’m not accustomed to that anymore. And my fingers are on the wrong place. So I’m like typing the wrong characters and I couldn’t see for whatever reason. I was looking at the screen. I couldn’t read it with these glasses. I don’t know why. So, and then after I got all that screwed up, I had to explain to them. I always have to tell everybody everything about my life. So, I’m trying to tell the security guys there about my mouse and how I’m having trouble. You know, this is what happens on a Planet Doug.
But this is the very first exhibit that you walk into. And yeah, this is like catnip for me. I love this stuff. And it doesn’t look like they go back into history too much, but here at the very beginning, they do give a nod to the history of Melaka as a trade center and how customs and duty and controlling trade goes back, you know, many many centuries.
And it says here that the building itself was built by the British colonial administrators in the early 1890s and it was like a warehouse to store rice, sugar, flour, all these things. They had to hold all the goods there until the customs agents could come in and put a value on the goods and then decide how much duty they had to pay, things like that. So, there’s a lot of interesting history here. And then, of course, I love all the gadgets and the gizmos. Lately, I’ve been struggling with modern technology. It’s I’m finding it to be kind of overwhelming. So, I yearn for the days the simpler days of paper and things like that where this number four over here is a numbering machine. So, that’s how you put a number on a form. You just set it up and then you stamp it. And look at this. I’ve never seen one of those before. That’s like a time stamp. It actually has a clock built into it. And then I guess when you press it down, it inserts the clock face or it inserts the date and time onto the document. I’ve never seen one like that before. And the days when a club like that, what do they call them here? Number five, a nightstick. You know, in a little nightstick like that was what the agents would walk around with or the security guards. It’s just a simpler, it feels like a simpler time, a more friendly time keeping records of your salaries on a big ledger like this instead of on a computer. You know, when someone makes a mistake on one of these, right, you just sort of scratch it out and write down a new number, you know, like someone perhaps made an adjustment there. But of course, in the modern time, if there’s a problem with your online record on a computer, you know, good luck getting anything fixed. Typewriters, of course, cuz customs would be all about recordkeeping. A lot of paperwork, a lot of documents, a lot of files, and everything has to be tabulated. But I guess these are all counting machines. So these are basically their version of calculators back in the day. Yeah. Adding machines they call them. Used from the ’40s until the 70s. Yeah. And in my youth when I learned how to type, this is what I used. I used a typewriter exactly like one of these. Not an Imperial. I guess this is the Imperial brand. I didn’t have an imperial. I had I think an Underwood maybe. But anyway, it was a huge massive machine exactly like these. And that’s what I learned to type on. And then to think of customs agents using bicycles because of course they had to go quite long distances along the docks, right? Cycling from ship to ship to ship, checking up on what the ship is carrying. Yeah, these are beautiful bikes. I remember these old generators for the lights. Runs next to your tire sidewall and turns this thing at the top and then it runs a generator to power this light. Yeah, it’s a beautiful bike. Raleigh. An original Raleigh. That’s very cool.
And I noticed this in particular is an actual customs declaration form for a shipment. And this looks like all auto parts, clutch cover, shock absorber, brake cylinder, clutch plate. And they have to assign like country of origin. All of this came from either the UK, Austria maybe. Yeah. Or Australia. UK, Australia, USA, Spain, UK. And then they have to total up the value and calculate how much duty you have to pay. And of course, duty is famously adjustable, which I’ve run into in my life in the past, where you’re importing something, and depending what you call it, what category it falls in, it may or may not have to have duty and taxes applied, right? So you can play all kinds of vocabulary games and you’re importing car parts, but maybe you can call them something else so they no longer get charged duty, you know. So yeah, people who run customs have to do a lot of mental work as well, figuring out what goods are dutiable, at what rate, at what level, volume that they’re importing, where like the source of the goods probably comes into effect. So yeah, it’s a very complicated world when you start to think about it. Wow. Hey. Anyway, I haven’t gone over this exhibit yet. This is the next room. So, I’m going to stop my recording and dive into some of this stuff. Another delightful room. It’s like somebody put together some exhibits just for me. Like they thought, “Oh, what will make Doug happy today?” And they put together this museum just for me. I’m having such a good time here. Yeah. I’m just sort of interested in the logistics of things, how things in the world work in the modern era. I’m bewildered like in the 21st century. I don’t know how anything works anymore, but it’s nice to be able to throw myself back to this time period and it’s sort of like, yeah, you know, I kind of get how this world would have functioned and how I would have fit in. But, yeah, there’s all kinds of interesting things. For example, I assume this is all for forms like something imported from Japan that is synthetic, something from Japan that is cotton, etc., etc. All kinds of different items being imported into the country and then what are the duties that you apply. So this is for imports from Japan perhaps, from Korea, from India over there. And that makes me think about again what I was saying about how complicated duty can become very quickly because you have to classify everything right down to the tiniest thing. So they have synthetic cotton nylon but what if you have 50% cotton 50% nylon like something that is made of both cotton and nylon. Now what duty do you apply? So now you need a new rate for something that’s 80% cotton, 20% synthetic, or 100% cotton. You see what I mean? It very quickly spins out of control and you have to categorize everything and constantly update your rules and your systems. I thought this was kind of funny. One of these an even older Imperial typewriter. And of course it has the big sign don’t touch. But when you look at the I noticed all the keys, so many of them were depressed. And you look here and of course they’ve all jammed. And I remember as a kid doing that on purpose on typewriters. You hit a whole bunch of keys all at once and they all get stuck there together and then you get to loosen them and have them all. It was like almost like a toy you could play with as well. So that was very cool. Yeah. They have some chests here. Like when you confiscate some goods that are illegal or you’re trying to determine whether they can be let into the country or not, you got to store them somewhere. So they have all these chests. They can put things in there, valuable items, lock it up, safes of different varieties, which is kind of interesting. And this is interesting, too. These are how they would weigh the goods. Up until like the 1930s, they were using this sort of system. Pretty clear, right? It’s got a balancing point right there, precisely set, and then you can hang the goods on these hooks or rings, and then you have to hang a weight on the other side, balance it out, and that’s how you figure out how much something weighs. And those are all the different weights down there. Yeah. When I saw these from a distance, I thought they were weapons like guns or something, but no, they are all used for weights and measures.
Some more technology over here, which is very cool. And one thing I learned going through this exhibit that everything here is not strictly about Melaka. So, a lot of this is from all over like Sabah, Sarawak, Singapore, Perak, all over Malaysia, Singapore, places like that. But yeah, check out this beast. What in the world are you going to do with something like that? And a little bit more of a modern machine here. And they have buttons that says on them, export, import, excise. So someone would have to be specifically trained for how to enter and then this goes into a computer system I guess or a printing system of some kind. And of course back in those days most goods were coming in by ship. We hadn’t gone into the modern era of so many commercial airlines that we have today. So it was places like Penang, Melaka, Singapore and other coastal cities where shipping was how goods were brought in. So a lot of the tools that they used were built around operating ships. So these are all lights. I think this one over here is like a Morse code light. It must have had some sort of a flap on the front. You can open and close it to send Morse code signals. Emergency bell. Barometer right here and then radios of course and then this up here is an old depth finder which is very cool and a whole lot of photographs which I always love to see some historical ones here very interesting so that’s the Melaka River in 1901 and it has like a breakwater here. I don’t know exactly where this is. This one is very cool. That is actually it says from the 1960s. So that’s what the river here would have looked like in the ’60s. And these barges, I guess these maybe these were called lighters. A lighter was a type of boat that would go out to a bigger ship and then unload and then bring things in because the big ship couldn’t make it up this river anymore. So they would unload using these lighters. And then they have a whole series of photos of entire staff from customs departments all over Malaya at the time. And you can have a lot of fun with them. Kind of like spot the white guy because there’s always some random white guy and it’s usually dead center because this is in the time of British control. So of course every customs department would have the head of that department would be someone from Britain. So here you’ve got customs department spot the white guy. Boom. There he is. He’s almost always dead center, of course, sitting very casually with his knees crossed. Open collar. Some of them are quite amusing. It’s almost like a where’s Waldo sort of thing. You have to look for a few seconds and it’s like where? Oh, there he is. So, there’s the white guy. Yeah. In the middle. And then this guy made me laugh. You see a lot of them like long pants, long pants, nice shoes, all very formal with the locals and then spot the white guy. He’s in a pair of like boys cub scout shorts and then tall socks and almost looks like a neckerchief from the boy scouts. He looks very very different from everyone around him. But yeah, we white guys can’t handle the heat. So yeah, here’s another one here. Spot the white dude. Boom. Right in the middle. And then he’s also wearing shorts and another white guy beside him in shorts. But everybody else, local people, all in long pants, uniforms, hats, but I guess they’re more accustomed to the heat and humidity. But yeah, you can have fun with these really interesting glimpses into history, though. This one is from Sabah in 1945. And can you imagine he’s here with his wife, I assume. And can you imagine the life of this couple where you know what an adventure it would have been for them back in 1945. A guy gets a job says, “Hey, we need you to go to Sabah and run the customs department there for us.” And yeah, if he wrote a book about his experiences or if he were a YouTuber filming his life, that would be a very interesting story to learn about. Where is this one from? Oh, this is Muar. So, there’s the customs department from Muar. It’s just like 40 50 kilometers south of Melaka. And there’s the white guy dead center. At least he’s wearing long pants and a tie. So, he’s suffering through the heat. Yeah, very interesting exhibit. A real nice blend of technology and history. And of course, one thing about customs that you tend to notice is that it is styled like military because in a way they’re almost a military force because they’re defending the border. So, but it is interesting that really all they’re doing is charging duty. You know, they’re getting money for imports. They’re basically on the business end of things, but they are also enforcing the law. And then when you look at all of their uniforms, they actually look more like police and soldiers than they do businessmen, you know. So if you see, you know, these uniforms here, 1940 uniform, 1960, all very very formal. I’m finding this museum to be very nicely organized subject by subject. It really makes you think because this next area going down this hallway takes a new turn and starts talking about items that are prohibited, things that they seized because they are not allowed into the country at that time. So this is a horde of motorcycle helmets because they are totally prohibited. But I assume this type of helmet is just not allowed by safety regulations or something. I’m not sure why they are prohibited. Certain electronics fall foul of the customs rules. And these are a bunch of telephones that were and radios, handsets that were not allowed into Malaysia at that time and were confiscated. And this is quite interesting. There’s two sets or three actually sets of kris that you would think because they’re weapons, they’re not allowed into the country, but according to the displays that I was reading here, there’s another one here. This one explains that these were not allowed into the country because they have Quranic etchings on them. So they have verses from the Quran etched onto either the handle or the blade or the hilt or something and because of that they’re not allowed into the country and could be also because they’re weapons they definitely look deadly dangerous. I’ve always had that feeling about the style of the kris. They look almost futuristic like they come from a science fiction movie with that curved blade with all of the jagged edges. They look absolutely vicious and yeah, they look very science fiction-like.
And of course, we’re talking about money when we get into controlling what goes in and out of the country. And if you have a certain amount above the legal limit, then of course they seize it. Bunch of Benjamins over there that they seized.
Again, more Quranic etchings on a serving plate also not allowed. Some more ban radios. These are actually they said used by smugglers. So these were seized when they arrested smugglers. This is how they communicated in order to smuggle items into the country. So that’s another angle to customs. It’s not just about money. It’s also about enforcing local customs and traditions, religious beliefs, things like that that they also enforce. And then on this side, well, yeah, I hadn’t thought about it until I saw this, but yeah, they’re also controlling the importing exporting of wildlife like this because these turtles are protected. They’re an endangered species. And so if you try to bring that into the country or take it out, yeah, it’s going to be confiscated. So they have a lot of displays here of various taxidermy items, animal trophies, horns, antlers that they have confiscated over the years. Of course, this one made me laugh, but I guess they are real frogs and they just turn them into goofy kitsch items. But again, you’re not supposed to do that. So, and they show animal hides as well that can’t be imported or exported. And then another display of clothing that was seized because it had also Quranic writing on the clothing and that is not allowed to be imported into Malaysia at that time. And I assume even today, I think they would be very strict about something like that. And yeah, so these were all seized as well. So these items are not allowed into the country because they have verses from the Quran written on them. So yeah, it’s another way to think about customs and the Royal Malaysian Customs Department and the work that they do. I think this next section is what most people end up talking about when they come to this museum and they leave it and they leave reviews. Some kind of the fun of the smuggling side, I guess, because they’re actually showing you some of the ways that people have tried to smuggle drugs and gold items like that that are small and they put them into shoes. They hollow out the heel and then a vest like that for carrying drugs I think mainly. And that that makes me think of the movie Midnight Express, which made a huge impact on me when I saw when I read the book and saw the movie. And the guy in Midnight Express, you know, he covered his whole body from head to toe with something like this using I think just tape and plastic and wrapped his whole body in bricks of drugs. And then of course he got caught in Turkey and got imprisoned. But that it makes me think of Midnight Express. And yeah, just a variety of items that people have hollowed out and then filled with prohibited substances, picture frames, containers like that, wooden boxes, and of course, they’re also keeping track of anything that is pornography related, and they have to seize all of that. And interesting, they dim the light for that display. So even though they have it on display, it’s the one display that doesn’t have a full lighting. Some of the boats that they use for patrolling. And then getting back into some more technology. And some of this is quite interesting to me cuz again, it shows another side of customs that I may not have thought about until going to a museum like this. For example, when you have a container going from one country to another, you have to make sure it doesn’t get meddled with along the way. So, when you pack up a container in one country, then you have to seal it with an official custom seal. And that’s what these are. So that you can put a seal on the door on the lock and make sure it doesn’t get broken between the origin and the destination. Seals for again for security reasons. And then some of the handcuffs for smugglers, people that they arrested, things like that.
Getting into some modern scales. And the most interesting one for me was this display cuz it gets back to what I was talking about about how complicated it gets to apply duty because this machine or one of these items number one where is number one? Oh, okay. Over here it looks almost like a microscope and it’s used to determine the number of threads in textiles. So, you know, if it’s a thousand count thread or 500 count thread, it has a different duty applied to it. So, they actually have to figure out and count how many threads. And I can see someone importing some textiles and then he’s arguing with the customs guy. He’s like, “No, no, no, no. This is only 500 count.” And then they actually start counting and they say, “Oh, no, no, no, sir. It’s a thousand.” And they kind of argue about it. And then this is used also in a similar fashion a hydrometer. I guess you calculate the amount of alcohol because the alcohol content in a drink being higher or lower also affects the duty that’s applied. So they need all this technology to judge the quality of the goods that are being imported. And then another display of items, statues, basically wooden statues that were considered offensive, pornographic. And I was reading the sign down there where it said that it was imported inside a shipment of timber. So these wooden statues would be hidden inside a bunch of logs that look quite innocent, but then customs would find these statues inside and in amongst typical logs. More interesting exhibits over here on the left. Continuing with seized prohibited items, this one is all about opium. So, it’s showing all of the opium pipes, weighing systems for people who are, you know, selling the drug, all kinds of equipment related to opium. A lot, most of this, of course, is totally unfamiliar to me. And just looking at some of these opium pipes that they seized, it’s quite interesting. I hadn’t seen anything like this before. And I’d heard about this motorcycle. It was famously used probably among many other motorcycles to smuggle tin. You wouldn’t think of tin as being something to smuggle, but is a very valuable metal. And in this motorcycle, they could put in 50 kilograms of tin hiding it like the gas tank had been modified the area under the seat. Anywhere where they could find a space, they would put in tin and then smuggle 50 kg of it at a time, taking it across the border.
This isn’t exactly important as far as history goes, but it made me laugh. I was talking about the spot the white guy and this apparently is the federal customs training school. And so these are for students to become trained to become customs officers. And right in the middle it’s like boom, okay, there’s the white guy. And I noticed he looked very very young compared to the rest of the staff around him. And I went down to the next picture, spot the white guy. Oh, same guy but in glasses this time. And every single picture he’s there, the same young guy, I assume from Britain, of course. And there he is again in his shorts. Everybody else in long pants. Boom. White guy. Same guy. Same guy. You can just sort of track his fashion choices over the years. His sunglasses, his shirts, but always in his shorts. But yeah, it’s the same guy, the same British guy in every single picture there from this training school. And it looks like to my happiness, to my delight, the next display goes back in time all the way back to the origins of Melaka. So it looks like I am going to get a bit of an insight into the 1400s and 1500s. So that’s the next exhibit. So I’m in the historical section and there isn’t a lot of indepth information here, but there’s enough to you know get the wheels turning thinking about what Melaka was like back in the 1400s. Yeah on the golden age of Melaka as an international trading center and there are a couple of key words here or titles that kind of tie everything together and they talk about it here that among the key positions was the bendahara kind of up at the top. Bendahara was almost like the leader of the port and kind of the prime minister and under him was the port master or the harbor master which they called shahbandar. But a cool thing about Melaka is that they had four shahbandar. And I have some notes here on my phone because I wouldn’t be able to keep all of this information in my head. But they had traders from all over this part of the world. Right? So here are some examples. They’re showing some of the goods that were traded through Melaka, textiles, spices, porcelain, and traders from China, Arabian traders, etc. And according to what I read, Melaka was divided up into four sections, kind of like four kampungs. And each kampung was dedicated to one group of traders. And each group had their own shahbandar. So shahbandar one, he managed the Gujarati merchants. And Gujarati was from I think the northwest coast of India. So that the Gujarati had their own village basically inside Melaka, their own kampung and they did all of their trading and were controlled and helped by a shahbandar assigned to them as a group and the shahbandar 2 handled merchants from southern India, Bengal, Burma and a place called Pasai. I don’t know what that is. Shahbandar three managed traders from the Malay archipelago, Java, Spice Islands, and Palembang and shahbandar four handled merchants from China, Annam, which is Vietnam and the Ryukyu Islands of Japan. So the shahbandar, it says here, they acted as a bridge. They allocated warehouse space, managed the docking of the ships, provided housing, escorted foreign dignitaries to the royal court, and they acted as judges to settle trade disputes using the local norms and laws and systems like that. So, it was highly organized at that time. And that’s a fascinating way to look at Melaka through you’ve got the Sultan under him, the bendahara, and then you’ve got the four harbor masters, the four shahbandar assigned to each subset of traders. And then if you were from one of those groups and you showed up in your ship, you would report to your harbor master to get the ball rolling exactly, okay, where do I dock my ship? How do we handle the goods that I’m trying to sell, trade, buy? And then if you need an audience with the sultan to present him with a gift, something like that, then you go through your shahbandar and he would organize that meeting for you. Yeah. Very very interesting system. And something that they don’t mention here in all the discussion of Melaka from this time period is that they also had a very detailed very specific set of laws controlling everything to do with ships, shipping and international trade. And I don’t hear much about this but it’s one of the more fascinating aspects of Melaka. I think it was called the Undang-Undang Melaka which is basically the set of laws governing everything going on in Melaka and a really cool thing about this set of laws is that you can almost think of it as being crowdsourced like normally laws are made by the government. The king makes a law and then it’s imposed on people and quite often the king doesn’t even understand what’s going on in his kingdom. So the laws can be very bad laws. But in this case the Undang-Undang Melaka was put together by ship captains. So, a big group of the captains of these trading ships came together and they already had a whole set of rules and laws governing how they operated their ship and how things worked. And they took all of the things that they do normally and they wrote it all down and made a complete set of laws governing how these ships operate and when they arrive at a dock, who is in charge of what. It was very very specific like to the point of for example if they’re out in a storm and they’re in danger of sinking and they have to throw goods overboard. Well, whose do they throw, right? Because if they just grab stuff at random, some merchants lose a lot of money because they throw all of his stuff overboard. So they even had a set of rules that dictate, okay, if we have to throw stuff overboard, we do it fairly. We know some of yours, some of yours, some of yours, and then they get compensated for the stuff that they lost. So they had laws like that, like very very specific, covering everything. And these captains put together this set of laws and they presented it to the sultan and to the bendahara and said, “Hey, what about this?” And then it was adopted and accepted. So it was almost like a ground-up set of rules governing international trade and how ships operated. The Undang-Undang Melaka. Yeah. Fascinating part of history here.
In this exhibit talks about the evolution of customs and duties and taxes during the colonial era. So it starts off with the system under the Melaka Malay Sultanate and then when the Portuguese took over, what did they do? How did they change it? And then how did it change under the Dutch and then over there underneath the British. But I find one of the most interesting aspects to this is that Melaka gained its importance because of the relatively low taxes that were applied then it was very consistent. So here it says that there was a 6% tax applied to traders from Saudi Arabia, India and Myanmar. Traders from China and Japan were taxed at 5% and then Vietnam, Cambodia, Malacca, Java, they were not taxed but they had to give a gift to the sultan and these rules, these taxes were quite low and applied consistently and it made Melaka a very attractive place. And then when the Portuguese took over, they applied much higher duties and taxes. And because they did that, a lot of the international trade just left. They just said, “Oh, okay. You Portuguese, you want to charge us a lot of money to bring our goods here. Well, we’re just not going to bring them here anymore.” And instead they went to places like Aceh and other places, other ports and essentially the Portuguese taking by taking over Melaka and changing the way it worked, it basically stopped being such an important port. They basically killed off international trade the way it was functioning under the Sultanate. And then we go through the history with the Dutch and the British. I assume we’re getting towards the end of the exhibits and these are all items that have been seized because they didn’t have the proper permit some sort of paperwork. They didn’t have the proper permit. It wasn’t that these were illegal, but they just didn’t have the paperwork to import them into the country. So, they were seized. And then there’s a whole bunch of motorcycles here. Very fancy bikes and smaller ones and toys. And all of these are examples of vehicles that were seized because they didn’t have the proper import documents. They didn’t have the permits.
There’s a whole exhibit here that gets more into the modern era, I guess, and they’re showing some of the boats that they use today and vehicles. And one thing I found interesting is that they’re showing like a lot of the equipment that they use now. And you saw I was talking in the earlier exhibits about how quaint the old tools were. So, and I kind of like that. So, and I pointed out the nightstick that the custom security would use. And then there’s the modern version of it. Basically clubs and the ones that can be extended, things like that, bulletproof vests, pepper spray, all more modern tools essentially that they’re using today. But yeah, they have some of the vehicles that they use in modern times.
And one thing that’s interesting for me is all the way through the museum, I keep thinking that the scales are too small. Like they’re so tiny and most of the things that get exported are huge and heavy. And here we’re suddenly seeing some scales that are a bit beefier. So like if you have huge bales of textiles or whatever is inside those bales, well, you need something this big in order to weigh it, right? So suddenly you’re getting to more heavy-duty scales, which is kind of cool. Yeah, the museum is a lot bigger than I expected. It’s got a lot of exhibits and a lot of interesting things to look at. They did not mess around in this museum at all. They really worked hard to put everything on display and make it as interesting as possible. Very cool. I mentioned the scales over there were getting bigger and now these ones are getting even bigger. I mean, it’s almost like a platform, right, that you could drive onto with something very, very heavy and then weigh it. Very cool. Old scales here and a display of other seized items. In the earlier item, all of the kris were labeled as banned because they had Quranic writing on them, but these are just banned because they’re weapons, right? They’re not allowed to have a sword in your luggage and bring it into the country, I would think, for obvious reasons. And then they have a lot of information here about various types of alcohol. This one I had never even heard of. They’re talking about all this equipment being used to ferment and create samsu, I think. Samsu, the manufacturing process of samsu and uses rice, sugar, water and yeast and then they use this equipment to ferment it and then they talk about tuak. Yeah, you can. They make tuak here from coconut traditionally made alcohol that contains low content of alcohol produced from the coconut nectar, the coconut syrup. And they have some displays about that.
Yeah. Here are these big fermenting jugs barrels for making different types of alcohol. And another display about opium. Yeah, it’s quite an elaborate diorama there. It’s very cool. And then modern, well, somewhat modern X-ray equipment because we’re getting into a time when you have to X-ray luggage. So, they have some of that on display as well. And some other high-tech equipment over there. And then displays of other banned items, which makes sense, right? Fireworks. You don’t want people bringing suitcases filled with fireworks into the country. So they have all these other banned items and things that have duty applied to them. You can import, you can bring cigarettes and alcohol into the country. Well, I don’t know about alcohol into Malaysia, but of course you can bring cigarettes, but then you just have to pay duty on them. Oh, yeah. And then they have all the alcohol is legally allowed, but it looks like you need a special permit to import it. Some small exhibits just as we’re getting to the exit for the museum talking about certain types of wood that for various reasons are not allowed to be imported into the country. Some furniture that had hidden compartments for hiding opium and other drugs to be smuggled into Malaysia.
One thing I was thinking about as I was getting towards the end of this museum exhibit is that there could be a new update about say drones for example like there could be an exhibit about right now in 2026 what is the situation if you are a YouTuber a tourist whoever you are coming into Malaysia what can you bring into the country what can’t you bring in like lay out the actual laws as they exist right now particularly where say camera equipment is concerned, electronics, maybe the amount of liquor or cigarettes you can bring in, you know, keeping it under the duty level and drones in particular. I was thinking there could be an interesting exhibit about drones. What drones are allowed in the country, certain weights, classes, what permits do you need to fly them, things like that, you know, that would be an interesting addition.
Yeah. And I think yeah, this is the exit right here. And that’s it. We’re outside back in the heat, the heat of Melaka. There’s the building behind me. As I saw in there, this was originally a warehouse built by the British. I think it said back in the 1890s, this warehouse was built for storing goods that comes up the river. And they have to store things here in order for a customs agent to examine it and figure out what kind of duty has to be applied. Yeah, there it is. And as far as I can tell, I mean, I was in there for a long time because I took the time to read every single piece of information that I could come across. And I think I was the only visitor that entire time. So, they’re a bit lonely in there. Maybe my video can prompt some visitors as I said who come down here for the riverboat cruise like right there that’s the probably the most popular place in Melaka other than Jonker Street to hop on one of these river cruise boats and right here is this museum and I found it fascinating. I think it’s a great museum. They did a really nice job. A lot of interesting exhibits, very well displayed, organized. Yeah, really enjoyed that a lot. Highly recommended. Two thumbs up from Planet Doug for sure. So, the only things that I was thinking of that could be improved or added to the museum would be like a more modern exhibit, bringing the museum up to date into the 21st century with an exhibit about drones. Exactly. What drones are allowed into the country, what are the rules there, anything else that applies to a modern traveler, maybe even a section on criminality, like if you do get caught with something you’re not supposed to have, what happens to you? You know, what are the penalties in terms of imprisonment, fines, things like that. They could have a section in there to scare people. It’s like, “Hey, don’t you break any of our customs rules because you’ll be fined X, Y, and Z, and you could go to prison. You could be deported.” You know, what are the consequences of bringing things into the country that are not allowed? Things like that. That could also be interesting, too. But yeah, enjoyed that a lot. Really did. So, that’s it. With the river behind me, the beautiful setting of Melaka, I’ll wind up the video, the entire video only about the customs museum and hopefully they’ll get a lot more visitors in the future. So yeah, if you’ve watched this video all the way to the end, shout out to the Crunch Club. You know who you are. Put CC in the comments to let me know you watched the video all the way to the end. And a big shout out and a thank you as always to all the supporters of Planet Doug Video Productions out there, whether through Malaysia’s touch and go system, the e-wallet. Very, very helpful for me. If they had it, this is a free museum, but if there was an entrance fee, I would have paid for it with my Touch ‘n Go e-wallet. So, yeah, Touch ‘n Go keeps me out here in Malaysia exploring and learning new things. And of course, there’s a Planet Doug PayPal link in the description. Any support through PayPal, through Buy Me a Coffee, any of these platforms. And the Planet Doug Patreon is there. I appreciate all the support I get through Patreon. Thank you very much to everyone out there. So that’s it. With a river cruise boat going by, I’m going to shut down, go grab something to eat, something to drink, and shut down the video for today. So, that’s it. See you next time.