VIDEO DESCRIPTION:
This video ended up being a bit more complicated than I’d planned, but it started with a very simple discovery: I saw a pin on Google Maps for a place called Chetti Village or Kampung Chetti. I had no idea what that place was, so I started to look into it. And once I began pulling on that narrative thread, I found a whole new way of looking at the history of Melaka.
This new approach got me talking about the Melaka Sultanate’s system of Shahbandar (or harbour masters) and how the Upe district of the city was divided into kampungs for each of the major merchant communities, each supervised and managed by one of four Shahbandar.
The thing is that most casual visitors to Melaka get the impression that the city consists of two halves: On one side of the river are the buildings of the European colonizers. And on the other side of the river is a giant Chinatown. But that leaves out so much of the history. Where are the Gujaratis, Javanese, Tamil Hindus, and more?
To unlock this ignored history, you only need to remember one word: Shahbandar.
But what is a Shahbandar? And why were there four of them?
As I investigate, I visit Kampung Chetti: The hidden heritage village of the Tamil Hindu merchants. I get lost in the laneways, explore a vibrant Hindu temple, and chat with a local craftsman who keeps the traditions alive.
I also go looking for the Javanese at the site of Kampung Jawa: I trace the footsteps of the Javanese rice traders and shipbuilders, and discover how they were pushed from the river mouth to their final home.
I explore how these communities moved inland over the centuries and why their physical footprints have disappeared, leaving behind a fascinating legacy that survives in the modern day.
It’s a tale of trade, conflict, integration, and survival. If you think you know Melaka, think again.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
During my time here in Melaka, I’ve come to realize something quite important. That if you come to Melaka as a typical visitor, today is a Saturday here in Melaka. And as you can see around me, there are lots of people. Beautiful sunny day. It’s bustling here in Melaka. But I’m willing to bet that most of the people that come here on a typical Saturday like this, whether they’re Malaysian visitors, visitors from overseas, they’re given a very simple story. And that story is we’ve got the Melaka River, this bridge crossing the river, and on this side we have the European colonizers, right? We’ve got the Portuguese who built A Famosa. We’ve got Dutch Square with all the buildings built by the Dutch. The churches and fountains left here by the British. Everyone knows the story that originally these Dutch buildings were white and the British left their impression by painting them all red. We’ve got St. Paul’s Hill up there and on and on and on. So that is all on this side of the river and then on the other side is essentially what looks like a Chinatown. And I think a lot of visitors come away thinking, well that’s Melaka. On one side the European colonizers, on the other side Chinatown. And as they go down Jonker Street, of course they see Chinese temples, restaurants, food, things like that. But that is a very simple story that doesn’t get anywhere near the true complexity of Melaka’s history and in particular its origins go all the way back in time to the Melaka Sultanate going back to the 1400s. For example the glory days of the Melaka Sultanate, well now you’re talking about Gujarati from northwestern India, powerful Muslim center of trade, the Gujaratis, you’ve got the Javanese equally powerful group of traders and ship builders. You’ve got the Chinese of course, you’ve got the Tamil Hindu community, the Bengali, you’ve got traders from the Ryukyu Islands of Japan, Sumatra, on and on and on and on. The Melaka Sultanate was a center for world trade linking all of these groups and they all had large communities living and trading here. That was the beating heart of the Melaka Sultanate and why it became such an important place in world history. But doesn’t that raise the question of well where are the remnants of all of those people? Where are the Tamil Hindu? Where are the Javanese? What is going on with those? So, as I said, in modern times, we’ve got the European colonizers on one side, and then we’ve got Jonker Street and a kind of Chinatown on the other, but these other communities appear to have been largely forgotten. So, I started doing a little bit of digging into that and I learned a few things and I’m going to track down the stories of two of these communities that I hope will illustrate this idea. Luckily, the history is not nearly as complicated as you might think or as difficult to understand. All you really need to do to become a master of Melaka Sultanate history is to remember one word and that word is Shahbandar. It’s a very important word. The closest English translation might be harbor master. The guy who is in charge of the harbor and all of the ships going in and out unloading cargo, loading cargo. The harbor master. But under the Melaka Sultanate, the Shahbandar was much more than a harbor master. And one of the ingenious things the Melaka Sultanate came up with was they had not one but four Shahbandars. And each Shahbandar was in charge of a specific community of traders from around the world.
And of course, back in those days, Melaka was all about international trade. The river you see around me right now is pretty much empty other than cruise boats. But back in those days, back in the 1500s, back in the 1400s in particular, this would have been bustling with ships from all around the world. And ships come here with cargo and they need to dock, unload their cargo and load cargo, things like that. So this entire riverfront area was the key to the Melaka Sultanate and its entire length was covered in ships loading and unloading and each of the international communities like the Gujarati had their own kampong. So the Gujarati merchants, the traders, the Gujarati ships would all be clustered in one section of the rivershore and that would be the Gujarati Kampong and it would be under the authority of Shahbandar number one. And then there would be another Shahbandar and he would be responsible for the Javanese community and then another for southern India, Bengal, another Shahbandar for the spice islands, Ryukyu, Japanese islands. So there were four Shahbandars each one in charge of a specific community a grouping of international merchants and then shipping things like that. And again these Shahbandars were more than harbor masters as I said and if a ship shows up here from Gujarat from a Gujarati ship they would have to connect with the Shahbandar assigned to them and quite often the Shahbandar was from that community which made things a lot easier. So the Shahbandar might be a Gujarati merchant himself. So he spoke the local language, understood all of their customs, which made things a lot smoother as well. And the Shahbandar would tell the captain of that ship, okay, you park your ship here. This is the Gujarati Kampong. Park your ship here. And if there had been a dispute, some sort of a legal dispute on the ship, something to do with any kind of crime or disagreement over the prices of the goods, the Shahbandar would also be the judge and would settle that dispute. Quite often these merchants from around the world, the ship captains, they would have to give a gift to the Sultan, pay tribute. So in order to arrange a meeting with the Sultan again they turn to the Shahbandar and the Shahbandar would organize that meeting with the Sultan. So Shahbandar it’s a key concept to understanding Melaka. And there were four of them each of them in charge of a specific area of Melaka at that time. So, I’m down by the river and the bridge right now, of course. And it’s also important to understand that back in those days, this bridge, this area where we are right now, was essentially sitting right on the Melaka Strait. So, this would have been the mouth of the river right here. And then it would curve around with on the shoreline of the Melaka Strait. And my understanding from what I read is that the Kampong Jawa, the Javanese community was located here, right at the mouth of the river along this part of the shore and then around the shore along the Melaka Strait. And that developed because Java, they were the ones feeding Melaka. They didn’t have a lot of rice production in this area. So the city of Melaka depended on the ships from Java bringing rice and the Javanese were highly skilled boat makers. So they needed a lot of space. So when the Javanese ships showed up here in Melaka, they would dock their boats right here at the entrance and then they would be unloading huge loads of rice going directly into raised warehouses to keep them dry. And then around the corner on the shoreline there was a lot of Javanese ship building. So this whole area would have been Kampong Jawa. And it’s important to think about that because where is it today, right? This was this whole area was part of the Javanese Kampong. But where is the evidence of that? And it’s all kind of gone now. And that’s sort of what I’m talking about today. And after the Kampong Jawa moving along the riverbank, then you’re going to get into the other communities, the Gujarati and the Tamil Hindu communities over there. And then over time after the Portuguese conquest of Melaka and then the Dutch and the British era, all of these communities, these local Kampongs, they were pushed out of this area away from the river. So when the Portuguese took over, of course, they built their fortress on that side and they wanted to control this side of the river militarily and they started pushing certain communities out and away from the rivershore because they wanted to control this area. So all of these original Kampongs started moving from place to place. And it’s sort of that movement that I’m going to dive into a little bit today. To be honest, this whole topic started for me because I was looking at Google Maps of Melaka and I stumbled across a pin for a place that I’d never heard of. A place called Kampong Chetti. I was like, “Oh, what is that?” And I started reading about it and it turns out that Kampong Chetti is the modern area where the Tamil the descendants of the original Tamil Hindu people live. So as I said the Tamil Hindu Kampong originally was right here along the river. This is where they lived. Because of the shipping was so heavily dependent on the monsoons that at certain times of the year ships would pour into Melaka and the sailors and the ships would have to stay here waiting for the next monsoon for the proper winds to bring them where they needed to go. So thousands of members of each of these communities would come and stay here for a few months and that’s how these Kampongs grew and the Tamil Hindu Kampong was here along the river. But now of course you don’t see any evidence of that here and Kampong Chetti is more inland and that’s where I’m going to walk to right now. And speaking of these communities getting pushed inland and away from the river, I’ve just walked a kilometer and a half. It feels like I’ve gone much farther than that in the heat and the busy traffic of Saturday in Melaka, but I’m now far away from the rivershore and I’m just a short distance from the modern settling area for the original Tamil Hindu community which today is called Kampong Chetti or Chetti Village. And I understand that the word Chetti there’s some debate about where it comes from, but one argument is that it actually means merchant. So these are the descendants of the original Tamil merchants of the Melaka Sultanate back in the 1400s. I think a lot of people are aware of the Portuguese settlement here in Melaka. It’s quite a well-known spot for visitors to go check out. And this area Chetti village is similar to the Portuguese settlement in that in the Portuguese settlement those are the descendants of the original Portuguese and they intermarried with the local population and now their descendants live there today and still keep some of the traditions alive from Portuguese culture and speak a language kind of related to Portuguese. So here in Chetti village I think the same thing happened where the Tamil Hindu community integrated with the local community. They got married here, had children here and integrated with Malay society. But from what I read and saw online they have kept Hindu traditions. Though they still are their religion is still Hindu even though they’ve integrated in many other ways. So I’m expecting to see signs of India and Hinduism. And just as I turn the corner looks like I’ve navigated pretty well. There’s a sign right there that says Kampong Chetti. And right there of course yeah feels almost like a little India. And it occurs to me it’s also quite interesting because Malaysia as a whole has a very large Indian population right they always talk about the three main cultures the Malay the Chinese and the Indian and the majority of the Indian population they would have been brought here by the British as a labor force right that’s where the majority the Indian population came from under the British colonial rule and they needed laborers and they brought in a lot of people from India. But this Indian community predates that by centuries. The Indian community here I’m having a heck of a time crossing this street. The traffic is just non-stop as it always is once you leave the historic district. You’re back in regular Malaysia where the traffic flow is just nonstop. It never seems to come to a halt to let a pedestrian across. So, I still haven’t mastered the Malaysian hand where you just walk out into traffic and stop everybody. But people are slowing down now. So, maybe I can get across. There we go. I made it across. But yeah, this Indian community, it dates back to the 1400s, which I think makes it quite special. So, here is the entrance way, the official gate into Kampong Chetti. Colorful Hindu temple right here on the other side of the gate. And again, as I said, I have no idea what this neighborhood looks like, what I’m going to see as I walk around, but already it is so interesting. And there’s a historical sign here to tell us about the heritage village of the Chetti people. A fascinating little story here as I said the heritage village of the Chetti people and it says here it basically lines up with what I’ve been talking about that the Chettis have been around since the reign of Parameswara who founded Melaka. So the Chetti people go all the way back to the very beginning of the history of the Melaka Sultanate. And the sign says back then most of them belonged to a group of traders, merchants and traders who were living in Kampong and Kampong Balanda. They originated from the Coromandel coast, Kalinga, Patnam, South India and Tamil Nadu. In the earlier days there were Chettis holding high posts in the government such as the prime minister. However, things began to change under Dutch colonization. The Chettis were imposed strict supervision in their trading which eventually caused them to move to more remote areas such as right here. So, as a result of that, many Chettis decided to switch their profession from trading to agriculture. So yeah that’s the basic idea that I was trying to get at whether I explained it very clearly or not but they were originally traders from the southern parts of India the Chetti people and yeah they were living in Kampongs near the river because that’s where they were doing all of their international trade and in fact to get here I walked down Harmony Street and on Harmony Street is the main Hindu temple I forget the name of it now but there’s a very very old very famous Hindu temple on Harmony Street right beside the mosque in Kampong Kling and that would have been the center of the Indian traders at that time and then over time they were forced out of that district and their trading ability was limited by the Dutch apparently according to that sign and then they moved to this area and became farmers instead because again back in those days, you know, hundreds of years ago, this would not have been covered in apartment buildings and houses. This all would have been farmland out here. So, I guess they switched to farming from trading.
Hello. Hello. How are you? I’m okay. Where are you from? I’m from Canada. Welcome to Chetty Kampong. Coming. Coming. Coming. Coming. Chetty Kampong. How many days here? Two months. How do you find my like that? Very nice. Very hot. You jungle walk. The jungle walk? Yes. No, I didn’t do a jungle walk. It’s a night market. Okay. The tourist attraction is the jungle walk. I see. Where you can buy anything, you can eat anything, you can drink anything. Yeah. Today I I’m Is this a museum? Is this your house or a museum? My house. Your house. All the handicraft is done by me. Oh okay. So because when I do this one the new students the college student always come to do the research right? Where how and how do you manage to do it? Because especially like this what do you call coconut there you see the coconut. Yep. Yep. Yep. The coconut we have a plantation you see. So all the green one we set it off. So the dry one I bring back. So this is what I do. Okay. Yeah. I came here myself to sort of do research into the Chetty people. Take a chance, you know. Okay.
So when we sit down we are our it is at this time. So make our brain work. Right. Make our brain work. So do something where people never do. See like this one coconut I can make into like that one coconut there. See that? Do you mind if I take some video? Is that okay? That coconut there. There hanging one. This one? No. Ah, that one now. Oh, right there. The light. It’s made of coconut. Ah, I see. So, where the coconut they cut into two and the inside? So, they make it into juice. Oh, I see. Therefore, I went to the market, my friend shop. So, he get me all the good ones. So I bring back here I grind make it nicely I do the pattern and I put like nicely. I see. Can you tell me about the Chetti people? What is their history? I want to say to you my grandfather comes from India. From India. So they do trade and butter where they have a group from all states and they they they under one roof. So when they do trading they stop in Sumatra. When they stops in Sumatra because in Sumatra a lot of people using what they call it herbs what they call it like especially things that can do medicine. Can do medicine and also herbal rampari. So they also do and they sail along the roads of Selat Sumatra. Then after that they cross over the straits of Malacca. They come to this port they call it Pulau Melaka. Okay. So when they they they base there they manage to get a government’s job. When they get the government’s job they are entitled to get a house. Those where you see on top of the hills there are a lot of quarters. If you were a government servant you are entitled to get a quarters. So when they they there for some time few years they were there and they got intermarriage with the local. So they went they got intermarried to the local and they start to do business in the what they call in Malaya and at the same time when they get married then has now wet that where I am you see so when my grandfather comes here and they also bring herbal leaves and herbal stone when the herbal leaf herbal stone just like That is it. Where? Oh, I see. Where herbal stone can cure a lot of skin disease. I see. Skin disease. Yeah. By using herbal stone. I see. See that one? You see the red one? Is from stone. I see.
Uh KL. But yeah, of course. Yeah. Thaipusam like that. Here is already finished in April. Ah, April where we have a 10 days prayers. Then the last day where did they do all the piercing? The piercing in the the last day where 5:00 morning. 5:00 morning people start coming using the yellow one. Say and the Terry. Yeah. The kavadi. Yes. Kavadi. Then from here they will walk to jungle walk. Wow. I see. There’s one temple Sri Viner Morti. That is our temple. I see. So they take the bath there. Take the bath. Inside there’s a big bell like this. The water is as same as mineral. I see very very very clean. See, so when they have the they pierce everything from there, they will walk walk back here. When they walk back here, the one that they carry the milk is for the goddess, right? Where what they believe is they got sickness or anything they make a vow said I already well that this is what I can do for you about more than 3,000 people you know I see so at the night time the there’s a chariot pulled by the cow right so from here they walk to the town ending at the same temple where the goddess is from there they take to bring here and round around in Melaka then after ending you send back there. We have to send back there because this one is the mother this one is the wife outside is the husband. I see. This is what we believe. And this pair is always in front where you can go in and do the street dance. Okay. Oh, interesting. You can do the street dance where people from everywhere will be waiting and watching this pair. And I already make last two years one pair where I put in the temple. I see in the temple that is temple’s property. So like this I do where people can always family can take photograph. Oh, I’ve been to Portuguese village. Nice. Right. Well, it was a real pleasure to meet you. Yeah. Thank you very much. You been to Jungle Walk? Yeah, I would like to. Yeah, maybe someday. But Morton Village. Okay. Yeah, I’ve been to Morton. Yeah, Morton Village. Yeah, a Portuguese settlement. Yep, I went there too. Yeah, quite a few places. All right, thank you. The last one is jungle where the baba where the Chinese cannot speak Chinese. Okay. All right. Okay. Thank you very much. Yeah, you too.
I just had an interesting conversation with that man. You probably saw just a few seconds or a minute or two of my conversation because yeah, my GoPro right in the middle overheated and shut down and I wasn’t able to get it up and running again. So yeah, but very interesting man telling a lot of stories about his trips to India and then he was telling me I couldn’t quite make out all the fine details but giving me a little bit of the story of the Chetti people being international traders and going to Sumatra and they were heavily involved in medicines like herbal medicines and remedies and then they were trading and then came to Melaka and then eventually moved out here and he was saying that this land this property was owned by the temple and then because of that they can’t sell it so this has been preserved as a traditional village gorgeous place I mean what a it definitely classifies as a hidden gem of Melaka because I don’t think a lot of people come out here or know about this area. But I get part of the reason it’s been preserved so well is that the land, the houses can’t be sold, some of them anyway, because they’re owned by the temple and the temple rents it to the people here. They pay rent to the temple and that’s how it makes some money to maintain the temple. So yeah, what a beautiful area. Got a little village on one side and then because this is modern Malaysia, Melaka, giant hotel and condominiums right on the other side. Interesting.
Honestly, coming out here, I really didn’t know what to expect. And I certainly did not expect it to be the way it is to have temples like this and to have such an Indian feeling and atmosphere to the whole neighborhood and to have a classic Malaysian kampong feeling as well.
Yeah. And with Hindu temples, they’re generally closed during the day. If you want to experience the life of the temple, you have to come here early in the morning or in the evening. I find early in the morning is the best when they have the prayers and the traditional music playing. But during the day, you have to be content for the most part with looking at it from the outside as I’m doing. But yeah, what a contrast here between this temple and the hotel over there.
Yeah, I don’t really know how far Kampung Chetti extends like walking in any direction from the temple. How many blocks you would cover to still be within the Indian community, the Chetti community? I’m not really sure but it’s fascinating because it looks so much like how you would picture a traditional Malay village. So even though it is a Chetti village, Kampong Chetti, a culture based in India, southern India in Hinduism, it feels very reminiscent of Kampong Baru in Kuala Lumpur and Kampong Morten here in Melaka. You know, these traditional Malay houses on stilts. And I think as you go walking around, if you go from it’s following these laneways, you’ll see a lot of traditional architecture like this.
But I honestly wasn’t expecting to find this village atmosphere and to find such a vibrant Hindu culture still here. I thought it would be more just like a normal street, more about the history than the modern times. But as you can see, yeah, there’s a lot of interest here. Traditional architecture in these buildings and these houses.
I’m still just walking around the laneways of Kampong Chetti. Very interesting, very quiet, very much like a village setting other than the towers behind it. Classic Malaysia.
And I was just thinking back to some of the stories that man was telling me. And one of them was about these two large statues that he said that he made them himself, a man and a woman. And I didn’t really understand what he was telling me, but it sounded very similar to Thaipusam, the big festival at Batu Caves that I’ve been there celebrating Lord Murugan. And everything he was telling me sounded very similar to that there was a procession starting from here that took symbols of God. So he kept saying a goddess and then a procession going down into the center of Melaka to the Hindu temple there and then the piercings through the skin carrying the kavadi pails of milk on your head as an offering and then the procession comes back here to this temple and they pour out their offering of milk and he kept saying to the goddess and part of that celebration was this statue of a man and a woman. So, I guess it isn’t the same as Lord Murugan. It wasn’t Thaipusam, but it was something very, very similar to that. I have to snatch like a minute or two of video here and there. Any longer than that and the heat, I mean, it’s so hot today and my GoPro just shuts down almost instantly. So, it can’t run for very long, I think. And I’m going to get the classic beep beep beep any second now. And my GoPro is going to shut down again.
If I didn’t know better, I mean, I would honestly say I was in Kampong Baru right now. Walking through these alleyways. Feels very very familiar.
Oh, this is this is interesting. Different architecture there on the roof. Roof tiles. Another temple. Very different style though.
There’s the interior of this temple. Must be quite old, much older than the other one that I saw. Has a sign there for the Shiva Sri Bala Subramaniam the temple priest. It says yeah what a fascinating place.
I love how the the houses are decorated giving no confusion about where you are.
This could be the home of the temple priest as is a phone number on the front there.
Just leaving from Kampung Chetti. That’s how I came out. The main entrance where I went in. The gateway is just up ahead here. And as I’m looking at these buildings, one thing I’m thinking about, something I didn’t mention when I was talking down by the river about all the various kampongs and the Shahbandars and how there was very little physical evidence of these communities of the Chetti people down by the river. And one of the reasons for that of course is that in the days of the Melaka Sultanate everything was made out of wood and thatch. So during the battle with the Portuguese and others of course most of these houses or a lot of them would have been burned down and those that didn’t burn down they would have rotted away over the centuries. So all evidence of these the communities of the Javanese, the Gujaratis, the Tamil Hindu, the Chetti has all disappeared over time. And the buildings that remain today are all of the stone buildings that were built later on, the Chinese shophouses, things that were built by the Dutch. So, the history of these communities has all disappeared because it was all made out of wood as you can see. And I did read about this before I came out here. I knew there was a museum. I didn’t see it until just now, but here is the museum. And of course, since I live on Planet Doug, that means the museum is closed. It does have visiting hours there, but it doesn’t look like it’s ever open. It has a fencing around it. The gate is chained up. So, even though it’s supposed to be open today, yeah, it’s just not. The Chetti Museum, that would be very interesting to check out. So it says this residential area has been gazetted under the preservation and conservation of cultural heritage enactment 1988. Gateway to Kampung Chetti behind me. Only took me 4 hours to cross this street to wait for a break in the traffic. But now that I’m leaving here, I’m heading back into downtown Melaka to the historical core to the river because now I want to follow that story up with the story of Kampong Jawa, which is an equally interesting story. I’m assuming I can remember some of the details. I haven’t reached the area where I want to pick up my story about Kampung Jawa, but it’s such a beautiful day and it’s so scenic here. I thought I should shoot a little bit of video as I walk along. All the colorful buildings on the side here and the river boat crews going by.
That’s how the smart people travel. They’re not out here hoofing it in the hot sun.
Another cruise boat going by. That’s a big one. Takes up most of the river. Barely have two of those boats be able to go past each other. But we’re getting closer and closer to where I want to pick up my story of the Melaka Sultanate, the Shahbandar, and the Kampong. Almost there.
Gorgeous day here in Melaka. Check that out.
And the river cruise boats are bustling. So many of them going up and down the river. Big ones. Really full, too. But here is where I’m going to pick up my story. And as you can see, it makes sense because there’s a bridge. And what’s the name of that bridge? It is the bridge Kampong Jawa. The Jambatan Kampong Jawa. So this is the area where I can tell the story of the Javanese community.
Now, at the beginning of the video, I talked about how casual visitors to Melaka get presented with a very simple story. The colonial, the European colonizers on one side of the river, Jonker Street, and kind of a Chinatown on the other. And those who are perhaps a bit more adventurous would head up the river and they might explore Kampong Morten. And Kampong Morten is presented as a classic traditional Malay village, but yet Kampong Morten is the direct descendant of Kampong Jawa. And yeah, it’s quite an interesting story. Yeah, got another cruise boat coming up the river. So at the beginning of the video, I talked about how the Javanese, they were the ones who kept Melaka alive through rice. So they brought shipments of rice here from Java and because of that their kampong was at the very mouth of the river and also because they were ship builders. So they occupied a shoreline along the Melaka coast along the Strait of Melaka and that section at the very beginning where they unloaded the rice and brought that into warehouses there. So that’s where they were located, a prime position along the river. But then over time under the Portuguese and the Dutch, Kampong Jawa and the Javanese were forced to move. They were forced out of their prime position at the mouth of the river. And in fact, they were still on this side of the river, but here. So in this on this side of the river, this is where Kampong Jawa moved to under the Dutch and the Portuguese off in this district.
And then as land pressure increased, Kampung Jawa and the Javanese moved from this side of the river over this bridge essentially to the other side. So this was the new Kampong Jawa over here. And if you look at Google maps, you can see that Kampong Jawa was nestled in a bend of the river right here. So where the river curves around this area in here became the new Kampong Jawa. And I believe this laneway right here actually bears witness to that history. I think it’s called Kampong Jawa. And you can see Oh, Jalan Jawa. Yeah, Jalan Jawa right here. And on the street sign, you can see Kampong Jawa is off in this direction. So, eventually the Javanese community was forced away from prime land right alongside the mouth of the river to a new location on right over there. Little bit still a good location, but not quite as good. And then they were forced across the river to this neighborhood right here. And looking around, you might think to yourself, hm, this doesn’t quite feel right. You know, based on everything I’ve been talking about, these Kampongs and the traditional housing, and this is all cement and stonework. And you’re absolutely right because even though Kampung Jawa was located here a long time ago, it was forced to move one more time. This district was being developed by the British and the British wanted to build marketplaces and a bus station and a bunch of other development all through this area. And because of that, the Javanese community was forced to move one last time. And where did they move to? Their final home. You may have guessed it, Kampong Morten. That land out there was empty land at the time. It was very swampy, very mangroveesque kind of land. And it was purchased for the Javanese community. There was a loan given out by the government or purchased by the government. I can’t quite remember the details but the Javanese community from Kampong Jawa was relocated from here to Kampong Morten. And again, you might be thinking, hey, that doesn’t make any sense because isn’t Kampong Morten presented as a traditional Malay village with Malay architecture and the stilt houses, all of that kind of thing. And you would be right. But the reason for that is by the time the people of Kampong Jawa were moved again to Kampong Morten, they had almost fully integrated with the local Malay culture. They were somewhat indistinguishable from the local Malay people married into the families here and now Kampong Morten today is the direct descendant as I said of Kampong Jawa which was one of the original Kampongs of the Melaka Sultanate under its own Shahbandar.
So, I think that brings me to the end of my story basically. And I suppose to really wind it up, I should walk to Kampung Morten to give you a visual of that. But I think I have walked far enough today. And I think people are very familiar with Kampong Morten. And I’m not going to walk all the way to Kampung Morten today. This is the end of my walk, I think. So yeah, I hope that was an interesting story. As I said, it started off because I just happened to spot Kampong Chetti, the Chetti Village on Google Maps, and I thought, huh, I’d never heard of that place before. I became curious about it, and I made plans to walk there to take a look at it. But then when I started researching what it is, who the Chetti people are, how they came to Malaysia under the Melaka Sultanate, then that led me to the whole story of the Shahbandar and how the Melaka Sultanate was organized and divided up for maritime trade at that time. And that led into this whole, you know, the whole looking into the history of Kampong Chetti and now Kampong Jawa. And with that, time to walk along the river, head back towards the historic core, find myself something to eat and a cold drink. But yeah, really enjoyed that a lot. Kampung Chetti in particular was brand new to me. I hadn’t seen anything out there before and it was a much more it looked very much like a small like a fusion really of a traditional Malay village with traditional Indian Hindu culture. Yeah, really really quite something to see and I don’t think a lot of people that visit Melaka managed to get out that far. So that’s it. If you made it this far in the video, shout out to the Crunch Club. If you watch the video all the way to the end, put CC in the comments to let me know. And right after this conclusion, I’ll be putting in a 3D like flyover map to show you everything I walked today. And that can show you the location of Kampong Chetti, Kampong Jawa, and the downtown core. You can get a sense of the geography. And yeah, thanks again. Shout out to everyone supporting Planet Doug Video Productions either through Malaysia’s touch and go e-wallet. I appreciate that very much. Keeps me lurching from day to day in my little life making these videos. And yeah, there’s the Planet Doug Patreon is available for anyone that would like to support what I’m doing. And the Planet Doug buy me a coffee platform. That’s all out there. There are QR codes you can scan and links in the video description as always. So that’s it. I will treat you to the sight of the Melaka River one more time. This beautiful area. This is a known photo spot with a cruise boat going by.
Two of them, two big ones. So, yeah, they got to be very careful. It widens a little bit here, so there’s enough room, but you got to be careful.
You go water skiing behind one of these things.
And with that last look, shutting down. And I’ll see you in the next video.