VIDEO DESCRIPTION:
Yesterday the Melaka River was almost completely empty — boats stranded on mud flats, monitor lizards walking across the riverbed, and zero cruise boats running. Today I’m walking down to the mouth of the river to find out why.
It turns out the Melaka River isn’t really a normal river anymore. Right at the river mouth sits a tidal barrage (a set of sluice gates, pumps and a dam) that lets engineers control the water level like a long, skinny swimming pool. They keep it at a steady 2.5–3 metres so the tourist boats can run… until heavy rain creates a flood risk. Then they simply open the gates and drain the whole river.
In this walkabout I:
- Show the drained vs full river
- Walk right up to the tidal barrage and try to understand how the gates and pumps work
- Explore the confusing geography around the international ferry terminal
- Pass through Heeren Street and Jonker Street
- Hunt down and finally buy traditional Melaka samsu (and a 37% herbal tonic)
- Taste both drinks at the end
If you’ve ever wondered why the Melaka River always looks the same height, or why it sometimes suddenly disappears, this video explains the whole system.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Good morning. Good morning from the crows as well. The crows of Melaka. Yeah, welcome back to Planet Doug. Welcome back to Melaka. And I woke up to a very wet world this morning. I stepped outside and as soon as I stepped outside, I kind of turned on my microphones and things like that. And just from stepping from outside, from inside to outside, everything was covered in dripping moisture. Like going from air conditioning to the outside world. It is so humid today. And I thought I wouldn’t be able to go anywhere because it was going to be raining, but it isn’t actually raining right now, but it has been raining a lot. And that is kind of suitable because where I’m walking to this morning is, you know, as always, the Melaka River. But I want to look into something that I just learned about yesterday. Yesterday I went walking up and down Heeren Street. Beautiful hot sunny day. So I got really good bright sunny weather for that video. But while I was down by the river, I noticed that the river was empty. All the water had flooded out of the river. It was like down to the mud flats. Even the river tourist boats were just sitting on the mud at the bottom of the river. I’d never seen the river like that before. I’d always seen it at exactly the same height. I just learned that the depth is about 2 and a half to 3 meters. So it’s just deep enough for the river boats to go up and down. And yesterday, there was no water in the river. It was practically empty. And you just saw the mud flats. And I even saw quite a number of big monitor lizards sitting on the mud and just trying to work their way through the mud. You could see how soft and squishy the mud was. This was all river silt, right? Silt that had come down out of the hills, out of the mountains during rainstorms and floods the river basin. And that’s a big part of the history of the Melaka River because when you go all the way back to the Melaka Sultanate when Melaka was a center of international trade and there were hundreds and hundreds of ships going in and out of this river all the time. It was much wider in those days. So the river was quite wide, much bigger than it is now. And then over the centuries, the river and the river mouth started to silt up. Every time there was a flood, it would bring down mud from the interior of Malaysia and the mud would settle and then silt would build up here just as you can see right now. Look at that. How low it is. We’re at low tide right now. And you can see the mud flats. And over the centuries, the mud built up so much that it was no longer open to big ships anymore. It wasn’t deep enough for these ships to go in and out.
I’m walking somewhere in particular this morning. I’m not just out wandering, but now that I’m here, yeah, let’s walk in this direction a little bit. There’s a couple of things that are interesting over here. And you can see just how low the water is here at the mouth of the river. But what struck me is all this sand. I don’t know where this sand came from. Right out there, you can see the classic mud flats you see along the coast of Malaysia and along the river shores. But there’s mud out there. That’s all the silt. But there’s actually sand down here. And I wonder where all this sand came from. You can see that these river boats are basically stranded. They’re sitting on the mud right now. The water level is really low, and that’s because the tide has gone out. We’re at low tide right now. But something else I noticed way out there. Look at that cruise ship. Absolutely massive.
Not surprisingly. I’ve never been on a cruise boat. I’ve never gone for a cruise. I’ve never even gone on board a big ship like that. That would be pretty fascinating.
There’s the cruise boat way out there. Let’s see if I can get a little bit of a closer look at it. Wow. I mean, that is bigger than many apartment buildings, right? How many stories is that? I mean, that’s a huge multi-story building of this incredible length and all floating on the water. What a sight. And they did have plans in Melaka long ago to build a set of docks that could handle ships this big. And they’re going to turn it into a big cruise ship destination. But they never managed to finish that project. That’s crazy. Looking back towards the mud flat and the sand here. And over there is another classic barge.
And these are essential to Melaka. They have to constantly run these barges to scoop up all the silt and the mud that accumulates here because they still have international ferries. In fact, I think just as I was coming here, one of the big international ferries that goes over to Sumatra just came up the river, but it looks like the boat could barely make it through the river right now at low tide like this. So they have to keep clearing out the silt with these dredges. To be honest though, I’ve never seen one operating. I’ve seen them all up and down the river sitting there like that, but I’ve never seen one at work. But I assume they do work when I’m not looking. To get back to my story from yesterday, as I said, I noticed how low the river was. And not just low, it was like somebody had pulled the plug and drained a swimming pool. They basically emptied the river. And I was curious about that and I started thinking about what had happened and I started doing some research online and I discovered and I kind of knew a little bit about this before that the Melaka River has undergone extensive engineering for flood control and things like that. If you go all up and down the Melaka River, you know, as far as I rode my bike about 10 kilometers, I guess up and the entire edges of the river, the whole way has been engineered with sluice gates controlling flooding, the river water flow, culverts, all kinds of things to make the river more pleasant, to clean it up, but also to control flooding. And in the last few days, we’ve had really, really heavy rain. So here in Melaka City, like the world heritage zone, which is extremely valuable, there’s a risk of flooding. Back in the old days before all of this intense engineering at high tide, there’s extreme tides here from the Melaka Strait. High tide would come in and the water level would rise high enough to overcome the river banks and some of the classic shophouses and the old buildings of Melaka they would be flooded. So the engineering was to prevent that from happening and this became even more important when Melaka became a world heritage zone because they needed to protect it. So I was reading about that and we had all these heavy heavy rains. So what I thought happened was that up in the hills inside the country of Malaysia during these heavy heavy rains I thought they had taken the sluice gates the dams and closed them to let the water build up there and not have all of it flood down the river all at once. Then that’s why the river was empty. So that’s what I thought had happened. They basically stopped the water behind gates and dams in the countryside and basically turned off the flow of water and that’s why the river was so empty. But it turns out that wasn’t the case at all. Well, that might have some impact. I’m not really sure. But it turns out that there is a gate right here at the mouth of the river that was designed to moderate the river levels. They can actually control how deep the water is. And it’s this place right across from me right now.
So that structure over there is the Melaka River tidal barrage. Basically a dam, a set of sluice gates and pumps that can be operated to control the depth of the Melaka River. And maybe I can switch over to Google Maps satellite view right here and give you a breakdown of how that works. Just for fun, I thought I would start with Google Maps satellite view zoomed all the way out to here. You can see the city of Melaka down here on the coast where my mouse pointer is circling. And this, of course, is the Melaka Strait. And I’m not entirely sure about this, but I think the Melaka River actually has its origins as far away as Tampin right here, which is at the southern base of the Titiwangsa Mountains and Batang Melaka over here. So I think there are two rivers. I don’t know the names of the rivers, but there’s one river carrying water out of the base of the Titiwangsa mountain range. So there’s water flowing from this direction and then water coming from this direction. And where these two rivers merge, then the name changes to the Melaka River, and then the Melaka River winds and curves and flows all the way down to the coast here. And the flood control measures begin as far away as these bodies of waters that you see here. So if we zoom in on this reservoir, the Durian Tunggal reservoir, this is actually an artificial body of water made by a dam. And if we turn on full satellite view and then we zoom in here, we can see the dam. And this was created mainly to provide a water source for the state of Melaka. But it also controls the water levels in the Melaka River. So if it’s a very very dry time of year and the river level has dropped, they can release more water from this dam and from this reservoir and it flows into the Melaka River. And if there is heavy flooding, they can use this dam and this reservoir to prevent downstream flooding. And if you follow the Melaka River, as I said, you’ll find countless, well, not countless, but you will find a lot of smaller sluice gates and dams and different systems that they’ve engineered over the years to control the water flow of the Melaka River. But now let’s zoom in all the way down to Melaka and switch back to default view because this shows something that really confused me for the longest time. Here’s Melaka right here and the opening of the Melaka River into the Melaka Strait. And of course you can follow the winding curving Melaka River. This is where all the Melaka River cruise boats go up and down this section here through the historic district. But what always confused me was what happened right here at this spot in particular. Maybe we can go to satellite view. That’ll show it a little bit better. If you zoom in here, there’s a big set of cement here, a curve. It almost looks like a place where you could sit beside the water. There’s a cement barrier here. And then here’s the Melaka River. There’s a cruise boat right there, but you would think the Melaka River would flow in this direction and then just go straight through here. And I was wondering, well, this looks artificial. Like why did they do this? And then again, zooming out a little bit, you can see that the water is blocked here and then flows off in this direction, goes down this channel and then out here and then flows into the Melaka Strait. So the actual river is flowing down here, then goes in a wide curve and then continues this way. There is no actual flow in this section here. And that always confused me. I had no idea why they did that. But now that I understand the flood control measures, everything makes sense. So, let’s see if we can get rid of these labels to clean up the image a little bit. There we go. So, the key to this whole mystery is right here. And that’s where I’m going today to look at this. This is the barrage that I’ve been talking about. And these are the gates right here. And as you’ll see later in the video, there’s a gate here that can be raised or lowered. So they take these gates, raise them above the normal level of the Melaka Strait and it basically is like a little dam. So it’s basically a small dam that blocks the river flow and then by blocking the water here the water level rises and rises and rises and then you end up with like 3 meters deep water extending all the way back along the Melaka River. So, as I said, it basically turns the Melaka River into a swimming pool because there’s a dam here and they close the gates of the dam and then all the water in the river rises to 3 meters and then when there’s a risk of flooding, they open the gates on this dam right here and all of that water that had been held back suddenly floods out into the Melaka Strait. And then this river pretty much empties and goes almost all the way down to a mud flat and there’s very very little water flow that you can see. So that that’s the basic idea that right here is the dam and when they close the gates of the dam that raises the water level all the way up the Melaka River and when there’s a risk of flooding they open the gates and let all the water drain away and that prevents flooding from occurring here in the historic district of Melaka. So that is the basic idea. They made a decision about how deep the river should be for the tourist cruise boats to be able to navigate. And that’s between 2 and a half 3 meters something like that. And then they designed this as a gateway, a dam right at the river mouth. And they basically close the gate. It’s like a small dam essentially. And then the water piles up behind it until the river gets to 3 meters deep and then they leave it there and then they adjust the sluice gates and the pumps depending on what the tide is doing. So if high tide comes in and it starts to get higher than the river level then they start pumping the water out of the river and then depending on what is happening with the tides and rainfall they can use the sluice gates and the pumps right over there to control the water flow so that the river itself it doesn’t go wildly up and down in terms of the depth. It stays at a steady 3 meters deep no matter what’s going on out here. So, you can see out here there is no control over the depth. This is controlled by the tides. And since we’re at low tide right now, you can see just what a drastic difference there is. And if I come back here in probably 12 hours to see high tide, you’ll see the water has risen all the way up to there. So here the water is going up and down, up and down, up and down constantly. But because of this dam and the pumps over there, the river, the Melaka River itself stays at a steady 3 meters all the time. But then we come to extreme conditions like the last few days where we had heavy heavy rainfalls and they have an automated system I think of sensors up and down the river and here at the dam and of course people are monitoring it as well. And the heavy rainfall reached such an extreme level that they decided even the dam and the pumps wouldn’t be able to handle the overflow and there was a risk of Melaka flooding. So here at this dam they just opened the gates. They basically drained the river. They emptied the river because because of this dam the river kind of functions a little bit like a swimming pool. They block. This is the drain for the pool. They block it and the pool fills up. So the river stays 3 meters deep. But when there’s a risk of flooding, they pull the plug, open the gate, and then all the water in the swimming pool just drains out. And now when all the heavy rain comes down out of the mountain sides so from the countryside then the river is empty and it can absorb all of this extra water flowing in. And I also read that they do this to remove a lot of the silt as well. That when in these heavy rains it’s bringing a lot of the silt down. And then when they pull the plug and empty the pool, it creates like this big rush of water leaving the river and it carries a lot of that silt out of the river and out to the Melaka Strait. So that is what I saw yesterday. And looking across at the International Ferry Terminal, there’s the Indomal Kingdom. Goes back and forth from Sumatra. Oh, you can see people passengers coming through immigration. They just left from immigration, these people, and they’re all about to board the ship to head to Sumatra. Very cool. But what I’m going to do right now is walk over to that dam, the barrage, because I just want to get a closer look at it. So, that is my mission for this little walkabout. And I want to see what the river looks like because like once they drain it, how long do they leave it drained? Because it has a significant financial impact on tourism here. Yesterday, Sunday, when I was doing my walk up and down Heeren Street, it was busy. Like this weekend, Saturday and Sunday, Melaka was rocking and rolling with so many visitors. And of course all of these visitors, they want to go on a river cruise. That’s one of the biggest attractions here. Tourists, yeah, we need things to do. So we really enjoy hopping on a river cruise. And when they shut it down because there’s no water in the river, they lose a lot of money. Even in like one busy Sunday where there were no river boats running, at least none that I saw. Yeah, they lose a ton of money. So they want to fill the river up as quickly as possible. Once they drain the river, they don’t want to leave it that way for very long. So right now, Monday morning, I don’t know. Maybe they closed the gates and the river has gone back up to normal levels or maybe it’s still down to the mud flats. I’m actually hoping I was hoping that this morning it would be still empty and then I was going to go for a long walk up and down the river and just see what has been exposed because with the water gone, you see a lot more along the edges. And I took some photos yesterday. I can put those photos in here. And I saw all kinds of things that I never noticed before because it had always been underwater, like that corrugated steel barrier down there along the edge of the river. Yeah, I never saw that before because it was always covered up and a lot of wildlife maybe would be uncovered. I saw a lot more monitor lizards than before. I’m just curious what would happen to the otter, the monitor lizards. So, I was hoping to be able to walk along a good length of the river and see all the changes, but the reading I did yesterday told me that they really want to refill the river as quickly as possible. So, chances are that it’s already back to normal. And I’m going to come around the corner here and see. And yeah, actually it looks like everything is back to normal again.
That’s kind of disappointing. I was hoping the river would still be empty and it would look drastically different, but I guess they emptied it for a brief amount of time because of a risk of heavy flooding, but now they closed the gates and they allowed the river to fill back up again. So, I don’t know if it’s back to its normal height. It looks a little bit shallow to me. Yesterday, these boats, there was only two boats here, and both of them were resting on the mud because the water had been drained away, and there were no river cruise boats operating. They had a barrier up here. They’re basically saying it was closed for the day, but everything is back to normal now. But I’m still going to walk around to the other side and then go down the river. And I want to go get a closer look at these floodgates. See what they look like up close. The difference is striking. I was really glad to be able to see it drained yesterday to truly understand how the system works because yeah, this is how it normally looks more or less. But yesterday all of this water was gone. And then right down here, I mean, I always thought these laterite steps, this would be the end of sort of the wall along the river, but it turns out there’s another flat area here, and then there’s another wall of steel barriers sunk down into the earth here. So, there’s like gradual steps.
Yeah. And yesterday, didn’t see any of these. No boats going up and down the river. And then looking in this direction, all I saw was like mud flats and then really really big monitor lizards. And across there, that’s Heeren Street over there and the tourist police. And right in front of the tourism police here, this was all rocks. Big rocky shore all exposed when the water was drained away. And these giant monitor lizards were all sitting on the rocks there. They had nowhere to hide in the water anymore. Yeah. Night and day difference between when they drain the river and then fill it back up again.
There’s the gateway and entrance onto Jonker Street, the market. Busy commercial street or Jonker Street. I think that’s how the Dutch would kind of say it. And I spent all of yesterday walking up and down this street over here the Heeren Street which runs parallel to Jonker Street and whereas Jonker Street over here is all about shops. It was like the commercial district when it was laid out by the Dutch and Heeren Street was a residential street for the top officials and administrators of the Dutch East India Company. Yeah, very interesting to explore that street in depth. But one thing I noticed as I was leaving was this. I don’t know if how long it’s been here, but I don’t think I’ve ever noticed it before. But it’s essentially a drinking water refilling station, which is very, very cool. I wish I’d known this was here before. I would have made use of it, I guess. But it’s free and filtered water. All you need to do is push this button here and drinking water comes out. So, you can refill your water bottles here. It needs a bigger sign or something. There it is. Ayer minum. But yeah, it should have a big sign in English like saying free drinking water or free fresh pure drinking water, something like that because I think most people walk right by it and don’t even know that it’s there.
And there it is again. Heeren Street. You can see just how narrow it is, especially compared to Jonker Street. Jonker Street is much much wider than that. And this when the Peranakan Chinese bought up all of those properties and expanded them and renovated them and turned them into these beautiful buildings that it was known as Millionaires’ Row because all the Peranakan Chinese who made a lot of money during the rubber plantation and tin mining boom. Yeah, they had all this money to spend and they built beautiful houses all up and down Heeren Street. Yeah.
So, yeah, right over here when the river was empty, when they drained the river, all of this was rock. This was a big rocky beach. So, in fact, oh, there’s one of there’s one of the monitor lizards. You see it out there? Looks like a looks like an alligator, a crocodile going through the river.
That’s probably one of the ones that I saw yesterday here on the rocks when the river was empty. I’m sure he’s glad that the river is back to normal.
And just to recap, one important thing that I talked about in my Heeren Street video is that back in the days when the Dutch laid out the streets and then the Dutch built the original houses, they were like tunnel houses. So the entrance to the house was over there on Heeren Street. And then the house itself would be like 200 to 250 feet long, like a narrow narrow tunnel house. And the rear entrance to the house would be here. And back in those days, this wasn’t a street. This was the Melaka Strait. So all of these houses here, this is the rear entrance to one of the original Dutch tunnel houses that stretches like 250 feet from here all the way to the street front. And this this would have been all water. The Melaka Strait. So standing where I am now, I would have been up above my head in water because I’d be standing out in the middle of the Melaka Strait right now. And all these houses now, they have driveways, garages to park their cars. But back in the days of the Dutch East India Company and in the days of the Portuguese, all up and down here, you would have seen docks at the back of all of these buildings. There would have been a pier or a dock and boats would be coming in and out unloading people and goods there. There was no streets and no traffic at here at all. Yeah, fascinating history to this area. And I’m pretty sure the average visitor who comes here for the weekend to try some good Nyonya food and go for a river cruise, they probably don’t really have any idea of what they’re looking at here with these the Dutch tunnel houses and all of them rebuilt and renovated like this beautiful place by the Peranakan Chinese community. I think a surprisingly few visitors to Melaka even make it this far outside of the main drag. I’m on the river still, but on the other side. And this is the Casa del Rio. Luxurious five-star accommodation there, right on the river. And now we’re getting a look from the other side. That’s Jonker Street. And there’s the bridge over there. Dutch Square, the Stadthuys over there. And this is the customs museum that I visited just two or three days ago as well, the Flor de la Mar, the maritime museum right there. And here is where the engineering starts to kick in and the river does something very unusual because normally the river would have just continued flowing straight from here and then through this area out to the Melaka Strait. But I don’t really know the history of the like the engineering exactly how they did it. But they have this new channel over here. So they blocked this off and this new channel goes around the island where the international ferry port is located and then at the end of this channel that’s where they have the dam that controls the water level. So yeah, it would be quite something to be standing here knowing it’s going to happen that the gates are going to be released and the water is going to be drained away and then you can see the water, you know, rushing down this way, flowing back out into the Melaka Strait and then the water level going down, down, down, down, down, down, down.
Most of them have run away because they heard my voice, but there were hundreds of fish. You can see a couple of them down there. Kind of I think they’re chewing on the edges of the stone here where lichen and things like that have built up. They’re basically feeding all along here. I saw hundreds of fish, but they’ve all sunk down to the bottom waiting for me to go away so they can start snacking again. That’s a really good sign. I’m told that the river was in a real mess originally. It was polluted, stinky. There was no wildlife, no fish anymore. And then since they did all of the huge projects developing the river, it’s pretty much come back to life. And you get a lot of fish in there now. Catfish. I saw some really, really big catfish, river otter, monitor lizards. So yeah, the river has really come back to life.
I’m still walking along the channel and the dam that I want to visit is just around the corner on the other side of that bridge over there. And this is the international ferry terminal. It’s a really confusing part of Melaka’s geography for me. I keep calling it an island, but I guess technically it’s not. It’s more like an artificial peninsula because it is connected to the land over here. So, in theory, you should be able to just walk into this peninsula, but there’s a fence here because this is an international ferry terminal. It’s sealed off and there’s a fence over there. And I don’t know if you can get through it. I maybe you can, but when I went there, it was closed and locked. So, you can’t you don’t have access from that side. So from here where it’s a peninsula, you can’t get onto it. And then from this other side, it’s an island and you have to go across that bridge to get to it. So I for a long time I was really confused about the layout of this place.
And I think when you see one of those huge cruise ships out on the Melaka Strait just sort of sitting there that I saw this morning, I think they sit there and then passengers from the boat can get it from the ship can get into smaller boats and those boats take them to here to the ferry terminal and they get off here and then they do a tour of Melaka and at the end of the day they get back on their smaller boats. I’ve seen them using like even like the lifeboats from these cruise ships. They pile into the lifeboats, take them to shore, and then the lifeboats take them back out to the cruise ship. Then they go along their merry way.
Well, we are pretty much there. This is the bridge going across to the ferry terminal. And this is the channel where they control the river depth. And there you can see just a little bit of the dam on the other side. Can’t make out much detail from over here. A lot of cruise boats are parked here. And I think you can get a pretty good look. I’m going to walk up onto the bridge, of course, look down on it from that bridge. It’s a traffic like a car bridge, but you can also walk or ride your bicycle across it. And from this side, I don’t think you can get very close. Oh, look at that. Good timing. There’s the Indomal Kingdom backing up and getting ready to depart for Sumatra. Yeah. Though out there at low tide, the river is extremely shallow. So, they would have to be very careful about where they go. They do not want to get stuck. And of course, with a dam like this, there’s a lot of concern for security. So, it’s not like I’m going to be able to go in there and get a close look. There’s going to be security fences and I cannot continue beyond this point. As you can tell, no entry from here. And they have everything blocked off. But yeah, there’s the gate, the dam from this side. And going to try to get a look at it from the other side of the bridge, but I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to do that at all. Let’s take a look. There’s the bridge. I’ll go up onto the bridge in a few minutes. Oh, I don’t want to walk into that ditch, but it looks like there’s some sort of a road, small roadway here heading down to the water’s edge. They’re advertising the Venice of Melaka, Pulau Berlon. I don’t know whether they plan on building something here in the future. Riverfront property, but yeah. Okay, this is surprisingly open. I didn’t realize I could get this close to the dam on this side.
It’s right over there. There’s the dam. And as I said, it isn’t just a dam. They also have a set of powerful pumps in there with culverts and they can pump water as well. So they have fine control over the river levels. So basically, I guess what I’m saying is when you see the Melaka River, don’t really think of it as a river. That’s more like a long skinny swimming pool. And they control the depth of the pool water here. This is basically the drain for the pool. And oh, this is cool.
The Indomal ferry just getting underway. Good timing here on Planet Doug. I can get down here and get a view of this ferry going underneath the main bridge.
Yeah, you can just see the water behind it. Whoa, two of them. That seems like odd timing that they would have two of them going through at the same time. Such a narrow passage to get through. But I guess they know what they’re doing.
Huh? The Indomal Sovereign.
But I was just saying when you look at the propellers at the back of the boat, you can see it’s churning up really muddy muddy water because it’s very close to the bottom right now. It’s so shallow.
And this might be one of the boats that goes in and out from the cruise ship. Like it looks like a lifeboat. I think that might be attached to the cruise ship bringing passengers in and out. Just guessing though. I don’t really know that for sure. The Indomal Sovereign. I’ve been on that boat and I’ve been on the other one too, the Indomal Kingdom. I’ve gone back and forth to Sumatra many times on these Indomal fast ferries, so I know them quite well.
So, I wish I could tell you exactly how this works, but I don’t. It looks like they have Are those hydraulics? Yeah, hydraulic rams for raising and lowering something. So, I guess the gates that we’re looking at, the spillway right here, they’ve decided that the river level should be set right there. And then yesterday when there was risk of flooding, I guess they use those hydraulic rams to lower each one of these basically one, two, or three of them depending on how much control they want to have. And then the water from the river from the Melaka River swimming pool would just pour out into here and drain away into the Melaka Strait.
But I’m wondering how much more can they raise it? Like is this close to the limit or could they raise it another 2 feet, 5 feet, 10 feet? Like how high can they raise these? Because basically if they raise this level by 1 meter, that means the depth of the entire river would go up by 1 meter because it’s essentially functioning like a dam on a lake. But looking at it from here, I can’t tell how much higher it can go. Maybe another two or three feet, but not not that much higher, I don’t think.
And I understand that there are big pumping systems as well. And I read online that I should be able to see the opening like when they’re pumping water out of the river that there should be some openings here and the water would be forced out by the pumps. But I’m not seeing anything like that.
That is very cool. The Melaka swimming pool basically. And this is the drain plug that they can open and close.
So right now at low tide, well it’s kind of medium tide now. I guess you can see the difference between this would be the Melaka Strait and the river is what 5 feet 6 feet higher than the Melaka Strait right now. And then at high tide, this would go up and up and up and up and maybe they meet at the top. I don’t really know. It would be interesting to come back here at high tide to see the difference. You can see the barnacles there. That would probably be the high tide mark, right? Yeah, that would make sense.
I think I just spotted another feature of this dam. I think over there on the far right, you can see a much taller door. I think that is a lock system so that at least a small boat could go into that lock. They open the gate and then they raise the water level up to the river and then the boat can go into the Melaka River. And if a boat wants to leave, they can enter the lock on that side, go in here and then they lower they will close the gate on the far side, lower the water level, open the gate here and then the boat can go out. But it would be restricted to only boats that fit into that width over there. Maybe 20 feet across at the most. 15 20 feet.
And from when we get up onto the bridge, we’ll be able to see all of the mechanisms on the other side. There’s probably some sort of a duplicate system on the other side as well. But again, I don’t really know the engineering or the mechanics of exactly how all of this works. I’m still looking for the pumps and the outlets, the pipes leading from the pumps, but I don’t see anything like that anywhere. So, let’s walk out onto the bridge at the base of the bridge. From my hotel to here, by the way, it’s about a 2 km walk. The route that I took following the river is pretty much the only way to get here. It’s a little bit of a little bit of a roundabout path. And I think approaching the ferry terminal from this side is completely open. This is completely open to the public. Of course, you can’t get closer than this to the dam. But if you want to go check out the ferry terminal, yeah, you’re free to go across this bridge on foot or bicycle or whatever. Take a look at the ferry terminal and you can go in there and check out all the counters. They’re selling tickets for various boats going to different places. But it is an international ferry terminal. So once you go inside, there’s certain points you can’t go beyond because you have to go through customs, security, and immigration. But here we are. The Oh, look at that. Selamat jalan. Thank you. I was just reacting to this open area right here. It looks like this could also function as a lock system. It looks like you’ve got major hydraulic ram system there. Could probably bring up a barrier so a boat could go in there. They close the gate, drain the water, bring it down to Melaka Strait level and then open the gate on the other side.
So it has that possibility here as well. And these two in the middle, they don’t have any mechanism on this side. So, these two in the middle, they only have gates on the far side that can be raised and lowered like like I said, pulling the plug on the river and draining it. And then this over here on the left, I’m guessing it can also function as a kind of like going through, you know, the Panama Canal, anything like that, where a ship has to be raised and lowered at various stages. That’s what this would be for. I’m pretty sure about that. I’m just guessing, but I think that’s a pretty good guess.
There does seem to be a separate section over here on the left. There’s a bunch of pipes and it looks like this they could be pumps down there. So, maybe this is some sort of a pumping system for controlling the water levels, but I was thinking of something much much bigger than that. But again, I don’t really know. So, I don’t know what I’m looking at over there, but it does seem to have a series of pumps and outlets.
Yeah. Very, very cool. And since I’m here and I’m out for a walkabout with you, figure well, I might as well continue into the ferry terminal, right? Show you what it looks like since I’ve walked all the way out here. There’s a gate down here. Controls, cars, buses going in and out. Security is there, but as far as I know, you can just walk through. You’re just someone from the public going into the ferry terminal to get information about the boats to buy a ticket.
And there you are, the international ferry terminal in Melaka. Big raised circular dome roof up there.
And over here you can get your SIM cards when you arrive.
And this would be the departure hall over here and arrival hall over there. Yeah, it’s basically set up like a small friendly airport and Indomal fast ferry. Their ticket office is right over there. And I think you can also go from here to Batam or some other places, but I’m not sure about that. An interesting thing about this ferry terminal is you pretty much see three groups of people. Of course, you get the tourists who arrive here by boat and they come here to spend a few days in Melaka enjoying themselves. And then you also get workers and their families. People who like people from Indonesia who work in Malaysia, have a full-time job here, and they live here in Malaysia, and they go back and forth using these boats to visit their families, go home during the holidays and things like that. And then you get a pretty large group of medical tourists where you see a lot of elderly people here in wheelchairs accompanied by family members and they’re all clutching packages of x-rays and MRIs and medical information. And they’re coming here from Indonesia to go to the hospitals of Malaysia to get certain surgeries done or treatments done that aren’t available in Sumatra. So they come here to come to the hospitals in Malaysia. So that’s pretty interesting too. So I just double checked with this entrance. There’s an entrance and exit here through the fence. And right there is the Flor de la Mar right there. The maritime museum. My hotel is right there. So all I have to do is walk across here and I’m at my hotel basically. It’s right over there. But for some reason this door is only for people getting on river cruises. So yeah, I went up to talk to them and if you buy a ticket for a river cruise inside the building from a company, then you can come out here, go through this gate, and then they have all these services for tourists. And right here, you hop onto one of the river cruises. But because I’m not planning to get onto a river boat, they won’t let me through. It’s the weirdest thing. It’s like this entrance and exit is only for people who bought a ticket for a guided tour of some kind. If I bought a ticket for a guided tour, I could go out this door. Weird. Yeah, it’s very, very strange. But yeah, right here you can see again we’re at low tide and you can see the muddy flats right there. But I’m going to be there in a few minutes, but it’s going to take me I have to walk two kilometers to go around in a big circle in order to get there when I’m only like Yeah, it’s just on the other side of this fence, but for whatever reason, it’s not set up that way. That entrance there is only if you buy some sort of a guided tour, then you can go out that door. Yeah, it’s very strange, huh? Right here. I’m still on the river shore right beside the ferry terminal. It’s right over there. And yeah, if you can walk along this side of the river and if I did, this is my side of the river. This is where I live. You know, my hotel is over here. And if I went along here, boom, I’d be right back at my hotel. But you run into that fence and they won’t let you through that fence. So, I have to go the opposite direction. I have to walk all the way back out to this bridge, across the bridge, and then I have to go on the other side of the river, all the way into the city to get to the other bridge, cross over, and then come all the way back again. So, luckily, I’m a walkabout kind of guy, so it doesn’t bother me. But it’s kind of a weird setup. I’ve always wondered why it works that way. There’s got to be a reason for it. Yeah, it’s funny. I don’t know why it’s so controlled. I was just walking along this boardwalk here. It’s wide open. I just wanted to walk down here, take a look at the boats, and all the guards started blowing their whistles at me and shouting at me and waving at me that I’m not allowed to go down here. Yeah, you don’t mess with the security in Malaysia. They’re very strict and they’re not here to have a discussion with you about where you can and can’t go. You just you wait for the whistles and when the whistles blow, you go where they point. You don’t argue with them. So yeah, I’ve been down in that area before anyway, but on the other side of the river.
All these coconut trees.
Even when I was down by that other gate, the one where I was I’m confused about why you’re not allowed to go through that gate. And when I was a few feet away from it, I started taking video and talking about that. And the men by the gate, they started shouting at some of the local men with guns and then pointing at me. So, they’re basically saying, “Hey, go get that guy. He’s taking video.” So, I was like, “Okay, okay, okay. I’ll go away. I’ll go away.”
So that that’s where I was walking along this waterfront. And as you can see, it’s completely wide open all the way to here under the bridge and over to here. And that’s where you get the security fence. That’s down by the dam right over there. So that’s as far as you can go. But yeah, when I tried walking along here, the guards got pretty upset with me for heading in that direction. Actually, the guard was making like a swimming motion, like swimming with his arms and then then waving his hands and blowing his whistle and pointing at me. I don’t know why is if he was saying you you can’t go swimming over there. I was like, well, I’m not I’m just just curious to see what is over there. Get a closer look at the dam. But apparently, no, you can’t do that.
As I said before, the geography of this ferry terminal is really kind of confusing, but the basic idea is right there. There’s the fence. You can see that big crowd of people. It looks like a tour group going through. They’re all going through a gate in the fence and they’re being met by taxis, by trishaws. And for some reason, they’re allowed to go through. The guy at the gate, he asked me like, “Where’s your tourism card?” And I says, “Well, I’m a tourist, but I don’t have a card.” And he says, “No, you can’t. You have to have a card to get through here.” So, you can see all those people going through. And that’s that gate. Apparently, you have to be a certain type of person to get through it, but I’m not sure because once you’re on the other side of the gate, this is completely open and public. I could walk up to the gate from the other side without any issues at all. I don’t see anybody even showing a card or anything, but yeah, right here. I’ve been here like a million times right along the river shore, but for some reason I’m not allowed to go through that gate. Yeah, it’s very, very strange. So, because I’m not allowed to go through that gate, I’m on this side of the river and you know, the only way I can get across is to walk all the way back to Jonker Street. Everybody else got to take a shortcut. But on Planet Doug, no shortcuts. You can’t go through the gate. Yeah, it’s a mystery. I wouldn’t mind having that one solved. I’m always curious about logistics, rules, and policies, exactly how they work, but sometimes they’re hard to make sense of, hard to track down.
You see all those people across with all with the umbrellas there? The bright yellow and green and purple umbrella. Those are all people who just went through that gate. All these people that you see walking along right here. They all just came from the ferry dock terminal and walked through the gate. And they’re basically just going down to Jonker Street. They’re not getting into cruise boats. So, it’s not like they had a ticket for the cruise boat. But I’m stranded on the other side of the river. But since I’m here on this side of the river, I think I’m going to go on one small errand to round out this walkabout because a couple of days ago, I went on the hunt for a local alcoholic drink called samsu. I went to the museum, the customs museum, and they had a display of like moonshine or distillery equipment that they had seized for the production of illegal samsu. And that got me interested in the product, the drink. I wanted to sample some. So I went out to all the shops hoping to buy a bottle, but I had a whole lot of trouble figuring out what is samsu and what isn’t. And I had difficulty communicating with most of the local people about that. But since then, I’ve learned a lot more. And while I was on the hunt, I took a lot of pictures of all these bottles that I saw. And I would go into like a liquor store and see some bottles and I would ask the store owner like, “Is this samsu?” Because I really wanted that specific drink. And they would say, “No, no, no, no.” And I showed them a photo of another bottle. Oh, they don’t make that anymore. And they would keep going back to these bottles and calling them by other names. But I had no idea what anybody was talking about. But since then, I’m pretty sure that a lot of the bottles that I saw, particularly the ones that had like white clear distilled liquid and like 53% on the bottle, that is samsu. It was what I was looking for. I just didn’t understand it at the time. So, I think I’m going to take a short walk back to one or two of these stores and maybe buy if I can buy like a small bottle now off the shelf. So, and they’re just off in this direction up the river a little bit. So yeah, here I am back at Heeren House on Heeren Street.
I might have to cross over the river again because there’s a big section of river walkway that is closed for renovations right now. So I might have to cross here, walk down the river, cross over again to finally get to these liquor stores that I remember. Crazy busy today. It’s actually a Monday. I thought after Saturday and Sunday, after this weekend, I thought things would die down dramatically. I thought the streets would be empty, but as you can see, they’re absolutely bustling even though it’s a Monday. Look at the bridge. Yeah. Jammed with people.
It’s actually pretty rare to see like Western-style backpackers. I just saw two going by and very rare to see them. Almost all the visitors are the majority are Malaysian by far and then a lot of tour groups from China. But it’s not that common to see Westerners with a backpack.
Look at the crowds out there.
That is crazy.
Melaka seems to be undergoing a boom period. Tourism boom.
Yeah, this is the section of the riverwalk that I had to cross over to avoid. This whole area here has been under construction for a while, so it’s blocked off at this point. This is where all the bars are. Cater to Western visitors. So, you can get a cold beer by the side of the river, but all of it is blocked off right now. So, you can’t walk down the river on that side. You have to go on this side until you reach a bridge. The day started off with heavy rain, but certainly cleared up. Hot and humid as always, but really beautiful clear sunshine now. So, I’m at Jambatan Chanun Cheng. And here I can cross over this bridge. And I think the liquor stores that I found are on the other side there. It turns out these liquor stores are farther up the river than I remember. So I can keep going on this side of the river. And then I just noticed this place. I don’t think I I know I’ve never gone inside, but it never struck me before as such an interesting building. Riverside bar restaurant of some kind. Upper floor. Yeah, I never really noticed that before. So, I think I’m going to drop by there after I pick up my bottle of samsu. Figure out what that place is. And I can continue up the river cross at the next bridge that I reach. I just looked up the name of this spot across the river. I’ve already forgotten it, but it was something like Jbat Heritage Bar and Gallery or something like that. But yeah, I’m definitely going to drop by there in a few minutes. Maybe grab a cold beer, sit out by the river, maybe up on the second floor. Looks like they have live bands playing. A lot of old historic photos on the walls. How did I miss that place? Feels like it’s right up my alley. Comes one of the larger cruise boats. Zooming past. Not too many people on board this one.
I waved at them and they waved back.
Yeah. What an amazing spot for a old heritage bar. Wow. All right. So, this is the bridge I’m going to cross now. Jambatan Kampong Jawa. Jambatan Kampong Jawa.
And this bridge, by the way, is a good landmark if you want to visit the bar that I went to. When I was hunting for samsu, I learned about this bar down here. It’s the oldest bar in Melaka according to the owner and the family. Sin Hiap Hin, I forget the name of it. Now, if we get closer, we’ll see the name of it. It’s this little unpretentious doorway right there, Sin Hiap Hin. So, if you want a shot of samsu or some other local drinks in a really interesting atmosphere, this is a great place to go if you’re lucky. And the woman, the family, auntie who runs the place now, she’s there. She has all kinds of great stories to tell. So, yeah, you can get yourself a shot of samsu there. But not today. I’m heading across the bridge.
Well, I’m in the right neighborhood. This is where I was hunting for samsu before.
An interesting old building right there.
And I think one of the liquor stores was just up ahead here on the right beside a pawn shop. I was going into every single shop along this street. I didn’t care what they sold. Could have been like a pharmacy, a souvenir shop, a farming store, anything at all. Because I had no idea where they would sell this samsu. And I would just pop in and show them a picture and say, “Hey, you sell this and if you don’t, well, do you know where I can find it?” And then I eventually got information that if I went looking for a pawn shop and then right beside the pawn shop, there would be a place I could buy samsu. And I think this is one of the places. And I don’t know if I really want to buy I only saw big bottles here, but we’ll see.
Hello. Yeah, I was here the other day speaking with her. Okay. I was on the hunt for samsu. Samsu. Okay. And we were looking at some of the bottles here. Okay. And I did some research online. And I think one of these bottles is what I’m looking for. Okay. So you want to This is actually rice wine. Rice wine. Yeah. So you want a higher percentage or Yeah, the highest like 53%. Highest. Oh, okay. I saw this. Oh, this one is 52. Yeah. And then this one is what one is that? This is I think it’s 51. 51.2.
And I saw this one here lower. You you sell this by the bottle. You can buy just one. Yeah. Okay. But maybe you were wholesale only. Maybe you can do retail as well. I was doing research into samsu like they used to drink on the rubber plantations. The workers would drink at the end of the day. Yeah. Yeah. Because they want to keep our body warm. Yeah. And it was very strong and not so expensive back then. So that that’s what I was looking for. Local local samsu. This one is rice wine. This one is rice wine with ah. So it depends on which one you want. The both are 52%. So what is what is cowyang? It’s a kind of liquor and they mix it together. I see. They have a certain smell for cowyang. They have a certain smell like soy sauce. I see. As they as as they say because I don’t really drink cowyang I because it’s too high percentage for me. Okay. Yeah. So I can I know the smell is like a bit like a fragrance smell like soy. Mhm. So, this one is just plain mainly just white rice wine. Okay. And it does say samsu. Yeah. Seco on it. Samsu is actually a Malay word of liquor. Okay. So, it’s actually it’s just liquor in English. I think I’m looking for more of a pure like rather than a mix. Okay. So, this Do you sell it in smaller bottles? Yeah. Yeah, sure. Do you want a What is Oh, there’s another one up there with the blue label. Which one? This one is the same, but this one has lower percentage. This only 37. That’s 37. Yeah, this one’s 52. And that one’s 52. Okay. So, it’s actually the same. Just the alcohol percentage is different. Okay. Yeah. So, yeah, maybe I’ll try this one, but a smaller bottle to start, you know. Sorry.
Oh, sorry. Sorry. For this one, we don’t have the smaller version. But this one, we do have a medium version. Okay. Well, let me try that one. Being smaller, like lower alcohol, it’s okay. Okay.
Ah, there we go. Hi. How are you? Hello.
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- Okay. Has a lower lower percentage. And there’s one other bottle I’m interested in. It’s like that healthy tonic one. Is it this or this? The that one. Yeah. I heard about this one. Okay. That they would also drink this on the plantations thinking it was good for their joints and to treat muscle pain. And I heard this name goes back a long time in history. Chan Lee Chai. Like the company was started like 500 years ago, 600 years ago.
Not great question. Yeah, it has a long long history. Okay. I will get these two if I can for today. Okay. Just those. Okay. Oh, does this work for Touch ‘n Go? I can use that. And the total was 30. Okay, that’s great. Chin Wat Chan Wine Traders. This is a great store. I’m glad to find it. Thank you very much. All right. Okay. Thank you. See you again.
So, we are on a lucky streak on Planet Doug because when I was shopping around the other day, I was also introduced to this idea that on the plantations, instead of drinking like a pure alcohol, they would drink these health tonics. It is like 34% alcohol by volume. So, it’s a very, very strong alcoholic drink, but it was considered good for your health as well. Warmed you up, relieved pain, joint pain, things like that. And I don’t know for sure that this is the company that goes back 500 years, 600 years into the into history, but the name is I’m pretty sure about the name. And it actually is if it is the same company it is the longest running company in Southeast Asia like or in Asia the oldest company that they can trace back through history. Chan Lee Chai out of China. So I got that for 11 ringgit and then I got a small bottle of this. I like the look of the label and according to the research I did, this is traditional samsu. They keep telling me, “No, it’s not samsu, it’s rice wine.” But of course, rice wine is kind of samsu at the same time. We’re just It’s just semantics basically. But I’m pretty sure this is what I was looking for. And it’s 37% alcohol by volume, which I think will be pretty good. I say that because when I had the samsu at the bar, I had two two drinks. I had a shot of 53% which was the classic samsu that I was looking for from the exact bottle from the company I wanted to track down. I was very lucky. And it was really strong. Like it was so strong even the aroma burned my nasal passages and my throat just absorbing the aroma. And then I also tried a shot of 40%. And I actually liked the 40% a bit better, the bit smoother, a bit more pleasant than the 53%. So this one being around 37% should be okay. I just have it stuck in my head that classic samsu has to be as strong as possible. That’s why I was aiming at the like the 50% range, 52, 53. But yeah, 37 40% is absolutely fine. So the next part of today’s adventure is completely unexpected. It’s going to be someplace up here on the corner. That bar or restaurant or cafe that I spotted that is right on the river.
And where is it? There it is. Okay, it’s across the way there. What a classic looking building. I think I’ve I walked by it a number of times and I noted it, but for some reason it never really jumped out at me the way it is doing today. It’s clearly a place I would normally be very interested in, but I don’t know if it was ever open to be honest. I think it was closed up until quite recently because if I’d seen it open like this, I definitely would have checked it out. But I think I kept walking by this side and it just looked like an old building that was closed. But now it looks completely open. That cultural heritage looks brand new but in an old building. That looks amazing. How in the world did I not know about it before? Well, let’s go in and check it out. So, let’s check the place out. They have a stage here, live music right on the ground floor. And then we have beer, which is what I’m here to have. A mug of Tiger or Heineken or something like that. And then they have a lot of Okay. They have satay, pasta, Western food, nasi lemak seafood. Huh. Very cool. Okay. Did you open just recently? No. No. We opened for I mean 1 1 hour already. No, what I mean in terms of years. I I walked by here before. I never noticed it before. You’ve been here a long time. Oh, this already 2 years. Okay. 2 years. Okay.
Okay. Can I look upstairs before I go? Is it open upstairs? Upstairs. Just renovation right now. Oh, just renovated. Can I look through the door? Just walk up and then I’ll sit by the river. Just have a beer. So, he said he was open. They’ve been open for two years and upstairs is closed because they’re renovating, but he said I can go take a look. Wow, what a place.
So, it’s not open this afternoon,
but it’s not blocked off. So, it looks like I can walk inside and take a look around. Look at that big stage up here
and they have some photos.
Could be bands from the history of Melaka. I don’t know. Or maybe they’re just bands in general. What a great place up here. Yeah. Nice. Very casual upstairs here. And then you can look out over the over the river.
Hey, how are you? Hi. Fine. How are you? Good. Good. I saw you from across there. How are you, too? And I thought, hey, that looks like a good place to have a seat. So, I’m following your example.
But yeah, so I’m out here on the veranda, I guess, the dock. And yeah, you can have a seat here. And you get a nice view of the river. You get to watch the cruise boats go by. And there’s my beer coming or a mug of beer. I just got a yeah, just a mug of Tiger. Here in Malaysia, of course, beer alcohol is not that common, so there’s a lot of taxes. It’s quite expensive, so they they really pile on the taxes. This is 18 ringgit for like a pretty much a small mug. The full pint is quite a bit more. But there you have it. I have to I have to capture the moment. I haven’t had a cold beer in months, like such a long time. So, this is a the very first one in a long time.
As a Canadian, the most important thing is ice cold. So, it is really, really ice cold. The mug is chilled. So really, really nice. And you can’t really Yeah, you can’t beat the setting, can you? Historic Melaka. So, as you can see, I’m back at the heart of it on the Melaka Bridge. I call it the Melaka Bridge. That’s not the official name, but it’s what I call it. And I had a great time sitting at that bar on the riverside. It’s a great discovery. Wish I’d found out about it earlier. Just around the corner here. The only problem, of course, is that in Malaysia, anything alcoholic, beer, whiskey, anything is heavily heavily taxed. So, it’s very, very expensive to drink in a bar at all. But I had a two mugs of beer. I enjoyed my time there. And there was a man sitting there already. He was the reason I went there. When I was on the other side of the river, I spotted that building. And there was like a lone foreigner sitting by himself out on the veranda beside the river enjoying a cold drink. And I was like, “Wow, look at that place.” So it was because of him that I went there and he was still there when I showed up. So we chatted for a while and he’s from Denmark. And interestingly for me, he’s actually based in Port Dickson, which is kind of unusual because not many people base themselves in Port Dickson. I’m one of them. And then he had a week before he has to go back to Denmark. He happened to be in Malaysia. He flew into KL and Port Dickson was nearby. So he thought, “Hey, I’ll go there.” And he based himself There goes one of the ferry boats. He based himself in a beachside hotel in Port Dickson. And then today he hopped on a Grab and came down to Melaka to check the place out. And he was having a cold drink there and then he met me. So yeah, I had a cold beer or two there, chatting with him and yeah, just telling him the things that I knew about Melaka, about Port Dickson, exchanging life stories. He asked me like where was I during COVID and I mean that’s a standard conversation now amongst foreigners especially foreigners who like to travel it’s like eventually you get around to COVID the pandemic and it’s like well where were you when all the borders closed around the world what did you do how did it affect your life so we talked about that for a while and then I walked with him down here to Jonker Street, told him a little bit about the history. We passed by the Zheng He, the Cheng Ho Museum, and I I babbled about who he was, his role in the history of Melaka. And then the Dutch and you know, the Portuguese, that whole history. And I said goodbye to him at Jonker Street. So this man from Denmark, he’s now walking up Jonker Street. And I encouraged him to also go up Heeren Street, this street here. I told him about the history that Jonker Street is like the commercial street as, you know, laid out by the Dutch and then the Dutch designated Heeren Street, Heerenstraat as a residential street. So hope yeah, who knows? This man from Denmark. He might walk up Jonker and then walk down Heeren Street. But I can’t believe how busy Melaka is today. The best thing about sitting at that bar. It was kind of crazy. All of the river cruise boats were going by and there a boat went by, a river cruise packed with people and they were all wearing the same white shirt, a collared white shirt. So, they were clearly part of a tour group of some kind, right? So, I waved to everybody on the boat. They all waved back. Everybody’s taking pictures and video. I’m filming them. They’re filming me. We’re all waving to each other. The boat goes by. A few minutes later, another boat, the exact same white shirts, collared white shirts. A big big tour group. I think while I was sitting there, we probably saw six, probably maybe even seven or eight of these boats all going by and every cruise boat was jammed full as it could get with the same people with the white shirt. So, they were all part of the same company, the same giant tour group, I’m assuming out of China. And they were really having a good time. Like they were waving at everybody on the shore.
And one funny thing about all these boats going by with the tour groups, it’s like one boat stopped and actually reversed and the tour guide was pointing at the shore and everybody was taking pictures and getting very excited. So I assumed there was like a giant monitor lizard sunning itself, you know, on the side of the river. But every time I went down, I I kind of poked my head. I was looking and looking. I couldn’t see one. I knew one was there. And this man from Denmark, he said, “Yeah, while he was sitting there, a big monitor lizard came swimming up the river.” And we talked about it and we both agreed that yeah, when they’re in the water swimming, they look like crocodiles. And his first thought was, “Whoa, there’s a crocodile in the river.” But it was actually a monitor lizard, a big one. And I think that monitor lizard climbed up onto the rocks and was just sitting there at the side of the river. And every one of these tour boats that went by, they spotted the monitor lizard. I think the people that run the boats learn to keep an eye open for these things and then if they see one, they can point it out to the people on the boat and they get very excited because they get to see one of the famous monitor lizards of Melaka. But no matter how many times I looked, I couldn’t see it. It was like right out of the corner, just outside of my view. But everybody, even people walking along the river, they were stopping. It was like, “Whoa!” You know, they all hit each other. Look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look. And everybody’s taking pictures of the monitor lizard, but I never did see the one. But the guy from Denmark, he showed me his video. He shot video of the lizard swimming up the river, so I knew it was there. I just never never got to see it. And here we are right back at the starting point. My original plan for today was to check out the dam that controlled the levels of the Melaka River and it’s right over here on the other side of the international ferry terminal. You can see here the tide is starting to come in. The water levels are rising just a little bit. And over here again is there’s the gate that was denied to me. Everybody else apparently can go through that gate, but anybody who lives on Planet Doug, nope, rejected. So, I have to cross the river and go all the way around and come across the bridge. This gate I am denied. But look at that. Everybody else gets to go through it. People in wheelchairs, people in strollers, average tourists, but nobody from nobody from Planet Doug, apparently.
And from here, I’m very close to my hotel. I’m going to make my way back there. And I guess when I get to my hotel, I will sample some of the samsu that I bought. The clear 37% alcohol by volume samsu and then that herbal tonic as well. It’s also 37% alcohol by volume, but it’s like an herbal health drink apparently. And I’ll try some of those when I get back to my room at the hotel. And that will be the end of today’s small adventures. Yeah, you can see the water moving up river, right? This is the tide moving in right now. The current is going up river, but because of the modern engineering, it’s all blocked here. This is as far as it can go.
All right, I am back in Planet Doug Studios for the end of this walkabout video, and I’m going to sample the two drinks that I bought today. So this is the 37% alcohol by volume samsu and then this is the 37% more like an herbal tonic drink. You know I don’t really believe the herbal health benefits side of it. It’s kind of a way to drink alcohol and telling yourself that it’s good for you. You know that’s kind of what that is I think. But yeah, they’re going to start with this samsu 37% and I’m not really sure what the name of the distillery is. I can’t really make that out from the label. And around the top, you can see it has a paper seal. And that paper seal, of course, is the excise tax from the customs and excise department. So if you see that seal on the top, you know that it is legal, monitored, safe to drink. So that’s what you want to look for. You want to see that tax seal across the top. All right, let’s crack that open. How how do you how do you open it? I thought there would be a satisfying ASMR crackle as it opened. Maybe there’s a something I have to pull up on. Or maybe I just have to manually tear this open. Yeah, I think I need a blade of some kind in order to get into that handy dandy Swiss Army knife. Never leave home without it. And that should help me cut through this.
Take off the top. And
okay, so now there’s a plastic cork that I have to unseal. Oo, there we go. I guess if you have a habit of buying this drink, you’ll become more efficient at opening the bottle. I have I have no idea what I’m doing here. Okay, I think I’m I think I’m on to something here. You need good strong fingernails to get under there.
There we go. I opened a seal of some kind. There we go. So, it actually has a plastic cork.
When you smell that, you feel like you’re in a nurse’s office getting getting a vaccination. Like getting a vaccine. Smells exactly like alcohol rub. Like if you disinfect your arm in order to get an injection. Yeah. I wouldn’t say that smelling that makes you go, “Oh, that smells so good.” It’s more like, “Okay, that smells strong.” Even at 37%. I don’t have a fancy glass cup, but I got a little bit of a plastic cup. Just pour out a little bit of that. My samsu.
Let it breathe. Yeah. Perfectly clear, right? It’s white. I don’t know what it would taste like if you mix it like mix it with Coke. Like a rum and Coke. Samsu and Coke. Samsu and tonic. Maybe would be a good combination. I have no idea. Samsu over ice. I do. If I have scotch or rye, I do like to pour it over ice. I find it doesn’t really water it down that much because I drink it very quickly. I just like to shock it with ice. Get it nice and cold and then I I drink it quickly and I just like everything to be cold. But yeah, that’s that is pure disinfectant alcohol.
H not bad. It’s pretty smooth. It’s smoother than I expected. I thought it would hit my nasal passages and my throat a lot harder. I guess I was expecting the 53% which is much much stronger.
Yeah, it’s fine.
I’m not sure that I would rave about it. I’m kind of wishing I had some scotch instead. Scotch has a richer flavor to it. Though at that liquor store, the guy did point out another bottle which was pure samsu, but it was mixed with another drink which had some flavor to it. So that that that to be honest, it might that might be the way to go.
Yeah, I think you would enjoy this like if you’re meeting up with your friends at the end of a day of hard work and you’re hanging out at the bar or you’re down at the river pouring out a bottle because it’s not not very expensive. This bottle 320 ml was 20 ringgit. So that’s about five yeah $5 US for this bottle. And yeah, if you shared that with a bunch of friends over a poker game or something like that, but as a kind of a standalone drink, there isn’t a whole lot going on here in terms of flavor. I got to be honest about that. But yeah, it’s fine.
But I would like to try one of the others that has a mixed with another drink that has some flavor mixed into it. I think that might be the better way to go. And maybe
that is what this health tonic is all about. Like it looks darker. Like I I haven’t seen it outside of the paper yet, but it looks looks darker. So let’s rip off the paper. See what’s underneath. Also has the the tax seal on it, the excise. So this company has paid the proper government duty, the excise duty. So they have a permit to make this. Yeah, look at that. That is dark dark dark. Liquor Way, Taiong Industries,
Johor Bahru, Malaysia, Batan, Malaysia, 150 milliliter, Chan Lee Chai, and then has a bit a photograph of someone there and and a bit of the history. And this cost 10 ringgit. So, 2.50 US for this. And it has another seal. So, it has a second tax seal on the the top there. So, got to take this off. Very curious about this. The people who were telling me about this, I was surprised. They were telling me that people would drink this before the workday. So, like if they’re not feeling very well, their joints are sore, maybe they have arthritis or something, before they start the day of work, they would have this in the morning before they begin their day. At 37% alcohol, I mean, that would put a lot of people to sleep before they get to start work. But, yeah, there we are. Whoa.
Okay. There’s a whole lot going on there. That is a rich rich aroma.
Herbs, spices, all kinds of stuff going on there. Wow. I think this is this is going to be an acquired taste. I think the first time you drink this, I don’t think you’re going to like it. It’s kind of like medicine. It’s like h I don’t like that. It tastes like medicine. But somehow medicine is supposed to taste like that, right?
Oh, yeah. There it is. Quite quite dark. Let that let that breathe a little bit.
Wow, that is something else. I smell history here. Takes me back in time.
I’m nervous. I’m nervous about this.
That is not bad. That is not bad at all.
That is a shocker though to your your taste buds when you first drink it and you have it in your mouth. Like I’m I’m swishing it around inside my mouth. I don’t really taste very much. It’s not until you swallow and then the air gets into your mouth and then then you get hit with the flavor all at once.
There’s one overpowering flavor in there, but I can’t I can’t put my finger on it what it tastes like. There’s something going on in there that I recognize.
Someone will have to tell me what it is. It just tastes like It’s like It’s like the outdoors. I feel like I’m tasting plants, like grass. Moan grass or something like that. All kinds of herbs and things in there. Yeah, that is a that is a very rich flavor profile in there. Very different from the traditional samsu.
I don’t know what it is. I think over time if you had this a few times, I think you would learn to enjoy it. You would like it. It would taste good to you. Right now, my very first taste, it doesn’t really taste good. It tastes Yeah. Challenging. It really does. Yeah. But yeah, there you go. Very interesting experience. I will set both of those aside right now and then I’ll finish them off as I round up this video for today. So yeah, very interesting day. I was disappointed to see that the river had been restored to its proper levels again. So, I didn’t get to see the mud flats and go walk up and down the river looking at all the exposed surface area when they drained the river because of the flood risk. But now that the river was up to its normal height, that meant all the cruise boats were going up and down the river. That was a lot of fun. Got it. Getting to wave to all the people on the boat. That was quite exciting. And going to see that dam. That was the most eyeopening thing over the last couple of days that I learned which I didn’t know at all. And as I mentioned in the video, the best way to think about it now is think about the Melaka River as a long skinny swimming pool where they set the depth using that dam. And then depending on the flood risk, they can let water out if there’s a big flood risk. But normally they keep the water in and they raise it to a certain level and then the water spills over the top and then it maintains the same consistent depth all the way up the river. So it’s basically like a they control the water depth just like you do a swimming pool and then when you drain the pool you just pull the plug and when you want to drain the river you just lower the gates and the water flows out. Yeah, very cool to see all of that. Yeah, very cool day. Learn something new about Melaka. So, winding down here in Planet Doug Studios. Shout out to the Crunch Club. Put CC in the comments. Let me know you made it all the way to the end of the video. And shout out to everyone out there supporting Planet Doug Productions, whether through the Malaysia Touch ‘n Go e-wallet, through PayPal link in the video description, and of course the coffee posi, the Planet Doug, buy me a coffee platform. Thank you very much to everyone supporting me through there. And finally, the Planet Doug Patreon. All of my regular Patreon members. Thank you very much. Shout out to you guys. So, that’s it. Shutting down here. Right after this, you’ll see the 3D flyover map showing you exactly where I walked today, everywhere I went with a few photos, then the video end credits. And that is it for today. And I will see you next time.