VIDEO DESCRIPTION:
This video comes to you courtesy of yet another couple of fascinating discoveries I made in the city of Melaka in Malaysia. I’d actually spent a long time in the city, so I was surprised that I’d never come across this fun story before.
AND I never knew this particular museum existed. I’d walked by the building countless times, and I never realized it was a museum and I had no idea that it actually held some answers to questions that I’d had for a long time.
The two discoveries kind of came hand-in-hand in my life, so I put them both into this video. I tell the amazing story I uncovered, and I visit this new museum.
I dive into two incredible discoveries:
1. The Accidental Discovery: The story of how construction workers hit “a big rock” while digging for the Menara Taming Sari, leading to the rediscovery of the Middelburg Bastion—and how the tower had to be moved 500 meters to preserve history!
2. The Hidden Museum: The “Fort of Melaka Heritage Gallery” (Gallery Warisan Kota Melaka). I walked past this building many times without knowing it held the key to my obsession with the A Famosa fortress. Inside, we find:
– The real layout of the Portuguese fort and its secret walkways.
– Models showing the dramatic land reclamation of Melaka.
– Actual skeletons found on-site (real bones!) and a sunken treasure ship (The Flor de la Mar).
Why is this video interesting? Because if you visit Melaka, the history is often buried under layers of text or hidden in plain sight. If you want to understand the true scale of the Melaka Sultanate, the Portuguese conquest, and the Dutch influence, this museum and the site of the bastions are a must-visit.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
It’s true. I have a bone to pick with Melaka. I don’t think the city is very good at telling its own stories, its own history. And today I have two more things I want to dive into that I just discovered recently. One is kind of a did you know kind of story and I absolutely did not know. So I can ask you, did you know that that tower, you can see it behind me, the Menara Taming Sari, it was never intended to be at that location. The original site where they were going to put that tower is right here where I’m standing. And I’m right outside of the Dutch Square. The Stadthuys is here. Middelburg Bastion is here. The river. This is where they were going to build the observation tower. That giant tower over there with a revolving platform. They were going to build it right here back in 2006. So, they brought in the excavators, they brought in the engineers, they brought in the construction teams, and they started digging out the foundations for that huge tower. And what happened? The excavators started to dig and they hit rock, big solid rocks underneath the ground. And this came as a bit of a surprise to everybody. They started digging. They started excavating. And this is what they found. They found the original foundation walls for the A Famosa fort and for this bastion, the Middelburg bastion. And of course the historians, they knew about A Famosa. They knew about the fort that was built by the Portuguese back in 1511. They had maps and drawings and paintings, things like that to go by, but they didn’t know the exact details. And they certainly did not know that when they started digging the foundations for the tower, they were going to uncover the foundations for the fort itself and the Middelburg Bastion. And so they halted construction. I mean it was a historic discovery. These remains were very valuable to history and they basically halted construction of the tower to do some investigating and some thinking and they eventually decided to move the tower. So they moved the site of the tower 500 m in that direction and then they started excavating this site and then eventually they rebuilt the Middelburg Bastion based on the drawings and the historical records. So from my point of view as someone interested in history, in the fort, in tourism, I would put up a giant did you know sign over here. I mean there is a sign of course telling you about the history of the Middelburg Bastion. So that information is over there. But to me, there’s such a powerful human interest story about how essentially the remains of this fort right here were kind of lost to history. Nobody knew that these stones were under the ground at that time. And they just started digging and then, you know, the guy on the excavator is like digging. Hey, hey, boss, I hit a big rock. Like there’s something down there. And then they uncovered the foundations and you know, the rest is history. Now they have the Middelburg Bastion available for tourists to enjoy. So to me that’s such an amazing human interest story. I would kind of broadcast it to the world. So I would put up a did you know sign over here and tell the history of how this foundation was discovered and moving the tower 500 m to a new site to accommodate history of Melaka. To me, that’s an amazing story. So, that is only the first part of my I have a bone to pick with Melaka story. The other half of this story, something that I only discovered a couple of days ago is that this amazing white building over here. I’ve walked by it a hundred times, maybe more than a hundred times, cycled by it, walked by it, daytime, nighttime, and every time I went by, I looked at it, it’s like, “Wow, what a cool looking building.” So, I notice it. I see it. I shot video of it. I took pictures of it. And yet, up until 2 days ago, I had no idea that it housed a museum. And not only a museum, it’s a museum that apparently has a lot of information about the fort, about A Famosa, the fort that the Portuguese built. And I think they have models inside there that show very clearly what I’ve been babbling about for a long time about how the land reclamation has completely transformed the geography of Melaka and that in the days when this fort was built when this was built to protect Melaka the shoreline was right here. This was the Melaka Strait. The water was right here. And I was so obsessed with that idea that I even went for a walk all the way around Melaka, going from ruin to ruin to ruin, tracing the outline of the wall because I was so interested in exactly what this fort looked like. And it turns out I think all the answers to my questions are right here in this museum that I didn’t even know existed. And interestingly enough, when they were excavating for the observation tower, they first uncovered the foundations for the Middelburg Bastion. So, they halted construction. As I said, they moved the site of the tower, but then they started digging and doing more research and their excavating. Their digging brought them across what is now this street and they uncovered this bastion as well. So, this one is the Bastion Frederick Hendrik. At least that’s what they call it on the main sign here. And they didn’t know this existed either. So, this was also a complete accidental discovery. And it could have been lost to history if they hadn’t started digging the foundations for the tower right here. But anyway, my goal for this morning, it’s a Sunday morning here in Melaka. I’ve had to stop recording a dozen times so far because on Sundays you get a lot of the trishaws going up and down and they’re blasting out the music. So I keep having to stop speaking and turn off my GoPro for music copyright reasons. This is one of the main thoroughfares for all the trishaws. So, it’s a very poor place for me to try to record this opening to my I have a bone to pick with you Melaka video. But yeah, there is the building and I think it was an old bank building, HSBC bank building and that’s where the museum is. I suppose I can’t fully put the blame at the feet of the tourism authorities of Melaka because there is a sign right here. The Gallery Warisan Kota Melaka, that’s the Malay name for this museum. I saw that sign a hundred times, but I never knew what it meant. I did not know it was a museum. And then there’s another sign here. I thought it was just like a marker saying, “Okay, here’s a cool building.” I had no idea there was a museum here. But of course, if I was paying more attention, maybe I would have deciphered it from that sign. And then over here, this is the main entrance, I guess. And I guess that’s another reason I never knew this museum was here because the entrance is so tiny. It’s really, like I said, I walked by it a hundred times and I never noticed the entrance, but that’s it right there. So, that’s the main entrance to the museum. And then again here is the name the Gallery Warisan Kota Melaka and I think they have the English translation down here somewhere. Ah here it is. It is the Fort of Melaka Heritage Gallery and it was a Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation building. So HSBC bank building and then they converted it into this museum. And I just glanced at a little bit of the photos on the Google Maps listing and then I was inspired to come down here because I got the idea that it had a lot of information about the A Famosa Fortress which has been my main interest in the time that I’ve been here in Melaka. And there’s a Melaka Hill up there. Beautiful sunny day and entrance is free into this museum. There are the hours 9 till 5, Tuesday to Sunday, closed on Monday, and holidays. Yeah. So, that’s the one day to be aware of. Closed on Monday, open every other day. So, let’s head inside.
Hello.
Sure.
All right. Thank you. Thank you.
Will you take one? Sure.
I’m inside the lobby of the museum and it is free entrance. The hours are what they say on the sign there which is cool. You just sign in at the front desk and away you go. Nicely air-conditioned and they have a really nice brochure here, a pamphlet that outlines all of the exhibits in the museum. Really interesting to read through. Gives you a sense of what this place is all about. And to my delight, there is a ton of exhibits about the fort and the history of Melaka as a trading center and things like that. So, I think this is the museum I’ve been looking for my entire time in Melaka and I just never knew it was here. It’s just a complete surprise. So, yeah, here’s the map of the museum. Two floors. So you can see all the exhibits here. One through six and then on the first that’s like a ground floor. First floor exhibits 7 through 12. And this is what I’m talking about. I mean goes through the Malay sultanate, the sea and Melaka port, the bridge which I’m fascinated by. The treasures of Melaka, World Trading Center, archaeological research and then we get into on the first floor the fort of Melaka, the fort under a foreign power, destruction of the fort, Malay navigation. So yeah, ton of interesting information I think here. Beautiful lobby too, very open, very bright, nicely air conditioned. The Fort of Melaka Heritage Gallery. So, yeah, let’s begin our walk through.
I don’t think they have the museum cafe that I’m always looking for on Planet Doug, but they do have a little shop here in the lobby. At least you can buy water and a bunch of souvenirs.
Look at that. It’s a beautiful replica of the fort itself with all the laterite stone. And I think we start our tour this way.
Looks like you have to have a real hunger for reading right out of the gate. A lot of text on those walls with some nice big illustrations at the same time. I’m developing a very good feeling about this museum. I noted that there seem to be a lot of text there, but it’s actually quite readable because it’s two languages, Malay and English. So, Malay and then beside it, the English. So, you can cut this in half in terms of the amount of text you might feel you have to read. And it’s actually a pretty good size. So I was able to stand at a comfortable distance away from the wall without bending down too much. And then I was able to read through all of this and glean a bunch of useful information. Not surprisingly, there seems to be some debate about dates and how back in time various bits of history go. It just kind of makes sense that that happens. But here for example they talk about the Malay sultanate was established in 1262. So there has been some historical research that dates the Malay sultanate to a much earlier date than the normal legend because the normal story that I’m aware of is about Parameswara and he was a prince and they actually mentioned that down here says there were some research by historians who stated that the Malay sultanate of Melaka was established by Parameswara, a prince from Palembang in the late 14th century. So there is some historical debate about exactly how old the official Melaka Sultanate is. And I noticed when I was reading through some of the history and information in the brochure that even the origins of the fort were kind of under debate. I mean whenever I read about A Famosa of course that is the fort that the Portuguese built when they conquered Melaka but according to what I’m reading here there was actually a fort predating that one that this was a fort here built by the Melaka Sultanate as well. So, in fact, when you’re talking about the fort of the city, you’re talking about something, a structure that predates the arrival of the Portuguese. At least that’s what they’re talking about here in this museum.
And this map gives you some context in terms of what we’re talking about. I think a lot of visitors when they’re thinking about Melaka, the Melaka Sultanate, they’re only thinking about the city of Melaka. But you know, a map like this shows that the Melaka Empire stretched across the whole of the Malay Peninsula and then over to Sumatra as well. That whole green area was part of the Melaka Empire. And this map shows their trade relations. Yeah, it’s really a lot of fun for me when things start to come together because I’ve done so much reading about Melaka in all the various museums and elsewhere. And here they talk a lot about the arrival of Cheng Ho from China as sort of an envoy from the Ming dynasty and establishing relations with the Melaka Sultanate. And then it talks about Hang Tuah. And a lot of the history comes from the annals of Hang Tuah. You can see here. So the source for a lot of this information is the epic of Hang Tuah. These historical stories. So all the things that I’ve been reading about all kind of come together. And you can see a nice diagram of the palace of Melaka which has been rebuilt today and turned into a really nice museum.
I really like this model of the palace. It adds a lot of detail that you don’t see in the modern reconstruction in particular. I think this the outer detail here. I don’t think you see that in the modern replica. But yeah, it was a beautiful building. I do like this idea of the Melaka Empire, the Melaka Sultanate going back much farther in history, like centuries earlier than the 1400s, because I’m always reading about Melaka in the 1400s, like when the Portuguese first came here. That was the glory days of Melaka like the height of Melaka’s power and influence and art and culture and everything else but it felt like there wasn’t enough time for such a culture to develop. So if the Melaka Malay sultanate dates all the way back to the 1200s then it makes a lot more sense to me. And then you get into the 1400s and that was the peak of the Melaka culture and the empire at that time. So it had centuries to grow and develop and that kind of feels a lot better to me. And again putting pieces together something I was interested to note here is that there’s a little note about how many cannons were found in Melaka. And this is taken from the historical records kept by Afonso de Albuquerque who conquered Melaka and in his own records like 3,000 pieces of artillery were captured and that there were as many as 8,000 cannon in the city. So I think most casual visitors to Melaka when they think about the Portuguese coming and defeating the Melaka Sultanate, they think it was a very simple thing to do that they just showed up with their ships and their guns and they took over the place. But Melaka in fact was well defended with 8,000 cannon things like that. And they talk about how their gun founders were as good as the Germans. So their ability to build cannon and weaponry was on a par with Europeans at that time. At least that is the story that you’ll come across here. And yeah, here’s an example of one of the cannon. I just like those little tidbits that I find in museums because it makes sense to me. It like putting the pieces together because I also learned while I was here that the Portuguese conquest of Melaka took over 40 days. It was like a battle, a long long battle lasting over 40 days before they finally managed to defeat the Melaka Sultanate and his forces. And I think most people don’t think it took that long, right? And then when you understand that they had 3,000 artillery pieces or 8,000, whatever the number was, it all starts to make a lot more sense. And I love the stories of the ships that they had at the time here in Melaka. This is the most famous one here. I’ve seen information about it in a few different museums. The Kapal Menam Barahi, the Menam Barahi ship, huge ship. So they actually had very large oceangoing vessels here in Melaka at the time which I think most casual visitors to Melaka don’t realize and according to the stories in the Hang Tuah the epic of Hang Tuah traveled all around Asia in this ship as an envoy of the Melaka Sultanate and they tell that whole story here all the different expeditions that he went on but you can see the scale of it. It’s a massive ship driven by oars and sails and the Portuguese wrote in their own accounts of arriving in Melaka how astonished they were at how huge the ships were that they discovered here. So this is an interesting exhibit about that. Something else that jumped out at me just sort of from a museum technology perspective is that they have like this 3D holographic image of the royal procession over here broken, not working. And then there’s another one over here where you get a diorama of the palace scribe and you can push the buttons and something will play, but it’s also not functioning. And that jumps out at me because I just visited the Hang Tuah Center which put a lot of money and a lot of development into making high tech multimedia digital displays. And that yeah makes a museum very interesting to visit. But it’s a bit of a double-edged sword because the more technology your display depends on, the greater the chance that the technology is going to break down and the exhibit won’t actually work. So maybe it’s yeah, there’s an argument to be said that a standard museum display based on wood and paint and actual graphics just on the wall is a little bit more stable, a little bit more reliable than the fancy technology. The next couple of exhibits were also of interest to me because I’ve been looking into them quite a bit. Still interesting though that even this museum seems to miss the story. Like they don’t seem to know what their own story is. So here for example is a story about a ship with a bunch of treasure on it. And the title is Melaka’s treasures brought to Europe. And it lists all of the gold and silver and weaponry and all kinds of expensive treasures that were on this ship. And it leaves you with the impression that all of this was taken to Europe by this boat, the Flor de la Mar, but it never made it. Of course, this is the ship that sank in the Melaka Strait. So this is like one of the greatest lost treasure ships of history. And here’s an entire exhibit about it. And yet that point that this ship loaded with all the treasure of Melaka is now resting at the bottom of the Melaka Strait. It’s not mentioned. I think there was one brief mention like it says here that 115 people were lost and drowned. So of course the ship sank. But like I said, this whole exhibit about the Flor de la Mar, it even misses the main point of the story, which I find kind of odd. My only explanation for that is whoever makes these museums in Melaka just assumes that most of the visitors will already know the story. So they basically they bury the lead over and over and they think most Malaysians they know about the treasure ship I guess so they don’t actually have to make that fact front and center. But for me you know if you’re trying to tell the story of a human interest that would be the headline you know one of the greatest lost sunken treasure ships in history. And but they never even mention that. And this exhibit is all about the various bastions that have been uncovered around Melaka, which I find really interesting because I went to visit all of them. And then you can see the laterite here talking about how the walls and the fortress were built with laterite. But the most interesting picture for me is this one. I guess that is what this bastion looked like before it was uncovered. It was basically a parking lot. So all of the history of Melaka was covered up with asphalt parking lots and then they dug up underneath the asphalt. And then they found this. So this is where they found the Bastion Victoria. So this is how it looks today. Well, not today. This is how it looked when they were excavating it. But that’s how it was originally. Completely covered up and it was just a parking lot. And I find that to be kind of an amazing story. And again, for me, that’s the interesting story. That’s the human interest story that there was a time when all of this history was just covered up. They just paved it over. They put buildings on top of it. They were going to put that huge observation tower right on top of it. And they’re digging foundations. And then at some point it shifted and they thought, “Huh, maybe we should preserve some of this stuff.” And then they started digging up all of these bastions and making all these discoveries about their own history. But there was a real chance that none of this would have happened and the Victoria Bastion would have remained a parking lot and nobody would know what was under the ground. And when they excavated the bastion Frederick Hendrik, the one that’s located right here at the museum site, they uncovered four skeletons. I think three men and one woman. I’m assuming these are replicas, but I don’t know for sure. These could be the actual skeletons that they found, but I don’t think so. They’re probably locked up tight at a research museum or a university somewhere. These are probably replicas, but I don’t know. It does have a thermometer down there measuring humidity and temperature. Which means they probably are real and they’re just keeping them preserved. I’m up on the first floor now, what in Canada we would call the second floor. But we’re finally in the meat and potatoes of this museum. For me anyway, this is what I was most interested in seeing, the models of the fort itself, so I can put it into perspective. And there is a lot of interest here. Like the main thing that I’ve been harping on all along is that back when Melaka was at its height and the Portuguese built this fort, the fort walls ran right along the Melaka Strait. So you can see how close the wall of the fort is to the water to the shore on this side and over here on this side and there of course is the Melaka Hill dead center. And this over here is the Melaka River and that is the main bridge that you walk across when you go from Dutch Square over to Jonker Street. Right. So that gives you a much better picture of the layout historically. So here is Middelburg Bastion right here and here is the Frederick Hendrik Bastion. So this is where we are right now. We’re actually here and the museum is located right here. And then there’s the Middelburg Bastion and the Melaka River. So basically these two huge defensive positions they were protecting the mouth of the river and the shore. So the main approach for any enemy forces. So looking at this I get a much better idea of what Melaka looked like back in those days and how the fort was arranged. And this is the first time I’ve seen this as well that you could walk along the top of the fort wall. I didn’t know you could do that. I thought it was just a thick wall, but according to this display, it was actually a platform going around the entire fort. So defenders, soldiers could walk the entire circumference of the fort from bastion to bastion, walking along the top. Essentially a similar design to the Great Wall of China, right? I didn’t know it was like that. I honestly didn’t. I don’t think I’ve seen drawings or models showing that so clearly. This is the very first one where I’ve seen that. Yeah. Fascinating. And very few gates. I don’t know if they’ve actually put in all of the gates. Like this is the one that still remains today. I think one name for it is the land gate, but this is the last piece of the wall, the original gate that still exists today. This is Santiago, I think. Santiago gate. So, you’ve got that gate and then it looks like there’s another one over here by the bridge and by the river. So, only two entrances the entire circumference of the fort. One land gate and then river gate on opposite sides. I just assumed there would be more, but no, just according to this model, just the two of them. And this is an amazing exhibit right here. I’m really glad this one is working. It has basically the history of the fort, but it’s divided up between all the different eras. So, we can go all the way back to the fort of Melaka during the Malay Sultanate. And then you can see some images of how it looked in 1508 and another image from 1511. So again, I didn’t realize that there was any kind of fort structure under the Malay Sultanate. I didn’t realize there were walls and fortified positions ringing the same place. I didn’t know any of that existed. So that’s something very new that I learned. And then you can jump ahead to the Portuguese period and you can go from year to year. 1511, 1515. Bit more of an artistic rendition. Yeah, that’s a sketch of Santiago gate right there.
But the one I found most interesting was under the Dutch. So this is under the Dutch they made a lot of renovations to the fort and the most interesting one for me is this the bridge. So in order to accommodate sailing ships going up the river they built the bridge much much higher. So you had to climb up a whole series of steps cross and then down the other side so that you basically have this section of the bridge much higher and the ships could fit underneath. Yeah. I’ve never seen that before.
And there’s a very clear example of the layout where you can see where the shoreline used to be before all the land reclamation. So there is where all the people were living over here. And this is where the Sultan and the Portuguese administration and then the Dutch administration were all inside this fort area. And it’s right on the water. Today, the water is way down here, kilometers away. All of this is reclaimed land now. So, I find that to be a fascinating part of the history.
And finally, we get some aerial pictures of Melaka today. So, if the fort still existed in its entirety, this is where it would be today. And you can see that instead of the Melaka Strait, you’ve actually right outside the walls, you’ve got shopping centers, parking lots, all that sort of thing. So yeah, the geography of Melaka has completely altered since the days of the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the British. Yeah, fascinating. This is exactly what I was hoping to see. Now I can finally sleep at night because I have a more accurate image of what A Famosa looked like and added a lot to my knowledge. As I said, I didn’t even know that the Melaka Sultanate had their own fort in place and perhaps the Portuguese sort of built their version of the fort on top of the ruins of the Melaka Sultanate fort. And I had no idea, as I said, that the top of the wall was that wide and that you could walk all the way around it and go from bastion to bastion. I’ve never seen that before in any other model. And maybe I just wasn’t paying attention. Yeah, really interesting exhibit here. This is what I came to see.
And my favorite laterite. Some actual laterite on display now. So each piece was taken from a different bastion. Amazing stuff. The laterite. They even curved it. That’s very cool.
And there’s the perspective location of Melaka fort to today. And it makes me wonder how much is still underground. Like in the future they could dig up more and more and more of it. Now they have a very clear idea of where all the remains are under the ground. Like I’m pretty sure that all of this is completely I mean the wall is gone of course but the foundations would still be here underground and there might be sections that they can still excavate in the future. That would be quite interesting. I don’t know how many exhibits are left, but this next section is all about the Portuguese conquest of Melaka and then followed up by the Dutch defeat of the Portuguese and then of course the British era and everything that happened. And the most interesting exhibit for me is this one. I’d never seen this before. This is a copy of a speech given by Albuquerque to his captains and soldiers about the attack that was about to be launched on the city of Melaka. And it has a lot of fascinating information in there. And I’d never come across I mean I haven’t done a deep dive into the history really. All I’ve done is visit a few museums and read a few Wikipedia articles and watch a few documentaries on YouTube. So most like deep historical documents and knowledge I’m not familiar with. So I never came across this the copy of his speech before. But it’s quite fascinating to read.
And they do have a quite a detailed movie here covering this period of history, Portuguese conquest and then what they call here the war of the triangle between the Aceh, the Johor Sultanate and the Portuguese. So it’s kind of interesting to sit through and get like a bird’s eye view of those centuries. My main critique is the same that I’ve had for a lot of the museums I’ve encountered in Melaka. That this the actual story is buried. Like I think you have to treat tourists like me like we’re complete dummies. Like we do not know what happened. So we need it in bullet form. Like tell us what the story is right from the top. Like right here for example, there’s a whole display and it has the title the destruction of Melaka Fort. So that’s what it says and then it shows a picture of the Santiago gate I think. So that’s the last remaining piece of the fort, the original fort that existed after the British destroyed it. And that’s it. Like it doesn’t tell you why the British did this, what their motivation was. It doesn’t talk about how they did it. There’s like no information at all. It’s like a title, destruction of the fort, and then a bunch of pictures, but the story of exactly like the significance of this isn’t really here. You have to know the story yourself, otherwise this exhibit wouldn’t make any sense to you.
This is another example where the title of the exhibit is betrayal towards the Malay sultanate of Melaka and then it has some historical documents and then a drawing but I think it assumes that you already know what they’re talking about. You already know this part of history and it’s basically illustrating that part of history. But we tourists, we need to be told. We need to be told, okay, what do you mean who betrayed the Sultanate and how did they betray them? I know what they’re talking about here because, as I said, I’ve actually done a fair bit of reading and watching YouTube history documentaries about the Melaka Sultanate, so I know what this betrayal is all about, but it’s the story, like the simple story, like what are you talking about, isn’t here in the exhibit. You kind of have to know what the story is already before you come here. But and again, I think that’s because this museum was made with Malaysians in mind and the Malaysians already know that story about like what kind of betrayal are they talking about? And I know the story, but that’s only because I did my own reading and research. With the final set of exhibits, we’re leaving behind the exact history of Melaka and the fort. Kind of just covering a selection of different topics like this one. Enrique de Malaca, who of course is very famous for perhaps being the very first human to circumnavigate the entire globe to go to start in one place, go around the entire world and return to that place. So this is the story of Enrique of Malacca and an exhibit about a very famous house here that has been renovated and brought back to its original glory
and talking about Malay culture, some of the clothing, the history of Melaka as a world heritage site. That’s quite interesting when you do a deep dive into that all the details.
Some information about traditional Malay foods, music, and dance. And this wall is actually kind of interesting because it’s all about traditional Melaka society. And of course, if you’re just a casual visitor to Melaka, you’re here as a tourist and then you, I don’t know, drop in at a couple of museums, learn about the history, it probably would never occur to you that historically slaves were a big deal in the Melaka Sultanate. Slaves were a well established part of society and I think all of the economic activity was based on slave ownership and it just talks about it here that for example ownership of slaves was a measure of one’s wealth and the more slaves one owned the greater one’s status and prestige and at the very top it starts off saying since the early history Melaka slaves were vital to the society. Slaves provided the workforce. So that’s yeah, it’s kind of an interesting little tidbit to think about the that slaves were very common and were a big part of society back in those days. It’s not something you would normally think about. And that’s it. My tour of this particular museum is done. Yeah, really interesting for me. I enjoyed that a lot. Filled in a lot of gaps in my knowledge. Big things I wasn’t aware of and a lot of small things. But I think I managed to glean a lot from that exhibit, from that museum because I already went in there with quite a bit of knowledge and I had very specific questions I was trying to answer for my own interest. Oddly enough, for other people, like for an average person, my recommendation for visiting a museum like this would be to learn some things before you go. Right here’s my the invasion of the trishaws going by. Wow, that’s Melaka. Yeah, be prepared for the heat. We’ve had a few rainy days recently and the temperature kind of dropped a little bit, but on a sunny day like this, the sun is like, pow. It’s like, oh, you forgot about me, didn’t you? I’m like, yeah, I kind of did. There’s the sun up there. But yeah, just saying like go to YouTube, track down like a 20 minute, 30 minute documentary about the history of Melaka. Like a very you can tell that the video was made by someone who knows what they’re talking about, a true historian, you know, get some knowledge in your head. You might think you come to a museum to learn things, but I’m finding a lot of the museums here in Melaka aren’t really set up that way. They are actually illustrations of the story. And to get the most out of your experience, you kind of have to know the story in advance and then everything kind of clicks has more meaning. But yeah, quite a few things that I learned that adds a lot of significance to my time here. One of course is how these remnants of the fort, how these historical ruins were discovered. And as I said, it was because they were digging the foundations for the observation tower and they just sort of stumbled across basically the foundations over there for the Middelburg Bastion. And then they halted construction and they started excavating and then they discovered this the remains of this bastion over here and over here. This is where they found the four skeletons. So, the four skeletons were unearthed here. And according to what I read, I think the skeletons dated back to the like the 1500s or the 1600s, something like that. And I spoke to the staff at the museum and they confirmed and those are the actual bones, the skull and the bones that they uncovered here that they dug up. They’re actually on display in the museum. Those aren’t copies. Those are the original skeletons. So yeah, I woke up this morning. I had a bone to pick with Melaka. All these things I didn’t know this amazing history of this city. And now I filled in a little bit more of my information gaps. So yeah, I enjoyed that very much. And that’s it. Shutting down for now. If you’ve watched this video all the way to this point, you made it all the way to the end of the video, that means you’re a member of the Planet Doug Crunch Club, put CC in the comments to let me know. I always love to see that. And thank you as always to everyone supporting my small adventures and my video production here on Planet Doug through Touch and Go. I have to shout above the disco soundtrack of Melaka. And everyone who has joined the Planet Doug Patreon and of course through PayPal, always appreciated. Links to all of that are in the video description and QR codes at the end of the video and of course through buy me a coffee. Thank you very much to everyone out there keeping Planet Doug in orbit. So that’s it. Hope you enjoyed a little bit of that filling in some gaps in my knowledge of Melaka and I’ll see you next time.