VIDEO DESCRIPTION:
I’ve spent a fair amount of time visiting and learning about the museums of Melaka. There are a surprising number of them considering how small and compact the UNESCO Heritage part of the city is.
And to try to make sense of them, I mentally divided the museums into five groups or “clusters”. And in this video, I start at Cluster 1 and talk about what museums are located there. Then I move on to Cluster 2, then Cluster 3, etc. all the way to Cluster 5.
And I end the video with a brief recommendation of the best ones to visit if you have limited time. And I give a strong recommendation about what to do BEFORE you visit the museums of Melaka.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Good morning and welcome back to Planet Doug and welcome back to the historic city of Melaka in Malaysia. And one of Melaka’s best-kept secrets is the number of museums that there are located here. And they’re all located in a very small area, all within walking distance. So, what I’m going to do today is take you on a bit of a walking tour of the museums that I know about and just show you where they are, talk a little bit about what is in each museum. I’m not going to do a deep dive into the exact addresses, opening hours, ticket prices. This isn’t going to be a guidebook to the museums of Melaka because that information changes all the time. So, you pretty much have to look it up for yourself when the museum is open, when they close for holidays, how much a ticket might cost for a Malaysian or a foreigner. Even the signs that they post, information you find on Google Maps, all of that can change constantly. So, I don’t want to get bogged down in that. All I really want to do is go for a walk, show you where they’re located.
To keep things organized in my head, I’ve divided the museums into five clusters. And just to give you a sense of where we’re starting from, behind me here is cluster number one. And right over there is Dutch Square. The museums around Dutch Square. That’s cluster number two. And you can see there is St. Paul’s Hill right over there. Jonker Street is right across the river from Dutch Square. Cluster number three is going to be around St. Paul’s Hill over there. Cluster number four around Jonker Street and cluster number five I won’t be visiting today. These are three museums that are a bit farther outside of the city. So let’s get started with cluster number one right behind me.
Cluster number one is interesting because the centerpiece is this recreation of a Portuguese ship, the treasure ship, the Flor de la Mar. And this museum is called Samudera, the museum Samudera. And it’s a great one to visit because for this price of one ticket, which I believe is 20 ringgit for foreigners, but don’t quote me on that. As I said, prices and opening hours can change all the time. But for your entrance ticket, you get access to three museums. This ship, the Flor de la Mar, is an actual museum. As you can see, there’s a man standing up on the deck there. So you can climb into the ship up onto the deck, walk around and go. And the exhibits are inside the hold of the ship. So that’s museum number one of the Samudera complex. And then over here is the maritime museum. So after you visit the ship and get its amazing story, then you can stay within that compound and walk over to the maritime museum right there. And that’s a traditional indoor museum all about the history of Melaka with a focus on the ocean, the Melaka Strait, the maritime life of Melaka. It’s very interesting. Air conditioned on the inside. And then take your ticket. Hold on to your ticket because then you can cross the street from the ship. You exit over there, cross the street and your ticket will get you into this museum as well, which is the Royal Malaysian Navy Museum. And it’s another very visual museum. The entrance is right here. But to give you an idea of what this museum is all about, you can walk around here to the front and you can see an outdoor exhibit of a ship, guns, things like that, radar installations. So, this museum is packed with all kinds of real life examples of the ships and equipment that the Royal Malaysian Navy uses has used in history.
So, as I said, you buy your ticket over there at the ticket counter and then your ticket gains you access to three museums. The ship, the Maritime Museum, and over here, the Royal Malaysia Navy Museum.
One thing I’ll say right here is that for the museums in Melaka in general, I found that it’s a really good idea to do your own research before you go there. I find the museums don’t do a great job of telling their own story. They illustrate the story. They show you a lot of amazing things, but they may not lay it out for you exactly what you’re looking at and what the significance is. So just as an example, I remember when I visited the Flor de la Mar, I bought my ticket for the museum Samudera and I read all of the signs, all of the exhibits, but it doesn’t really tell you the true story, the amazing story of this ship, which is this is one of the great lost treasure ships of history. When the Portuguese conquered Melaka, this ship was involved in the battle where they defeated the Melaka Sultanate. And after the battle, the Portuguese looted Melaka. They took all the gold and the treasure and the beautiful historic artifacts, anything they could get their hands on. Basically, they loaded it into this ship to bring back to Europe. But on the way through the Melaka Strait, it was following the coast of Sumatra. It ran into a storm, ran aground and sank. So all the treasure of Melaka was on this ship and then it sank on its way back to Europe. So that is the most important fact about this replica of the Portuguese ship. But you probably wouldn’t really know that unless you did some reading before you went there. So that’s an example of what I’m talking about. The museums may not take its most important story and put it right in front of you. They kind of stays hidden. So you can kind of read up on the museum before you get there and think of the museums as galleries of illustrations to help you understand what you already know. If that makes any sense.
A great thing about the Samudera Museum is after you’ve paid your entrance fee, you got your ticket, and you went through three different museums, right outside the door, you’ve got a freebie. So, here’s the ship right behind me. Turn my GoPro around and bang, there is one of the hidden gems of Melaka, at least in my opinion. And that is the Royal Malaysian Customs Museum. You can see museum, Royal Malaysian Customs Department. And this, of course, is a museum all about the history of customs. And it’s a fascinating museum because Melaka historically has been a maritime trading center. So customs regulating everything going in and out of the country to apply duties and taxes and to control things for security. That’s a very important job. And this warehouse that it’s housed in was used as a warehouse by the customs department historically and they converted it into this amazing museum. And it is a free museum. This is the entrance here. And I said I wasn’t going to get bogged down in opening hours, but there is the sign right there. And notice that it’s closed on Monday. And that is common for museums. So be careful about that. And a great thing about this museum beyond how interesting it is in terms of its exhibit is how close it is to Samudera. You can visit both at the same time, do a tour of the three museums there. And then just walk right over here, pop inside, you register on a computer, put in your name, what country you’re from, and then you can enjoy this. It’s quite a large museum, a lot of interesting exhibits, and check this out. You cannot get any better in terms of its location because it is right on the Melaka River. So, you also get the added attraction of the beauty of the riverside here in Melaka when you visit cluster one of the museums of Melaka.
Cluster number two of the museums of Melaka is all centered around Dutch Square and I’m walking there right now and as I said everything is within easy walking distance. So cluster number one is right behind me there and I can go for a casual very easy walk right along the river. Here I am just walking along the beautiful Melaka River and then right over here where you see these trees that is Dutch Square cluster number two. Another great thing about Melaka is that as you are visiting the museums and walking from one museum to the next outside you pass by kind of outdoor museums. You can think of them as historical sites, historic monuments, not a museum per se, but they are almost like you can think of it as one giant outdoor museum. So, as I’m walking towards Dutch Square, I’m going by the water wheel of Melaka. So, you’ve got this amazing site right on the river. And then of course just down the river here is the recreation of the one of the bastions of the fortress of Melaka.
So right beside the water wheel right next to Dutch Square is the Middelburg Bastion right here. And you can think of it as a kind of outdoor museum in a way. Here we are at the heart of the bustling Dutch Square of Melaka. And this is where you will find cluster two of the museums of Melaka. Probably the largest grouping of museums. Yet most of them are, I think, almost completely unknown. Right behind me is the famous Dutch building built by the Dutch during their colonial possession of Melaka. All the government offices were located here. They call that the Stadthuys. And inside the Stadthuys is probably Melaka’s biggest and best museum to visit if you just want to get an overview of Melaka. And that is called the History and Ethnography Museum. So the History and Ethnography Museum is right here inside the Stadthuys. And you get there by following these stairs which a lot of people miss. And one thing I’ve noticed about the museums in general is that the signage is not that great. I get the impression that a lot of people visit Dutch Square, they see the building, they go up here to take a picture, and they walk around, but nobody knows that that entire building is a large museum complex because, as you can see from here, there’s no sign at all. So, I didn’t even know it was there for the longest time. It took me a while to find it. But the way you get to this museum is by going up those stairs. And there is a trick or two to this museum. So I am going to take you up the stairs and show you the entrance. There’s a couple of interesting things there before I move on to the other museums in cluster number two.
So there is the entrance to the Stadthuys. And if you look on the left you can see a sign but it’s very very small. You can see in English History and Ethnography Museum. So I would say if you’re only going to visit one or two museums in your time in Melaka, I would say visit cluster number one, the Flor de la Mar treasure ship, the Samudera, and then visit this one. If you go to those two and you don’t have a great passion for museums, these would be the two that I would recommend that you visit. So yeah, you come up the stairs here. And a great attraction about the museums of Melaka is that they’re all built into historic buildings. So you get kind of a double bonus, a double whammy. You get the museum and you get to see the history in the buildings themselves as you can tell. So, this is the ticket counter. And the one trick I wanted to point out is that they close on Fridays from 11:30 to 2:45 for Friday prayers. So, that’s something to be aware of. The other thing to be aware of, the foreigner price is usually considerably higher. So here, 10 ringgit if you’re Malaysian and you have a MyKad card. Non-MyKad, which means foreigner, is double at 20 ringgit, but senior citizens often get a 50% discount. So if you’re 60 years old or more, you get your ticket for a 10 ringgit and closed on Monday. So that’s always something to be aware of. Monday is not a good day for museums in general. And something I noticed while I came up here, I’d never seen this before. They have this interesting display cycling through. Yeah, there’s the Flor de la Mar Museum. I believe all of these museums. There’s the Royal Malaysia Navy Museum and there’s a whole bunch I’ve never heard of. There’s a Gulf Gallery. I haven’t come across that. There’s the Maritime Museum. It’s part of the Samudera. The Submarine Museum. I’ll talk about that at the end. Melaka Chief Minister Museum. I’ve never gone there. The Sultanate Palace Museum, Portuguese Gallery. I’d never even heard of that one before. And they give you some opening hours and ticket prices here. And it goes on and on. And these are all of the museums that are controlled by PERZIM. I believe it’s the government organization overseeing a whole bunch of different museums. So, it’s yeah, there’s the Hang Tuah Center, another museum that I visited, education museum, on and on and on.
And if you’ve set aside the time to visit the History and Ethnography Museum, just right behind me there in the Stadthuys, it is kind of a no-brainer to come up here. And they have this nice raised balcony, a platform where you get a really nice view of Dutch Square and the Melaka River. And there’s Jonker Street over there. So yeah, I might as well pop over here and you can get a nice view, a nice picture of Dutch Square. And right here is the Stadthuys with the History and Ethnography Museum. And right behind it is St. Paul’s Hill and the Church of St. Paul. So you can leave from the museum and then walk up onto St. Paul’s Hill and you follow this walkway around and that is another outdoor museum.
Continuing with cluster two of the museums of Melaka. I’m back at the traffic circle. It’s the safest place to stand. I’m finding out here in the middle of the circle and there’s the Stadthuys with the History and Ethnography Museum. And I came out here because from here you get a nice view of one of Melaka’s other hidden museums almost completely unknown. That white building right there, right beside the Stadthuys. And that building is interesting just as a piece of history because I believe it is an original HSBC bank location, but the bank has moved out of course long time ago and a museum now occupies the interior of that building. And despite having a strong interest in history and museums and I was out looking for museums, I walked by it many times without even realizing that it was a museum. And again, just to get you oriented, there is the museum that I’m talking about. And right over there is the Stadthuys. Right up there is St. Paul’s Hill, the Church of St. Paul. And then right behind me is the Middelburg Bastion, the Melaka River, and Jonker Street. So you can see just how close together all of these museums are. So I guess if you go to one museum and it’s closed, well, just step outside, walk a few meters, and there is another museum waiting for you right across the street.
And as you walk from museum to museum, as I said, you can keep your eye open for outdoor exhibits. So these are the remains of the Frederick Hendrik Bastion that they uncovered and now it’s a part of an outdoor set of exhibits about the history of Melaka. And it’s right outside of the Gallery Warisan Kota Melaka which I think stands for something like the Melaka Heritage Gallery inside this historic building. And again as I said a lot of people including me walk right by this building never realizing that it is a museum because again the signage is not very clear at all. Certainly not very large. So here is the entrance. Says Fort of Melaka Heritage Gallery right there. So that is the entrance to this one. And this is another free museum. And it fits into what I was talking about before, this style of Melaka’s museums where you sort of have to do your homework before you go there. I think of this museum not as a place where you really learn the nitty-gritty of Melaka’s history, but where you see it illustrated. So you almost have to have the history in your mind already. And then you go into this gallery and you see displays illustrating what you already know. That was my take on it. Anyway, but yeah, it’s a very visual museum. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it yet, but it is free. This one is a free museum. There is no cost, no ticket price for this one. Back at the center of Dutch Square, the traffic circle right behind me, the Stadthuys over there on my right.
And here part of cluster two of the museums of Melaka is a whole range of small specialty museums all on that side of the road going along in a row. And again a lot of these museums I think are almost completely unknown. And for me this is the start of museum row. So right across the road in that historic building is the Malaysia Youth Museum which is all about the accomplishments of Malaysian youth and youth organizations in the country. And an interesting thing is right above it on the second floor is the Melaka Art Gallery right beside the Christ Church Melaka and the Stadthuys. So if you’re interested in the youth of Malaysia, you can check this place out and you get the bonus of the Melaka Art Gallery up on the second floor. So that is the first of these many niche museums along Museum Row. That’s the Youth Museum and the Art Gallery. And now we’re going to go for a walk following this road here. There’s a central courtyard, outdoor exhibits, of course, the clock tower and the fountain, famous parts of Melaka’s history, the Stadthuys. And we’re going to be going around following this road, which goes in a circle around St. Paul’s Hill, and you’ll find a range of museums all lined up, housed inside more of Melaka’s historic buildings. Here we are just leaving from Dutch Square going around the corner and Museum Row just continues along this road here on the left hand side and there’s the Fort Melaka Heritage Gallery Museum that I already talked about on the right hand side. And a fascinating thing about all of these museums is that historically they would have been inside the walls of the Melaka fortress. It was built originally by the Portuguese of course and then expanded by the Dutch eventually torn down by the British. But there is the outline of the original fortress walls and we are right here. And this would have been the Middelburg Bastion right over there on the river.
So these buildings, all these historic Dutch buildings would have been inside the protection of the fortress walls. And these are all now housing museums all along here. So this is the extension of cluster two of the museums of Melaka starting with that red building right there.
So the very first one we come across is the Malaysia Architecture Museum. And this museum is exactly what it sounds like. It’s dedicated to showing you models of various types of architecture that you’ll find in Malaysia over its history. So, it doesn’t focus on Melaka in particular. It’s more about Malaysia’s architectural history in general. I believe it is a free museum, but if there is a fee, it would be nominal, you know, certainly something like 2, 3, 5 ringgit, something like that. But I believe it is free.
Interestingly, right beside the Architecture Museum and the next set along museum row is this gate and that leads to stairs going all the way up to the top of the hill and the Church of St. Paul. So if you’re visiting the Church of St. Paul, you can come down these stairs and then pop over to the Architecture Museum, get out of the hot sun. And moving along museum row beside the Architecture Museum and the stairs, we come to the Melaka Islamic Museum, which again is pretty much how it sounds. Gives you illustrations of Islam and its history in Malaysia. Fascinating thing about this museum, all of these museums as I’ve said, is that they’re located, they’re housed in original historic buildings like this one. So, the building itself is as much of an attraction as the museum.
And I believe this is an administration building for museums in general. That’s not a museum open to the public. But right beside it is the UMNO Museum and that focuses on one of the major political parties here in Malaysia. Shows you the history of that political party and again housed in a historic building. Right across the road is an outdoor transportation museum. So you can actually see trains, planes, other items of interest here, all exhibited outdoors. And you can find remnants of the fortress walls out here on display as well that used to encircle the hill and all of these buildings. And this is an interesting museum here. Seems to confuse a lot of people because it’s actually a group of museums. It’s called the Museum Rakyat as you can see on the sign there, but there are actually a bunch of smaller museums housed inside the Museum Rakyat. So there is the Kite Museum, Beauty Museum and then a couple of others as well. So that is the Museum Rakyat. Maybe people just walk by these places because they don’t look like typical museums, right? That looks like a government office or even a school, something like that. Very very plain. But here they have quite a large sign. This I think is relatively new and it lists the galleries the museums inside the Beauty Museum, Kite Museum, Tan Sri Aziz Tapa Gallery, another gallery and a Eurasian Gallery. So yeah, Rakyat Museum. I would show you the entrance but I can see from here they have a closed sign on the wall. Could be again because of Friday prayers. I’m not sure. But here they have the ticket prices probably up to date. Five for Malaysians, 10 for foreigners, and five for foreigner senior citizens and children. And there are the regular visiting hours. So yeah, they’re closed for Friday afternoon prayers as well, 12:15 to 2:45. I think that’s pretty common for all of the museums underneath the government organization. The PERZIM. Yeah they have the PERZIM display here again that digital display. So these all these museums are under the control of this central organization and I think they follow the Friday prayers closing for Friday prayers habit.
Doing this museum walkabout is ending up interesting for me as well because I’m discovering things even I wasn’t aware of. I noticed earlier that sign for the Stamp Museum. I didn’t know where it was but here is a sign for the Stamp Museum and giving its history. I’m not entirely clear where it is. I’m guessing it is supposed to be in here, but the gates are locked. To be honest, it looks like it’s not open at all anymore, but who knows? They could be closed for renovations, but Stamp Museum. I’ll throw that into my walkabout tour for cluster number two. And as we go around the corner here, we’re going to come across another museum that is quite unknown here in Melaka. I think the vast majority of people walk right by it and don’t even know that it is a museum that they could enter. And there it is right there. On Google Maps, I think it is listed as Bastion House. And I think most visitors see the name on the building there, Bastion House, and they don’t know what it is and then they just walk on by.
But I think the official name of the museum is the Malay and Islamic World Museum. It just happens to be inside the Bastion House. So you can see the name of the museum here, the Malay and Islamic World Museum and the history of the building itself, Bastion House built around 1910 and it was eventually it was a government building of course and then it was preserved for its historical value and then the government of Melaka bought it and converted it to the Malay and Islamic World Museum.
And it feels like it’s another closed on Friday kind of places since it is all about Islam.
And that brings us to the end of cluster two of the museums of Melaka. And interestingly, when you arrive here at the end of the museum row, you’re immediately in what I call cluster three of the museums of Melaka is within easy walking distance of Dutch Square. As you can see, 2-300 m at most, easily within a half a kilometer. And if I turn my camera around, you can see what I’m talking about. We are right here at A Famosa, the last remaining gate of the fortress. So, this is the only part of the original fortress that wasn’t demolished and torn down by the British right at the base of Melaka Hill and the Church of St. Paul up there. You can sort of think of this as an outdoor exhibit if you’re talking about going up on the hill checking out A Famosa. And there are a lot of interesting boards on the other side of A Famosa containing a lot of the history. One interesting thing and one very confusing thing is the name A Famosa gets tossed around a lot. Originally, A Famosa referred only to the corner tower that the Portuguese built in their original small fortress when they first defeated the Melaka Sultanate. They were under threat immediately. They defeated the Melaka Sultanate. The Melaka Sultan and his forces retreated out of the city, but they were still here ready to counterattack. So the Portuguese had to defend themselves as quickly as possible and they immediately started construction on a big massive fortified tower. And that was over on the other side of the hill by the bridge where the original Grand Mosque was located. The Grand Mosque was torn down by the Portuguese. And they used all the stone of the mosque to start building this giant tower. And it was that tower that was called A Famosa, the famous one. But then over time, people started using that word A Famosa to refer to the whole fortress. Though technically it wasn’t quite accurate to say that. And now in modern times, everybody calls this A Famosa, but in fact, this is just one of the gates, one of the many gates going through the fortress walls. This wasn’t A Famosa originally, but on Google Maps and in all the tourism maps, they call this A Famosa now, even though originally that referred to something else entirely. So there’s A Famosa, the last remaining part of the fortress, the gate right behind me. And then right beside it is the centerpiece of cluster 3 and that is the Melaka Sultanate Palace. So the Melaka Sultanate Palace was originally on the other side of the hill closer to the river and during the battle with the Portuguese, the Portuguese burned it down. It’s made entirely of wood as you can see and the Portuguese set fire to it and then burned it down. So nowadays they couldn’t rebuild it on its original location. There just isn’t room over there anymore. So, they used this land here and then built this huge accurate, as far as I know, replica of the original Sultanate Palace. So, this is what the Portuguese would have seen when they first arrived here back in the early 1500s. And again, because it’s a Friday, it’s closed. I knew that going out because I didn’t have any plan to go into any of these museums today. I just wanted to do the walking tour. So there it is, the Sultanate Palace Museum. So yeah, you can go inside. You can see the original architecture design of the palace and they have a lot of exhibits on the inside showing the history. Again, as I’ve mentioned a few times, to really appreciate this museum, you have to know about the history of Melaka already because there are a lot of really fascinating illustrations in there like dioramas, full-sized displays of historic events. But as a foreign visitor, to be honest, when you look at those displays, you’re not really sure what you’re looking at. And so, for example, there’s an entire room in there set aside to the legendary story of Hang Tuah. And all the main events of his life are on display and you can see all of it. But as a foreign visitor, if you don’t already know the story of Hang Tuah, it won’t really mean anything to you. So, you have to kind of know that story in advance. And they also illustrate other historic stories of Malaysia. And you kind of have to know them before you go in to truly appreciate the museum exhibits.
One more place rounds out cluster three of Melaka’s museums. So you’ve got A Famosa right here, St. the Church of St. Paul Melaka Hill up there, the Sultanate Palace right there. And almost completely unknown, which most foreigners walk by without knowing what it is, is this building. And that is another museum, kind of a hidden gem of Melaka in my opinion. And that is the Proclamation of Independence Museum. And again, it’s a little bit confusing because of the name. I think the name that I came across for it was the Independence Memorial. Like right here it says it’s the Proclamation of Independence Memorial. So I remember glancing at it from time to time and then walking by because a memorial to me is not something you can interact with. But in fact it is a very large very elaborate full-scale museum. And the key thing about this museum is well other than closed hours on Friday from noon till 3. So it is closed midday on Friday for Friday prayers. But other than that the interesting thing about this museum well two interesting things. One is the building that it’s housed in. And I’ll talk about that in a minute. And it covers the history of Malaysia. So, a lot of the other museums focus specifically on Melaka and Melaka’s history, but if you want the overall context, this is where you want to come. It’s a quite a good museum, very interesting building, interesting displays, and it covers the full breadth of Malaysian history. So, I’d highly recommend coming here if you want to get that perspective jammed into your brain so you can better understand Melaka and everything that you’re looking at. So, as with most of the museums in Melaka, the building itself is as interesting or even more interesting than the museum exhibits. And this is a very special case because this building was originally called the Melaka Club which I think was built in 1911 by the British. This can probably explain it better than I can. So yeah, it was the building was known as the Melaka Club built around 1911. Local and British architecture and it was a place where the British colonial and expat community would come to hang out. It was basically a social club for the British colonizers of Melaka and you can see that in the building itself when you go inside. Must have been an amazing place to hang out on the balconies. Cool breeze having a cold drink. Yeah, would have been an interesting life back then. But the building was chosen to house this museum because it is in front of Padang Bandar Hilir which was where Tunku Abdul Rahman proclaimed the date of independence upon the return of the independence entourage from London. This event on February 20th, 1956 was a momentous occasion in the country’s fight for independence. So, this museum gives you a very detailed in-depth look at Malaysia’s fight for independence from the British, which was a long drawn out process. And that sign is talking about a key moment when Tunku Abdul Rahman and his group of negotiators for Malaya went to Europe to negotiate. They went to London and they engaged in talks and negotiations and with the British they settled on an official date for the independence of the new country. And then when the group of negotiators returned to Malaysia to Malaya at the time they announced the official date of independence and they didn’t do it in Kuala Lumpur they came here to Melaka and they announced the date of independence here and that’s why they sited the museum here and it was a very big event the big public proclamation of Independence Day. So that is it for cluster three, the Independence Museum, not just a memorial and of course A Famosa and Church of St. Paul and most importantly the Melaka Sultanate Palace over there.
I’m back at Dutch Square, which for me is a cluster two of the Melaka Museums and I’m right beside the bridge of course going across the river. Jonker Street, the famous Jonker Food Street is right over there. And cluster number four of Melaka’s museums for me is located across the bridge in the Jonker Street area. And the centerpiece of that cluster is right on this very first road. Cross the bridge, turn right, and let’s go there and take a look at it. You cross over the bridge and that brings you to this gateway which is the beginning of Jonker Walk right there and there’s a road right here. You turn right and a short distance to the right you come across as I said the centerpiece for cluster number four the Cheng Ho Museum. It has a few different spellings, different pronunciation, and I’m sure I can’t get anywhere near the official proper pronunciation, but this is it right here, the museum Budaya Cheng Ho, but I think you can also pronounce it Cheng Ho. So, it’s the Cheng Ho Cultural Museum. So, again, you can see just how easy it is to get to. Very very close to Dutch Square, Jonker Street and this is a very important museum to visit. I would put it as one of my primary recommendations and I say that not because the museum itself is so amazing. It’s probably just more or less it’s kind of ordinary but what’s important is the man that it is about. Cheng Ho is a very important figure in the history of Melaka and in particular its relationship with China. Cheng Ho was actually an admiral of the Ming dynasty in China and he was the leader of a fleet of ships that they called the treasure fleet. So in his fleet of ships, he went on seven major journeys around this part of the world, establishing trade relations with all the other kingdoms around. And Cheng Ho and his 300 ships were key to the development of Melaka because they would stop here in their journeys when the monsoon seasons wouldn’t let them continue. All 300 of these ships of the treasure fleet would dock in Melaka and they built a huge Chinese settlement here of traders. And so the story of Cheng Ho and his treasure fleet is pretty much essential to understanding the history of Melaka. So this is a very important museum to visit. Let’s just pop inside to get a look at the opening hours and ticket prices so you know what I’m talking about. So right there, non-Malaysian, 15 ringgit, eight for children, 10 ringgit for Malaysians, five for children, and yeah, nicely air conditioned. So you can jump in here if for nothing else to escape from the heat of Jonker Street for a little while. They have a really nice theater in there. They show a nice movie about the history of Cheng Ho and they have models of his treasure fleet and they have expansive displays on the inside relating to the history of Malaysia and Melaka. So yeah, it’s one of the highlights for me of the museums here in Melaka.
Back on the outside here. I was just chatting with a young man who works here and he was telling me that it’s a private museum. So they’re not controlled by the government hours for Friday prayers, things like that. So they set their own hours and even though it’s Friday afternoon, they are open to the public. Very interesting museum, beautiful old wooden building. So, it’s worth the price of admission just to get in through some air conditioning and see some of the old architecture of Melaka, the interior design, and it’s connected with a cafe over here. When you exit from the museum, you exit out this cafe, you can get yourself a cold drink. But it does fit strongly into this theme that I’m developing that I’d highly recommend visiting this museum, but I’d also recommend doing a little bit of reading about Cheng Ho before you go there. In fact, there is an exhibit at the History and Ethnography Museum on second floor upstairs, kind of hidden and out of the way, but there’s a whole exhibit about Cheng Ho and his expeditions. And it would almost be a good idea to go to the History and Ethnography Museum first, look at that museum, absorb some knowledge about Cheng Ho, and then come here to this museum dedicated only to him, and then you’ll understand it a lot better. Back to the bridge leading from Dutch Square to Jonker Street. Hard Rock Cafe right over there. And facing the gateway, the entrance to Jonker Street, Cheng Ho Museum. It’s just a short distance to the right. And the rest of the cluster of places that I would recommend here in cluster 4 is over here on Heeren Street.
Heeren Street itself. You can think of the street as an open air museum because there is so much history on display in the architecture. So you can think of the street itself as a museum but there is at least one museum here that is worth visiting part of a cluster 4.
This is the start of Heeren Street. The base of it starts right at the Melaka River. Right over there is Dutch Square running parallel to Jonker Street.
And if you turn to go up Heeren Street, a short distance ahead is the Baba and Nyonya Heritage Museum, which is an original mansion, a family home built by a very wealthy Peranakan Chinese family. And the interior of the house as it was renovated by the Peranakan Chinese has been preserved and turned into a museum. So you just walk up here a short distance and this is it. The road is so narrow. If you’re walking on the right side of the road, you might even walk right by it and not notice that it’s there. But of course from this side you get a full view and it clearly stands out from its neighbors. So this is the Baba and Nyonya Heritage Museum and it isn’t really about the history of Melaka. It’s more about the history of one particular family, how they lived, and you get to see the architecture and interior decor of a classic Peranakan, a Chinese family. Ticket price is 25 ringgit, I believe, for everybody. And inside they have audio tours. So, you scan a QR code and then you listen to an audio tour as you go through the museum. For me personally, I don’t know if visiting this place is worth 25 ringgit or worth of the time. It’s interesting to see the inside of a beautiful house, all of the beautiful furniture. I visited this house because I was interested in the history of the engineering and the architecture, how these houses were built and designed. And this is one of the few opportunities you have to go inside one of these houses as they existed decades or centuries ago and you can actually get a close-up look at the interior design and engineering and architecture. So that’s why it was interesting to me. I mean, if you’re interested in the artwork, Chinese decor, seeing a beautiful home and family history, yeah, then it’s worth visiting. It’s quite beautiful on the inside, very well preserved. But again, I think to get the most value out of visiting that place, you sort of have to read up on Heeren Street and the buildings here before you go there and learn as much about it as you can before you pay your 25 ringgit and go inside. So that is the end of cluster four of my Melaka museum walkabout tour.
I thought I would wind up this museums of Melaka walkabout tour by climbing up here to the top of St. Paul’s Hill. Church of St. Paul right behind me. Fascinating place to visit. I guess you could think of it as an outdoor museum and the monument to St. Francis Xavier right there. And I thought this would be a good place to wind up my tour before talking about cluster five of the museums because from up here you can get a bit of a bird’s eye view and start to understand how close together all these museums are. So right from where I am, you can see the ship right there, the Flor de la Mar. So that is a cluster one that I was talking about, the Flor de la Mar and then the Maritime Museum and then the Royal Malaysian Navy Museum and the Customs Museum all grouped together right there. And then right over here below us, this is Dutch Square. Right behind these trees, you can see some of the orange roof tiles there. So, Dutch Square and the Stadthuys right here, the History and Ethnography Museum, the Heritage Gallery Museum right there, the Youth Museum, and then Museum Row right down below us, following all the way along this street. And then cluster three of all the museums is right on the other side of the hill. So down on the other side we if we walk by St. Paul’s Church here, something else that’s very interesting to learn about before you explore Melaka and the museums is laterite. Laterite is this clay like stone right here. And so many of the buildings here were made with laterite which you just dig out of the ground. So yeah, you want to learn about laterite before you visit all these places as well. You can see this church. These massive walls were all built with big chunks of laterite.
So that’s the inside of St. Paul’s Church. And then if you come over here to the other side of St. Paul’s and you go down the stairs here, then you get to the last remaining gate of the old fortress which is now called A Famosa and it is right down here. The Sultanate Palace is right over here and the Independence Memorial Museum in the old Melaka Clubhouse building is right over here. So this is a cluster three of all the museums. And then swinging back to the downtown core. If you cross the Melaka River across the bridge, that’s when you get to Jonker Street, Heeren Street over there, and that’s where you’ll find cluster 4, the Cheng Ho Museum, and the Baba and Nyonya Heritage Gallery. And there are also memorials there to some of the historical figures like Hang Tuah, Hang Jebat, things like that. They’re quite interesting to track down. Assuming you already know the stories of Hang Tuah, Hang Jebat, and Hang Kasturi and the others. So those are the four clusters of museums all within half a kilometer of each other. Really, really interesting.
The final cluster of museums. Cluster five is a set of three museums that I visited that are outside the historic center. So for these three museums, more specialty museums, you’d have to have your own transportation, take a Grab car or something like that. The first one is the Prison Museum. And the Prison Museum is housed in an actual prison that was used in Melaka historically and it’s been converted into a museum. So the Prison Museum is very interesting and it’s right beside St. John’s Hill and you can go up St. John’s Hill and see St. John’s Fort still in pristine condition there. It’s about 2 km from here. About 7 kilometers away is the Hang Tuah Cultural Museum. It focuses very much on the story of Hang Tuah and his band of fighters. And through their lives, you get a very interesting focus on the history of Melaka. That’s about 7 km away. And then 10 kilometers away up the coast in this direction, having trouble with my voice, is the Submarine Museum. Also fascinating place to visit. It’s an old original French submarine that was purchased by the Malaysian Navy to be used as a training submarine to train Malaysian sailors in how to operate submarines. And after the training was over, they converted the original submarine just as it was and turned it into a museum. Fascinating to visit. But again, I highly recommend reading about the history of all these places before you go there. Read about the story of Hang Tuah and Hang Jebat and Hang Kasturi. Read about the prison system that operated here in Melaka under the British colonial administration. Read about the submarine itself before you go to any of those three places. But I would say all three of them are very much worth visiting if you already have some knowledge in your head. One last look at St. Paul’s Church before I head back down the stairs. And one other thing to point out is that all these museums are so close together, such a compact area, which is what makes Melaka so unique. But that compactness extends to other things. You got all these museums. I don’t know how many I listed, but there’s 18 to 25 museums probably right in this area that we’re looking at. But right in the center of it, you’ve also got the Taming Sari Tower. So that observation tower is right there that you can go up and down in a revolving tower. You’ve got the cruise boats going up and down the Melaka River right there. So, all of these major attractions are right within this very compact historic core. And that makes it time to wind up this walkabout tour of the museums of Melaka.
I found myself a chair here in the shade down by the Melaka River just so I could sit and catch my breath. The heat and humidity really got to me today. It’s like my ears have closed off, like my inner eardrums, like I’ve gone scuba diving or something. And it’s kind of hard to speak right now. I can’t even pop my eardrums. So, it’s kind of hard to talk right now. Yeah, the heat can be pretty intense here in Malaysia, especially if you’re not prepared for it. But yeah, I’m right down here. I think I’m going to get out of the sun or out of the shade and back into the sun because I came here specifically because of what’s around me. Yeah, I’m having a hard time talking. I’m down by the Melaka River, the starting point of my walkabout tour. And right beside cluster one of the museums here is the Customs Museum and there is the Samudera Museum complex the Flor de la Mar the Maritime Museum and the Royal Malaysian Navy Museum. So this is cluster one all right here. So I thought it would be good to end the walkabout where it started. And despite how tired I am, I didn’t walk very far. I guess I just walked really fast today and I didn’t spend a lot of time resting. So now I’m paying the price. But yeah, my recommendation of the best museums if you’re my recommendation would be to go to all of them. But hey, that’s me. If you only want to go to a selection, I would start with the History and Ethnography Museum, the biggest history museum, the one that’s inside the Stadthuys. Make sure you go to the Cheng Ho Gallery up on the second floor. It’s kind of hard to find, but make sure you visit that gallery. And then after that you could go to the Cheng Ho Cultural Museum across the bridge near Jonker Street and I would go there and then I would also take in the Flor de la Mar because it is so unusual, so interesting to see this museum and you get three museums all in one. And then I would visit the cluster number three, the Melaka Sultanate Palace. Very interesting to visit. And of course the Proclamation of Independence Memorial to round it out. Those would be I think my set of four museums to visit to get a nice overview of Melaka and its history. And then if you’re interested in specialty topics, I really enjoyed the Customs Museum. And if you wanted to go further afield, you’ve got the Submarine Museum, which I really thought was interesting. But before I went to any of the museums, what I would do is sit down and do a little bit of reading on your own and put together a rough timeline for Melaka and think about Melaka in terms of its major periods of history so that everything you see as you walk around Melaka, you can slot it into one of those periods of history. So for example there is the pre Melaka history like before Melaka even existed as a city what was here. So I would start with that. So what was here before Melaka even existed and just think about the river, the hill, fishing villages, things like that. Who were the people living here? And then historians agree more or less that the official history of Melaka as an urban center, as a city, as a maritime trading center, you can date it somewhere between the year 1396 to 1402. Somewhere in there a man that we call Parameswara. He was actually an exiled prince of the Srivijaya kingdom from Sumatra. He came here to Melaka. He founded the city and he gave it its name of Melaka. So right around 1400 to the year 1511 that is the Melaka Sultanate period. So Melaka as a trading center was founded around 1400 by Parameswara and then Parameswara or his son converted to Islam. So Melaka became an Islamic center of trade and was ruled by the Melaka Sultanate for about a hundred over a hundred years. So that is the period of the Melaka Sultanate and for me that was the heyday of Melaka when ships from all around this part of the world would dock here to do their international trading. It was the free trade center of this part of the world. So that was the Melaka Sultanate during the 1400s. And then in 1511, the Portuguese conquered the Melaka Sultanate. They took over, drove out the Melaka Sultanate and they converted Melaka to Catholicism because the Portuguese were Catholic. They built the original fort and the Portuguese ruled Melaka from 1511 to 1641 and that’s when the Dutch took over and then the Dutch took over in 1641. They rebuilt the fort, did a lot of that construction in the Dutch Square. Those are all Dutch buildings. Most of the museum buildings that we saw today were built by the Dutch. A lot of Jonker Street buildings, they were also built. Those brick buildings were also built during the Dutch era. And then the British took over after the Dutch. They tore down the fortress walls and then the British ruled Melaka until Malaysia gained its independence. So before you even go out exploring Melaka, before you go to the museums, just mentally divide Melaka into those historical periods. Prehistory before Melaka existed, the Melaka Sultanate, the Portuguese era from 1511 to 1641, the Dutch era from 1641 until the British took over. And then the British era from when they took over until Malaysia gained its independence. I would write down those years in a little notebook on your phone and then every time you see something here, think about what you’re looking at. Are we talking about the Melaka Sultanate era? So for example, when you go to the Cheng Ho Cultural Museum, you are talking about the Melaka Sultanate era because Cheng Ho was the connection between the Chinese Ming dynasty and the Melaka Sultanate here on the peninsula. So you can instantly slot, okay, Cheng Ho, that’s the Melaka Sultanate era. Now I’m looking at the ruins of the fortress, the south gate. Ah, was that built under the Portuguese or under the Dutch? Is this building a British building, a Dutch building, a Portuguese building, or does it predate all of them? Go all the way back to the Melaka Sultanate. It’s really not that complicated if you divide the history into those big periods of time. And then when you visit the museums, yeah, you’ll have a much much greater understanding of what you’re looking at.
Heading back to my hotel after that Melaka Museum walkabout. Yeah, if you plan on coming to Melaka in the future, I hope that little tour helps you out, gives you a sense of what kind of museums there are here, where they are, which ones might interest you on your visit. Yeah, there’s my hotel right behind me, so I’m already back here. Good time to wind up this video. Shout out to the Crunch Club. You know who you are and you know what to do. Thank you for being part of the Planet Doug video productions community. And shout out to everyone out there supporting me and Planet Doug through all the different platforms Touch ‘n Go here in Malaysia through the Planet Doug Patreon. Yeah, appreciate you guys very very much for hanging in there with me, keeping Planet Doug in orbit. The Planet Doug coffee posse over there on Buy Me a Coffee and of course people supporting me through PayPal. Link to the Planet Doug PayPal is in the video description. If this video gives you a lot of value and you want to kick back a little support, that PayPal link is there for you. Yeah. Thanks very much for hanging out with me and I hope you have a very good experience when you come to Melaka and you check out one or two or three or four or 20 of those museums. See you next time.