TL;DR / Key Takeaways
- Johor’s coastline hides a remarkable feat of human engineering. Hundreds of canals, dug largely by Javanese migrant workers in the late 1800s and early 1900s, helped transform waterlogged coastal land into agricultural territory.
- A place that looks like an ordinary river might be anything but natural. Following the canals around Parit Unas and Parit Jawa revealed an extensive network of waterways, embankments and water-control gates.
- The unexpected discoveries were just as interesting as the history. A beautiful Chinese temple, an educational mangrove park, working fishing docks and a sprawling collection of boat-repair equipment all turned up along a relatively short ride.
- The accommodation problem solved itself. I arrived in Parit Jawa expecting to camp or find somewhere to sleep on a fishing jetty. Instead, I stumbled across a modest room for RM60, complete with air conditioning, Wi-Fi and a private bathroom.
A Short Ride with No Particular Plan
After settling into Muar, I headed south along the Johor coast toward Parit Jawa. It was an unusually late start for me, but there was no reason to rush. I had only about 15 kilometres to cover, and I wanted to spend the day exploring rather than simply getting from one town to another.
My original plan was fairly simple: find an interesting fishing jetty, investigate the possibilities for camping, and hopefully discover somewhere to get a cold drink. I had no affordable accommodation booked and was prepared to improvise.
That approach had worked before. On the previous leg of my journey from Melaka to Muar, I had ended up sleeping on an old sofa at a fishing dock. The place had electricity, a fan, a shower and a ready-made community of fishermen who were happy to let me stay. It felt like I had discovered a practical way to travel through parts of Malaysia that don’t cater particularly well to budget travellers.
So, when I spotted another promising jetty on the map, I wondered whether I might be able to repeat the experiment.
But the more interesting discovery was waiting along the road.
The Canals That Changed Johor’s Coastline
I’d been noticing a pattern in the names of towns and waterways along this stretch of Johor. So many began with the Malay word parit, meaning canal or ditch. A little research revealed that these weren’t just incidental drainage channels. They were part of an extensive system created to make the coastal land suitable for agriculture.
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, workers from Java came to Johor under a land-grant system associated with the state’s rulers. The idea was that people could clear and develop land for farming and, in return, obtain ownership of it. Along the coast, Javanese workers cut through dense mangrove vegetation and dug long drainage canals into the waterlogged interior.
These projects were far more ambitious than I had imagined. Some canals extend six or seven kilometres inland, and there are hundreds of them along the coast.
The system also involved building up embankments to protect agricultural land from seawater. Water-control gates, known as pintu air, allowed water to drain toward the sea while helping prevent tidal seawater from flowing back inland.
It was a complicated balancing act. The land needed to be drained enough for farming, but not so much that it became unsuitable for crops. And the saltwater had to be kept out.
What fascinated me was how easy it would be to travel through this landscape without realizing any of this had happened. You cross a bridge, see a broad waterway and assume you’re looking at a natural river. In many cases along this coast, you’re actually looking at a human-made canal that has been reshaped by more than a century of flowing water.
The landscape itself was a historical record, hiding in plain sight.
Reading History in the Names
One of the most enjoyable parts of the ride was learning to interpret the names on the canal signs.
Take Parit Unas Laut, for example. My understanding was that the middle name often referred to the person who organized or led the group that dug the canal. In this case, Unas was associated with the work crew responsible for its construction.
The other words describe the canal’s location:
- Laut means sea, identifying the coastal section.
- Tengah means middle, identifying the central section.
- Darat means land, identifying the inland end.
Suddenly, the signs were telling me more than where I was. They offered clues about the people who built these waterways and the way the canals were organized.
Other names seemed to refer to different origins. Parit Jawa, for instance, refers to the Javanese connection. Parit Punggor appeared to refer to a tree stump, while Parit Pinang Seribu suggested a connection to a thousand betel-nut palms.
I was piecing this together as I travelled, looking up unfamiliar words and comparing what I found with the landscape around me. Some of my interpretations were tentative, and there was still plenty I didn’t know. But that was part of the pleasure: the road kept presenting questions, and the answers made the places I was passing through more interesting.
A Temple, an Unexpected Coffee Stop, and a Different Kind of Community
At Parit Unas Laut, I found a large Chinese temple with extensive grounds, beautiful architecture and a small shop and café. It was much more elaborate than I expected to encounter in such a rural setting.
Naturally, I went looking for an iced coffee.
There was a slight complication: they didn’t have any ice. My request apparently set a small operation in motion, and someone went off to find some. The coffee itself wasn’t particularly memorable, but the setting more than made up for it.
I began to think of these jetties as more than places where fishing boats come and go. They are working communities, with places to eat, gather, repair equipment and socialize. If you take the time to talk to people and find out what’s available, they may offer possibilities that aren’t obvious to someone passing through.
I had arrived expecting to find little more than boats and a place to sit. Instead, I had found a temple, a shop, a drink and another glimpse into everyday life along the coast.
Walking Through a Mangrove Forest
Another unexpected discovery was Laman Bakau Parit Kassim, a mangrove park with a network of boardwalks and educational displays.
The park was rough around the edges, and some of its infrastructure had clearly suffered from the elements. Parts of the boardwalk that once extended over the water had been destroyed. A viewing tower was locked, too, adding another entry to my growing collection of disappointing tower encounters.
Still, I was impressed by the educational material. The displays explained the different mangrove zones, the environmental conditions that shape them, and the remarkable variety of root systems found among mangrove species.
I’d been trying to make sense of the tangled roots myself. Some spread out like stilts to anchor trees in unstable ground; others project above the soil to help the trees obtain oxygen in waterlogged conditions. The displays helped me understand why the roots looked so different and why my earlier assumptions needed a little adjustment.
The park also brought the canal story into sharper focus. The workers who dug these waterways had to cut through precisely this kind of dense, muddy mangrove environment before they could begin draining the land behind it.
And mangroves are not simply an obstacle to development. They also protect coastlines from erosion and support a rich ecosystem. Walking along the damaged waterfront, it was easy to see how much effort can be required to maintain a coastline after its natural protection has been disturbed.
I was disappointed that parts of the park had deteriorated, but the visit was still worthwhile. I hadn’t expected to find such a useful introduction to mangrove ecology in a small coastal settlement.
The Scale of the Engineering Becomes Clear
As I continued toward Parit Jawa, the waterways became increasingly difficult to ignore. I crossed canal after canal, some of them broad enough to resemble natural rivers. I also found modern water-control gates and channels running parallel to the shoreline, adding another layer to the drainage system.
The more I saw, the more I appreciated the scale of the undertaking.
This wasn’t simply a matter of digging a ditch to drain a field. The canals, embankments and gates formed an interconnected system designed to manage water across a large coastal landscape. The work helped make agricultural settlement possible in places that had previously been waterlogged and difficult to cultivate.
I was still trying to understand how the system operates today. Some of the gates looked modern, but I couldn’t tell how frequently they were used or how much of the original drainage system remained essential to local agriculture. Those were questions for further research.
Parit Jawa: Fishing Boats, Workshops, and a Little Industrial Archaeology
By the time I reached Parit Jawa, I was ready to explore the fishing harbour.
The scale of the operation was impressive. These were substantial commercial fishing boats, not just a few small vessels tied up along a creek. There were workshops, piles of old machinery, discarded engine parts, metal frameworks and all manner of equipment associated with the fishing industry.
Some areas looked abandoned. There were damaged structures, accumulated debris and old pieces of machinery that seemed to have been sitting in the same place for decades. Yet the evidence of ongoing work was everywhere.
That contrast caught my attention. A place can look neglected to an outsider and still be very much alive, with people coming and going, repairing equipment and preparing boats for their next trip.
I have a weakness for places like this. Old machinery and industrial leftovers feel almost archaeological, as though every object has a story that could be uncovered if you knew who to ask. I found myself wondering what some of the enormous engine components had come from and how many decades of work were represented by the piles of metal.
The harbour wasn’t polished for visitors, and that was precisely what made it interesting. It was a working place, and I was getting a glimpse of it simply by wandering around.
The Accommodation Mystery Solves Itself
There was one problem I still hadn’t solved: where to sleep.
I had expected to spend the night outside, perhaps at the jetty or somewhere near the beach. I had assumed there were no affordable rooms in Parit Jawa, and I wasn’t particularly keen on paying for a family-sized homestay when all I needed was a bed.
Then I spotted Marina Lodging, a small establishment right by the harbour.
I went in to ask about a room, and to my surprise, they showed me one for RM60. I paid in cash, received a key and suddenly had a perfectly respectable place to stay.
The room wasn’t luxurious in the conventional sense, but it had air conditioning, Wi-Fi, drinking water, a private bathroom and a comfortable bed. For someone who had been preparing to sleep outside, it felt like a tremendous upgrade.
I also found myself appreciating details that might seem trivial in a more expensive hotel: hooks on the door, somewhere to hang a towel, and a light switch beside the bed. These little conveniences make everyday life easier, especially when you’re travelling with a lot of equipment.
There was one electrical outlet for the entire room, which created its own logistical challenge. Fortunately, I travel with enough cables and power bars to make it work.
The funniest part was that the lodging wasn’t even listed on Google Maps. I had spent time planning around the assumption that affordable accommodation didn’t exist here, only to discover a room by looking at what was actually in front of me.
The Difference Between Going Somewhere and Discovering Somewhere
I’d encountered another pair of travellers’ video of Parit Jawa shortly before my visit. They had stopped in town while travelling up the coast, explored the harbour and then continued to their planned destination.
Their trip illustrated an interesting contrast between different styles of travel. If you’re following a schedule and relying on buses, you need to know how you’re getting to the next stop and where you’re sleeping. Spending a few hours somewhere unusual can be a great experience, but extending the visit may be difficult.
Travelling with a bicycle has its own inconveniences, of course. There’s the heat, the traffic, the equipment and the physical effort. But it also gives me a degree of independence. I can stop whenever something catches my attention, follow a canal for a few miles, or change my plans when a place turns out to be more interesting than expected.
And because I carry camping equipment, I have another option when affordable accommodation isn’t available.
That flexibility is what allowed a short ride to become a full day of exploring. I arrived with a vague idea of finding somewhere to sleep and left with a much better understanding of Johor’s coastal landscape, its fishing communities and the extraordinary engineering that helped shape the region.
Notable Quotes and Insights
“The landscape itself was a historical record, hiding in plain sight.”
A recurring theme of the day was how much history can be concealed in ordinary things. A canal sign, a bridge or a water gate can reveal a story that would otherwise go unnoticed.
I had set out expecting to camp, with no particular plan beyond reaching Parit Jawa. Instead, I found a mangrove park, an unexpected temple café, a fascinating fishing harbour and a room for RM60.
FULL VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Good morning. Got a bit of an unusual day for you here on Planet Doug. I’m leaving the city of Muar and I’m leaving by bicycle, but it’s already 11:00 in the morning, which is really late for me and that happened for two reasons. One is I’m only going a short distance down the coast to the next small town. There’s a town there called Parit Jawa. And yeah, I’m going to cycle there. Hopefully spend the night there, though I don’t know how yet. We’ll see how that works out. And because I’m only cycling a short distance, I didn’t need to leave this hotel at the crack of dawn. So, I thought since I paid for the room until noon, why not hang out here and relax and enjoy the luxuries and then get on the road around 11:00, which is what I’m doing right now. This is all taking place in the middle of October 2026, by the way, if you’re watching this in the future. And this month here in this part of Malaysia, there’s a lot of haze in the air from fires across the strait in Indonesia. So, it’s been very, very gloomy, very gray, very hazy. But today, the skies are a little bit lighter. It may not look like it, but there’s a little bit of blue. I think I even saw the sun. Look, look, look, look, look. Shadow. I haven’t seen my shadow in weeks, it feels like. Yeah, look at that. You can actually see the sun, so it’s peeking through. There’s my bike all ready to go and suffering a little bit. I have this gel pad on there, but it’s completely torn open like the covering. This is exposed to the sun all the time, so the material just becomes brittle and there’s like sticky gel under there. Makes the seat a little bit softer. To be honest, I don’t even need that really, but I stuck it on there. But during the day today, I’ll probably end up taking it off and throwing it away. My instinct is to sew everything up and everything, but it’s just like there’s nothing to sew it to because all the material is completely brittle now. There’s no way to repair it. We’ll see what happens.
Hi, there you are. Thank you so much. Thank you. Yeah. Had a really great time. Okay. Good. Cycling away from my homestay in Muar. I really settled in there. You know, I’m very good at that. I can put down roots very quickly. I got to know this neighborhood so fast. I knew all the best places to grab a good hearty, tasty yet inexpensive meal. I knew the roads of Muar. I knew how to get everywhere. I really settled in fast. Great people running that place. All the staff, as far as I can tell, are from Indonesia and they have that warm, outgoing, energetic style that I got so accustomed to from Sumatra.
So, as I said at the opening, I’m in the city of Muar, which is in the state of Johor, Malaysia. It’s known as the royal city of Johor. All right, this is where I am. This is the city of Muar. That is the Homestay Muar Longstay. And I’m cycling out of this city right now. And I’m heading south along the coast. This journey, as far as the bicycle is concerned, it only started in Melaka maybe a week ago. And I cycled from Melaka to Muar in 2 days. So I went halfway and I spent the night down here on the coast. I just slept at a fishing dock, like a jetty. Spent the night there and then I rode to Muar. And I’ve been here exploring Muar and shooting videos. So the idea today is equally unambitious. I’m only going to be cycling a very short distance from Muar to this town right here called Parit Jawa. So that is where I’m hoping to spend the night only because it looks like a very interesting place. So there’s Muar, the city of Muar. And my plan is to ride down the coast to here, this cluster of houses. And the reason I’m interested in this town is basically because of this jetty. And there are no homestays that I can afford here. There are no low-budget hotels. There are basically no accommodation options here. And what I’m going to do is just play it by ear. I may sleep on the docks. Maybe I can find a place here to put up my tent. There’s actually a park over here and a beach. Maybe I can put my tent up here. The hope is that in this jetty there’s like a public bathroom and a water source. So all that’s all I really need, a bathroom and a water source. Then I can sleep anywhere in here and then I can use the bathroom. That would be very convenient. Perhaps on the way I will stumble across something interesting, but I don’t know. On my way from Melaka to Muar, I only made it halfway on my first day because I stopped in so many places. There’s so many interesting things to check out, so much history to explore. I only made it halfway. And then when I went looking for a place to stay, again, I was priced out of the market because the only thing available were homestays and they’re meant for big groups or entire families. They don’t rent single rooms. There was nowhere to stay. And I ended up spending the night on a sofa, just an old old old dirty dirty dirty sofa on the fishing dock at the jetty. And when I did that that night, I kind of felt like I had unlocked Malaysia. I found a key to unlocking Malaysia in that a jetty like that could be such a useful such an amazing home base. That sofa that I was sleeping on, it had a fan. There was electricity there. And on the other side of the jetty, there was a bathroom, a regular sit-down toilet bathroom with a shower. So, I basically made myself at home there. I asked the local fisherman if it was okay. Can I sleep here on the sofa? They all said, “Yeah, fine.” And it’s such a readymade community that I could join. So when I saw Parit Jawa and I saw that jetty and all the fishing boats, I thought, “Aha, maybe I can repeat my successful experiment of sleeping on the sofa at the other jetty. Maybe I can be adopted by the fishermen of the jetty of Parit Jawa.” So that’s kind of where the idea came from.
But then I started to notice something, a pattern in the names of all the towns up and down the coast of Johor. They all started with the word parit or parrot. I’m not sure if it’s parit or paret. I’ve been saying parit. So I did a Google search and it turned out that that word parit meant canal. And more research told me that all of this coast of Johor State is lined with hundreds of these artificial canals that were hand dug back in the late 1800s and the early 1900s. So Parit Jawa means… I’m losing my glasses. I’m losing everything. It means Java canal and it was dug by workers by migrant workers by immigrants from Java who came over here to Johor dug these canals and the purpose of these canals was to drain the water from land inland. So they’re draining the water out and turning all this land into fertile agricultural land. And that’s why they dug all of these canals. And once I was armed with that knowledge, I did a whole lot more research. And in my previous video, I did a deep dive into these canals, these parit, and how they were engineered to drain the land. A fascinating, fascinating topic. So yeah, I’ve been doing a lot of research into this whole concept. And now I stopped here at the side of the road because check it out. Here is one of these canals. This I believe is Parit Unas Laut. And when you see the names of these canals, you can learn a lot about their origins. They have a naming convention where they divide them into three parts because these canals can be very very long. They started by cutting a channel through the mangrove like the coast of Johor has a thick belt of mangrove. You can see it there. That’s all mangrove over there. And that was dense and pretty much impenetrable. And then these workers from Java cut through the mangrove, cut a channel through it, and then by hand they dug a canal. And then this canal that they dug can extend six or seven kilometers inland. They’re very, very long. And as I said, there are hundreds of them all along the coast of Johor. And there because they’re so long, they actually divide them into sections based on location. So this part down by the sea is Parit Unas Laut because laut means sea. And when you get all the way to the end that part of this canal is called Parit Unas Darat because darat means land. So you’ve got laut, the sea, darat, land, the land end. And the middle section is just called the middle section. It is Parit Unas Tengah. So you’ve got laut, tengah, and then darat. The sea, the center, the land end. And the other name like in this case, the name Unas. Again looking at this canal. This is Parit Unas. Unas is the name of the leader of the work crew that built this canal that dug it. So I think his name was Wak Unas or Pak Unas and he was like a headman from Java and he funded the expedition back in those days. We’re talking about the mid to late 1800s, early 1900s, the Temenggong of Johor. He offered he came up with a scheme of land grants. He wanted to develop the economy of Johor to keep it out of the clutches of the British, I think. And he set up a policy where people from anywhere could come here, develop the land for agriculture and then they would be given ownership of that land. And I believe in the interior a lot of that land was taken up by Chinese workers like Chinese immigrants came took up a lot of that land in the interior and converted it into plantations or various products. But along the coast, it was men from Java because there was a land scarcity in Java. And then people in Java heard about this land grant scheme in Johor. And yeah, they couldn’t get land ownership in Java. So someone there who had money, who had influence, like a headman, he would put together an expedition. And so he would pay for the boat, pay for the tools, pay for the food for the work camp, you know, to get them started. And then he would put together a crew of, you know, hardworking young Javanese men who are seeking their fortune. And they would all pile into the boat under the leadership of Pak Unas came here and then they started clearing the mangrove and then they dug this canal which you can see again just extends 6 or 7 km inland. And after the work was done and they drained all of that land, it was divided up and given to those men. They were given deeds to that land and they developed it for agriculture and then quite often the canal that they had just finished building would be named after the leader of that expedition who in this case was Wak Unas so this became the Unas canal the Parit Unas Laut. It’s not always the name of a person though sometimes it’s the name of a group like Parit Jawa just refers to the Javanese in general. Sometimes the name refers to I think like a local tree, some kind of special species of tree or flower or plant or some other people that were involved in the building of the canals. But yeah, you can look at that middle name and learn a lot about the canal, whoever built it and where they were from. I hope you were paying attention. There’s going to be a quiz at the end of the video, the Planet Doug quiz. So now if I present to you the name of one of these canals, you can answer my questions. So remember Parit Unas. Parit means canal. Unas is… that middle word is usually the name of a man associated with digging that canal. Usually the leader of the group. And then laut tells you that you are near the sea. Tengah, you’re in the middle. And then darat means you’re at the far end of the canal far inland. And yeah, a couple of key things to realize about this is that this is all completely artificial. This is not a natural river. These are man-made canals. Some of the smaller ones, you could probably call them drainage ditches. So they range in size from almost like a full-size river like this, to small ditches. And when they first dug it, I believe they were quite narrow, right? They just dig a narrow channel and a narrow canal. But then over the decades over you know the last 130 years with the flood waters coming down reaching you know the highest water level here near the Melaka Strait the flow of water started to expand it so that the canal got wider and wider and wider to the point that it actually turns into a dock and you can see all of those fishing boats there. So some of the larger canals have been turned into fishing docks and fishing villages and that is the case with Parit Jawa. It also has a very large fishing harbor like a jetty and that spot as well is a channel a canal that was dug by hand by these Javanese immigrant workers. Anyway, I wanted to stop here to tell that story and I’m going to cycle down there to get a closer look at it. That’s one of the advantages of only cycling 15 kilometers down the coast in an entire day. Gives you lots of time for stopping and exploring and hanging out, which is what I’m going to do. Head down there. Yeah, I’ve just become absolutely fascinated with this whole land grant system in Johor and the canals that resulted because they’ve had such a tremendous impact on the state as a whole, the economy, like all of these settlements, like all the people that live here, they’re basically living on land that was reclaimed from like a bog, a kind of a flooded forest and oh just and there’s a tremendous amount of wildlife. You can see a big monitor lizard there crossing the canal. There are giant monitor lizards all up and down these canals. There are storks, macaques, lots and lots and lots of bird life. So yeah, it’s an amazing part of the state and I think the average person I think that’s another… Yeah, you can see one right there. A monitor lizard hunting probably. I was just saying that the average person, me included, cycling or motorcycling or taking the bus up and down the coast of Johor would pass over dozens and dozens of bridges like little… Oh, here’s another bridge. Here’s a bridge. River. Another river. Another stream. And unless you do a little bit of reading about this, you would think that all of those are natural rivers and streams, but in fact, these are all artificial canals that were dug by hand a hundred years ago or something like that. Check out that… they’re so prehistoric, aren’t they? The way they swim with their tail like that. I guess he’s going to go into the culvert.
Hey, I’m just cycling up to this fishing jetty, the dock on Parit Unas Laut. Just curious what’s here. I’m hoping there’s going to be a little restaurant, a little kopitiam, and I can have an iced coffee and hang out for a little while.
Maybe I’ll cycle along the canal a bit farther first. See how far I can go and then I’ll turn around and come back to the dock and if there’s a place where I can sit down for a few minutes. Yeah, I noticed on Google Maps when I was looking at this place on Google Maps satellite view and to my amazement there was a very nice very large Chinese temple. It’s over here on my right.
Look at that very ornate extensive grounds. Much larger temple than you’d think you would find way out here.
Beautiful fountain. And yeah, I remember I just realized there’s a cafe here. Oh my goodness. And look at that. That is beautiful. And I wonder why it’s here exactly. I was getting excited because I thought I saw the cafe over there and it looked like it might even be open. And if it is open, I think I’ll go there right away. I don’t want to miss my chance if I go cycling up and down the canal for an hour. Maybe I’ll come back and it will be closed. If I see an open cafe, I better get over there right away. But yeah, look at that. What a beautiful structure.
The canal is right over there in the fishing dock right there. You can see how close the temple is to the canal.
Man, it’s quite large. And there is the coffee shop. Even if they’re not open for coffee, I can probably get at least a cold drink. Let’s give this a try. Are you open? Can you make a coffee? Coffee. Kopi ice. Yeah. They even have a store here like kind of like their version of a 99 Speedmart or something like that. So, yeah. What a great little spot. And they don’t have any ice right now, but apparently my desire for ice has sent someone off in search of it. An order has been placed for ice. And I can enjoy my iced coffee. I mean, yeah, look at this. This is, like I said, maybe this is the key to traveling around Malaysia. Jetties, fishing docks and jetties. Once you can sort of make a connection with them, like yeah, you could set up a tent here, camp overnight. Got a little restaurant right here, which came out of nowhere, you know, complete surprise, get cold drinks, food, and yeah, if you talk sweetly to people, maybe you could even gain access to, you know, a washroom here at the temple, something like that. Amazing. Finished my coffee. Wasn’t the best coffee I’ve ever had. If I’m being honest, they haven’t quite mastered the art form of the iced coffee yet. I think it was meant to be just that’s all they make is a hot coffee. Comes in a typical cup for a hot coffee and my request for iced coffee kind of threw them off and they didn’t quite know how to do that. So, it wasn’t very good. But hey, you cannot beat the setting, can you? Honestly.
I think this temple and all the buildings serve as a large community center for all the people living in this area.
There is no kopitiam here at this dock, but there is like a little shelter there. Some fishermen are there sorting through somebody’s catch. Yeah, these are bigger boats than I’ve seen at the other jetties where I’ve stopped. I mean, these look like real commercial fishing boats. And you can see that the channel opening is quite large. I mean, it’s a possibility that some of these canals did begin at a spot where there was a natural inlet, like not a full-on river system, but there could have been like an opening here in the mangrove already. So, this could they could have had access through here and didn’t have to cut through the mangrove quite as much. And then they dug the rest of the canal inland. I’m not sure. Yeah, this is like the widest one that I’ve seen. All the other parit that I’ve explored. I couldn’t get very close to the Melaka Strait though. The road would just peter out in the mangrove and you couldn’t actually get close to the water. So, you couldn’t even really see much of the opening. But here, yeah, it’s quite wide. You know, looks almost like the mouth of a natural river.
Look at that. That’s an awesome little fishing hut. All the comforts of home.
I made my way back to the road that I was following. And right here you can see the sign for Parit Unas, Unas canal. And you can see it continues inland for quite a long ways. And I’m just going to cycle this way just for a little bit.
And a part of this hydraulic engineering system was not just the canals, but they also built up the land on either side of the canals. I’ve been calling them the bund like a series of dikes. And one of the reasons they have to do that is because if the seawater comes in with the tide and if it overflows the banks then the salt water from the sea goes into all these plantations and of course trees normal trees non-mangrove trees and seawater yeah they don’t get along so they have to build up a series of dikes to keep out the seawater as well. And I haven’t seen one of the traditional gates, but they also developed a technology of one-way valves that would control the flow of water. They called them a pintu air, basically a water gate or water exit. And the idea was that this valve was just a simple piece of wood on a hinge covering up the culvert and then the water flowing out of the land into the sea would pass through that valve. But when the tide rises and then the seawater tries to come in, it closes that door and closes it like a valve. So all the water from the land can flow out, but then the sea tidal water can’t flow back. And you see a number of these modern pintu air all up and down the coast. I’m hoping to see a traditional one, an old one, but I haven’t seen one yet. This is as far as I’m going to go following this particular canal, the canal Unas. And you can see it just goes on and on and on. Hello. And if you look at Google Maps, you can probably trace it for another five or six kilometers. There it goes. Continuing inland. And in this direction, it flows all the way back to the Melaka Strait. And then you can see how it was hand dug. Looks like they brought in some machinery here, right? There’s some bucket teeth there. In modern times, they probably been maintaining these canals with modern machinery. But originally this was all dug by hand. I’m back on the road cycling between Parit Unas and Parit Jawa. And I was looking at Google Maps while I was having my iced coffee there. And I counted at least five major canals between them like spaced like every three-quarters of a kilometer. Another canal, another canal, another canal. Just passed one was called Parit Haji Ali. So I think we can guess that the leader of that expedition, the headman, his name was Ali. And we’re coming up on another one, I think, another sign. Parit Punggor, but I don’t know what that means. Whether that’s a person or the name of a tree or what punggor means. There it is. Parit Punggor.
I just looked up this name and according to what I found on the internet, punggor means a tree stump. Like yeah the remains of a tree that has fallen over. So there must have been a very large very notable tree stump here somewhere where they built this canal. And you can see it’s not nearly as wide. Well, it’s as wide as the Unas canal, but it isn’t as full of water or as clear. You know, it’s got a lot of growth in it, but you can see from the straight line that it is definitely an artificial structure. It’s not a natural winding river. That is a canal dug by people. And it goes off in this direction down to the Melaka Strait. I’ve just come up on the next canal on my route. This one is Parit Pinang Seribu. And if I’m right about that one, I think it means 1,000 betel nut palms or betel nut plants. So it’s named after a crop betel nut crop. And I guess it was very abundant in this area. So this is the canal of a thousand betel nut plants. It’s a very clear canal. You can see the water flowing very very nicely. It’s amazing how much water is flowing out of this land, keeping it dry enough. It can’t be too dry and it can’t be too wet. I read that as well.
Originally, it was this was all what they would call a bog, like a peat bog, and the water quality wasn’t proper for agriculture. It was very acidic or something like that. And they had to drain all the water out. But they can’t drain too much because then the land just dries up and it’s also unsuitable for farming. So, they have to get the balance perfect with these with this canal system to drain away just enough water to make it perfect for whatever crop they’re going to plant here.
And right now on either side of me, I think what they have planted is palm. So, it’s an oil palm plantation. Yeah, I recognize the trees and the fruit, though. It may be hybrid agriculture as well. It’s possible they’ve mixed in other crops along with the oil palm. I’m not sure, but there’s definitely a lot of oil palm here. And coconut. Yeah, I see a lot of coconut trees, too. So, maybe it’s a mixture.
So once upon a time you would have seen betel nut farms all up and down this canal but not anymore. The Parit Pinang Seribu the canal of a thousand betel nut plants. Learning the history through street signs and canal signs. I’m getting closer to Parit Jawa and I think I’m at one of the last big canals before Parit Jawa. There’s a bridge over top of it right up ahead and it is the Parit Kassim Laut I believe. And I think Kassim is the name of a person.
So that would be the name of the leader of the expedition that built this canal that dug it originally. I don’t know how long ago though exactly, but yeah, all this activity was taking place in the late 1800s, early 1900s under either the Temenggong, I can’t remember his name, but then his son became the ruler after him and that was Sultan Abu Bakar. And that’s a name you really have to know if you want to understand Johor because he’s considered the father of modern Johor. He was the mastermind behind the modernization of the state of Johor.
Could have sworn I was on a tiny countryside road, but the traffic never stops. Just flows and flows and flows. I keep waiting for a break so I can cross over to the entrance. Head onto some smaller roads, but every time I look, there’s another car coming from one direction or another or a scooter. Here we go. Here we go.
Yeah, you really got to be careful. You get so fixated on the cars that you might miss a motorcycle because they’re so much smaller, so much thinner. They turn out of a side road and they come barreling down on you and you may not even see it coming. So, you really got to triple check. So, I don’t know what’s going on here. It’s like a little development alongside this canal. So, this is a little park that they’ve developed, Laman Bakau Parit Kassim.
I rode my bike all the way down to the end here. And yeah, looks like it’s a place for fishermen. I think this guy must be… He just came out here for fun to do some fishing. And it looks like yeah, we’ve cut through a mangrove.
I never know what to call it to be honest. Mangrove vocabulary always trips me up because I think mangrove says it all. You don’t have to say mangrove forest. You don’t have to say mangrove swamp. You know, it’s just a mangrove. And that implies that it is a forest and it is a swampy forest. And I guess all of these are yeah mangrove trees that can survive in salt water. Pretty amazing when you think about it. Or I suppose it also makes sense that over time some kind of tree would evolve to live in salt water. And I believe they have two different types of roots. I forget the names of them, but these top roots that you see, they’re like spider legs. They go out on like over the top of the land and then sink their claws into the land. So those are for stability. And then you’ve got these pencil roots, those things sticking up. A lot of people think those are a different plant or that those are like mangrove shoots, like a new mangrove tree growing, but those are actually another part of the same the root structure of the same tree because the soil here just doesn’t have any oxygen. So they actually poke these roots up from the ground and then they get oxygen from the air and then they’re often underwater when the tide comes in and then when the tide goes out they get exposed again like this. But yeah, there’s like there you can really see the… let’s walk around there.
Yeah, right here you can really see the spider quality of the root structure. Isn’t that amazing? So that root holds the tree in place. Then it has to send up these little pencil roots that actually get the nutrients for the tree. I think again I’m no mangrove expert, but that’s what I read. And this stone breakwater here demonstrates another feature of mangrove that the mangrove protects the land from erosion. So you need this mangrove all those trees to protect the land from the constant waves hitting the shore. And then if you cut away the mangrove like they did here to build this canal, they cut through the mangrove and then you can see the land just gets eroded and eroded and eroded. And now in modern times to protect this park they have to bring in loads of this granite, this rock to prevent erosion. And these days I think there’s more and more awareness of the role that mangrove plays on a coastline and how important it is. So there’s a lot of programs for companies and individuals to get involved in replanting mangrove. So you can sponsor the planting of one a 100 a thousand mangrove trees and you can get your name here. But yeah, talking about the effect of the ocean, looks like the boardwalk used to extend out into the water, but look at that. It’s all been torn to bits by the ocean. And the Melaka Strait is kind of protected. It doesn’t really get the huge ocean swells, but even the small waves here, just the constant impact of the waves just chews everything up. You get the occasional storm and it wipes out the boardwalk. How are you? Hi, fine. Good. Where you from? Canada. Canada? Yeah. Alone? Yeah. Just traveling alone. Just a tourist in Malaysia. Where? Where you stay right now? I don’t have any place to stay. I have a camping equipment. Oh, you and are you camping? Sometimes. If I can find a low-budget hotel, I stay in a hotel. But tonight, I think I want to stay here in Parit Jawa. But the homestay is too expensive for me. So, maybe I will sleep outside somewhere. How long you here in Parit Jawa? Maybe two nights maybe. Yeah, I’m going towards you know Johor Bahru you know going that way. Yesterday I was in Muar and before that Melaka. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Where are you from? Muar. Okay. Yeah. I stayed in a homestay in Muar. Nice place. Homestay, not hotel. No, not hotel. Homestay. Well, the homestay was kind of like a hotel. What name? Homestay. Longstay. Homestay. What’s the name? It was called Longstay. Oh, Longstay. Yeah. Longstay. Homestay. Longstay home. Yeah. Complicated name. But it was like a big house. But every room was like a hotel room. Oh, homestay. How much? Room. Three for me. I paid one night 51 ringgit. 51 ringgit. Yeah. One room. One room. Oh, it’s a big room. Enough for… Well, I had two beds. Yeah. It was the cheapest place I could find. All the other homestays were expensive. Tonight you stay. Yeah. Jawa Jawa. Yeah. You’ve got all the special tools. My hobby. Yeah. Your hobby. Yeah. If you catch a fish, do you eat it or do you sell it? Eat. Eat the name of the fish.
Oh, okay. Fish. But I only some some some fish I take. Okay. Only some of them. Not all of them. Not all. Only. Yes. If it’s big enough to eat. Yes. Or the right type of fish. Okay. Well, good luck with your fishing. Thank you. You too. Yeah. Good luck. Yeah. I might I think I will park my bicycle and I will walk through the mangrove in the park. And so maybe I’ll see you again. I will come around. Oh, maybe. See you later.
I just pulled my bike up here into the shade. There’s like a little restaurant here or something. It’s not actually open. I saw a man sitting here. I was going to ask him if it was okay if I just parked my bike here in the shade. Keep it safe and out of the sun. So, this is where I have it. In terms of security, I just do a little bit. I mean, I’ve got my two pet bags in the trailer and the main zipper has a lock on it. Same with that pet bag. And the main zipper there has a lock on it. And that’s pretty much all I can do in terms of security. There’s you pretty much have to take a risk when you leave your bike anywhere. And I lock it up, of course. But that’s yeah, in Malaysia, it’s not something I overthink. Everything seems pretty pretty secure. And it looks like the history of this place goes back to maybe 2021. I don’t know. It says here, Bandar Rena Carbon 2021, a community or government sponsored or corporate sponsored project to preserve this mangrove. And as far as I know in Malay, mangrove is bakau. B A K A U. So this is like I saw in the sign out front, it’s like laman bakau meaning mangrove site. Mangrove park, something like that. Woo! Yeah, there’s a classic mangrove spider network of roots. Isn’t that something else?
You know you’re dealing with a mangrove when you look when you see something like this giant pile of muddy boots from all the workers in the park. So, yeah, let’s go for a walk. I’ll bet we’ll see a lot of signs from various companies, banks, and corporations, all of them planting mangrove trees. And even there, I’m confused to be honest. I never know whether to say it’s a tree in a mangrove. Is it a mangrove tree? Like I don’t know the name between the forest and the tree itself. Like if it was a maple tree and a whole bunch of trees together is a maple forest. But with a mangrove my brain always gets confused.
This is what I was talking about here. This is the name of like the spider roots rhizophora and then the pencil roots avicennia. And I think the same roots attach to the same tree. They have both. But again, don’t quote me on that. Maybe it’s two entirely different plants, but I always thought they had both. They had these to hold them in place like an anchor, and then they had these to help them breathe. But I could be wrong about that. But yeah, there’s a lot of information there about different types of plant life in the mangrove. And I’m assuming this is the entrance. I think I saw a boardwalk going in over there, but this looks like a pretty convenient entrance. Rhizophora mucronata. So that’s the tree there.
Yeah, maybe I was completely wrong. We’ll find out. But this looks to be yeah, the spider roots as I’ll call them. But right here, I don’t see a lot of the pencil roots. Same thing over here. That is an elaborate root structure. Very cool. But yeah, I mean I do… Yeah, I do see pencil root coming up there. Not a lot of them, but there are some of them.
But maybe as we go through here, we’ll start to make sense of what we’re seeing.
Yeah, very rough kind of park. I definitely I get the feeling that this fits in with the pattern that I’ve talked about before where there’s a lot of passion, interest, and financing to build one of these places. Everyone’s excited about paying for the construction, but then once it’s up and running, a lot of the funding disappears, so there isn’t nearly as much money left for maintaining the boardwalk that they built. And that’s a very common pattern I found across Southeast Asia, at least where I’ve been spending the last part of my life. Yeah, this look look to be like they’re planting new mangrove shoots there.
Yeah, this is awesome. I wasn’t expecting to come across anything like this. I thought Parit Kassim would be just another fishing dock. I didn’t realize it had a fully developed mangrove park with boardwalks. Yeah, it’s probably a place where you have to spend a lot of time being quiet and watching carefully to see a lot of the wildlife that lives here. I saw one macaque so far, but there’s probably crab here. I haven’t seen any skipper. I have mud skippers. Haven’t seen any mud skippers yet, but I imagine there’s some mud skippers in here. But so far, I’m not seeing a lot of wildlife, but the trees. Yeah, the root structure is very impressive.
The walkway is quite a bit more extensive than I expected. I thought it was just one trail. But it looks like it branches off in different directions.
This definitely ties in with some of the things I was talking about in my last video where I did a deep dive into the construction of these parit because this is what they were faced with the workers from Java when they came here to dig the canals through the mangrove. This is what they were looking at. They had to cut down these trees, cut through all of this root while standing in that mud and clearing this and then starting to dig the canal. And this is the Pelantar Ilmu which I believe means knowledge platform. Yeah, that makes sense because look at that. You can get a lot of knowledge here about mangrove, the mangrove forests in Malaysia, English and Malay. That’s great. Big big big thumbs up for this knowledge platform. They nailed it with this. Absolutely nailed it. I’d give it a three thumbs up if I had three hands. But yeah, they break it down beautifully. The mangrove situation across all of Malaysia. Then they break it down in terms of the non-biological components, basically soil, nutrients, air, water, oxygen, salinity, temperature, and then the biological components, the trees, all the different types of fish, birds, algae, crustaceans, everything that lives in there. And then here they break down all the different zones which is fascinating as you go farther and farther inland where the different types of mangrove live. The avicennia zone, rhizophora, rhizophora apiculata, etc., etc. The transition zone, they really break it down really nicely and tell you exactly which type of tree is found in each zone. And then they broke down all the roots, which is really cool. So that’s easy to see why I got mixed up because these ones are the pencil roots in the avicennia like that. But these ones look similar, but they’re cone roots. So they look similar, but they’re bigger and then thicker. And then you have knee roots that look like a knee joint. And then buttress roots. And then finally, these stilt roots, which they say, you know, look like buttresses, flying buttresses, and they break down exactly which tree uses which type of root, which is really, really interesting. And then all the different types of flora that can be found in a mangrove forest. So, this really helps me understand what I’m looking at more.
Ah, this is another classic thing. At least on Planet Doug. Every time I see a tower, I get very excited. And then my excitement disappears when I find out that it is closed. And that appears to be the case once more. Yeah, it’s locked. It’s probably considered unsafe. Yeah, it gets back to the funding problem. They had enough money to build this thing, but then there wasn’t enough in the budget to keep it. Or maybe it’s own maybe it is still safe, but has to be supervised or something. Anyway, I mean, if I really wanted to, I’m sure I could climb over this barrier and go up there, but somebody has decided it’s not safe to go up there. So, I will take them at their word and stay down here on the ground.
I could be imagining things, but I think I’m seeing the transition even right here. So, here we have some of the stilt roots, right? The buttresses, and these would be the cone roots. I can’t remember which type of root is connected to which type of tree. You’ll have to refer to the posters for that. But these are clearly the cone roots. And we’re getting closer and closer to the shore. And now we’re leaving the cone roots behind. And right here is are the pencil roots. All the pencil roots right here getting closer to the water.
And then this is where the boardwalk ends. Used to go out over the water, but not anymore. And this is where I was chatting with the fisherman.
But yeah, this is the end of the line, but I want to walk back along the canal. So, I’m just going to make my way back to where they’re fishing over there.
I wonder I wonder how far it went. I see some foundations out there even. I wonder if the boardwalk originally went way out into the water and all the way back around. That would be pretty impressive, but that’s all been destroyed. Yeah, you can see here.
All right, leaving from this mangrove park. That was very cool. Much nicer than I expected. Very informative. And I’m hoping that the restaurant here at the entrance to the park is open, but I’m doubting it. I don’t see any open doors.
No, everything is closed. Thought it looked more open when I… Yeah, when I arrived here, I thought there were some open doors, but nope. Anyway, I’m very close to Parit Jawa. I… Oh, actually, yeah, that’s right. I can go down this small road right over here. I can stay off the main road and then go down this small one all the way into Parit Jawa and it opens up this road ends right at the jetty. So that’s cool. Gorgeous small road here. Little laneway that I found for the last kilometer or two to Parit Jawa. Funny thing is that I was talking a little bit about security and how if I walk away from my bike, how do I deal with security? I put a little lock here, a padlock here, and it’s all about things not being stolen, you know, not losing items. Yet, in reality, the biggest danger in terms of me losing things is me myself. It’s crazy. I keep trying to train myself and give myself good habits and yet they never become ingrained. So today already I nearly lost my grip. My it’s my favorite my most essential vlogging tool for holding my GoPro. I nearly lost it because when I was changing batteries, I used my trailer has a little a tray table. So, as I disassembled my GoPro and got out all my new batteries and I put everything down on the trailer, put the batteries away and then put the GoPro back on and then I rode away and I totally forgot about all the things I had piled onto my trailer. So, including my mount. So, as I’m riding along, there’s the risk of everything falling off the trailer and then I lose it and and it’s gone forever. And then later on I was changing batteries again and I needed to unlock one of my padlocks and the lock the key is around my neck. So I removed this neck mount and I put it around the handlebars thinking temporarily as soon as I’m done I’ll put it back on. And of course I completely forgot and I just rode and rode and rode with this thing dangling loosely from my bicycle and it could have fallen off at any point. So yeah, when I was in Sumatra, I’d lost GoPro batteries because I would put them on top of my pet bag instead of putting them away instantly and then I would ride away and the battery would fall off and I would lose it. So yeah, the biggest security concern is me being a dummy.
Another aspect to these canals that I’ve been focusing on again in this video is that they also built canals and dikes running parallel to the shore. So right now the Melaka Strait and the mangrove is off on my right. The interior and all the plantations are off to my left and in between them is another parit a canal right here which serves as a barrier so that the seawater can’t come through the mangrove and then flood the interior again. So they built up these canals and these parit running parallel to the coast as well. It’s a very sophisticated system. So far today, I haven’t seen any of the gates like I haven’t seen any of the pintu air. I thought they would be far more common, but so far I haven’t seen any in terms of like they’re supposed to control the flow of tidal water going in, but I haven’t seen any of those.
Something I alluded to earlier and it’s kind of an important part of Johor State is how it was one of the most independent states relative to the British. And I mean I don’t have all the details at my fingertips but under the British you basically had the crown colonies the Straits Settlements right Penang Melaka and Singapore and they were under direct British rule. So everything was controlled by the British essentially the British crown. The laws, the courts, the administration, everything was done by the British. But then you had places like Johor which were unfederated Malay states and they had far more independence. So Johor for example had complete control over the interior in terms of their treaty with the British. The British controlled their foreign relations. That’s my understanding of what an unfederated Malay state was. They had total control over how they run their kingdom, their state. But they can’t make a treaty with another country or another kingdom, a military treaty, any any kind of agreement with another country, they can’t do that. So the British had control of their international relationships. But that’s where British control ended inside Johor. The Sultan Sultan Abu Bakar he controlled everything. So it was his father the Temenggong who originally came up with the land grant scheme. And one of the reasons he could do that was well he had control over the land. He could do what he wanted with it. It belonged to him. The British had no say in it. And then he set up the land grant scheme. And then his son, Sultan Abu Bakar, he continued that program and expanded it, I believe. So that’s a key to this whole area, the fact that it was an unfederated Malay state. And in between the two, there were federated Malay states. And they had sort of they were sort of like halfway between complete British control and the independence of places like Johor. They were somewhere in the middle, but I don’t know exactly what the differences were. Well, I think I’ve arrived at Parit Jawa and over here to my right is the park which is on one side of the jetty. Today is a Friday, by the way. Yeah, Friday.
I’ve seen a lot of people who were dressed up like they were going to or coming from the mosque for Friday prayers. So, I see a lot of families are out enjoying Friday, you know, their day off.
There’s a big tower over there, but I’m wondering if it’s another Planet Doug tower where they’re promising me a view, but then when you get there, you find out that it’s out of commission and you’re not allowed to climb to the top. But yeah, let’s give it a try. Let’s head over to the tower. So far so good. At least the bottom of the stairs are open.
And hopefully from up here, we’ll get a nice view of the town that I’m hoping to call my home for maybe one night or even two nights, depending how things go.
I knew there was a tower here on the beach, but I didn’t realize it was such a big one. We’re going to go up pretty high.
Oh, I think this is the top already. Not quite as high as I thought. I thought maybe we could see the full extent of the town. We can see a lot of the shore, of course.
The mud flats down there.
And there’s the town fishing boat coming in. There’s the open channel heading into the canal. Yeah. Can’t see it on the GoPro, I’m sure, but a huge stork just landed on a boat over there. We can’t see it today because of the haze, but there’s like a two 200 meter hill over here, Bukit Jawa or something like that. It’s got hiking trails up the hill, but I can’t even make it out with my eyes.
There’s a cement pier out here. I thought I could get here directly, but yeah, there’s like a food court right here. A lot of restaurants, but not a lot, a couple. And over here is the all the fishing boats. Yeah, as I suspected, much bigger than the ones in the jetties that I’ve passed so far. Look at all these are big commercial boats for the most part. Look like this guy’s getting ready to go out. Got a couple of big bags of ice for to keep his catch fresh. I came all the way around the restaurant area. Had to go back through the park to finally get here to the cement boardwalk so I could walk out to the end of the pier.
No particular reason to go all the way out here, but it’s sort of like going to the westernmost point or the southernmost point or the northernmost point of wherever you happen to be. You see a dock or a pier, it’s like a dog whistle. You can’t resist. You have to walk all the way out to the end. And just a couple of days ago, in fact, I stumbled across a new YouTube channel, at least new to me, a British guy and his girlfriend from Switzerland. Ryan and what is her name? Sarah. The channel might be called Sarah and Ryan or Ryan and Sarah. But they just started traveling through Malaysia. They started off in Singapore kicking off a 20 month tour of Asia, Southeast Asia, or maybe all of Asia, I’m not sure. And they started up a YouTube channel. Well, he had a YouTube channel going for 5 years previous to this. And his goal is to post three videos a week as they travel around Asia. And they’re doing it more or less in real time. So any video that I saw on their channel, they actually put in the description the day it was filmed and you could see that they were pretty current. So I they visited this town actually. They posted a video where they traveled up the west coast of Malaysia, basically from the southernmost point near Johor Bahru, and then they traveled by bus all the way up the coast to Melaka. And it was a 4-day trip and they spent, I guess, one night in each town where they stopped off. And then they put the whole trip together into one video. And on one day they were taking the bus from Pontian to Muar. But they got the bus to drop them off here along the way. So they took one bus from Pontian to Jawa to Parit Jawa. Got off the bus here and they did a tour of the town. They came down here. I remember that they actually went out here as well. And Ryan, very professional YouTuber, very high production values. But yeah, he flew a drone here. So I guess they could walk out to the end of the pier and then fly the drone over the city, over the shore, over the harbor, get some beautiful drone footage of all the boats, and then put nice music over top of it. So yeah, it’s really, really pleasant. But they didn’t spend the night here. As I said, there’s no like low-budget hotels here, anything like that. Could stay in a homestay, but they booked a room in Muar. So, then they ran into trouble. That kind of gets to the advantages and disadvantages of different types of travel because their whole idea for a lot of their videos and for this trip in particular was to go where other people don’t go. So they wanted to get off the tourist trail. So when they got off the bus here in Parit Jawa, the idea was to get off the beaten path, go where no tourists go, at least no foreign tourists, and experience the real Malaysia. And that’s, you know, a great thing to do. But then once you’re here, how do you get to Muar right now? It’s a real struggle. You’re in a small town midway between the larger cities. Where’s the bus station? When’s the next bus? And I think they ended up taking a Grab. So, they had to take a Grab all the way from here to Muar cuz then, yeah, if I have a bicycle, which comes with its own disadvantages, the heat and that kind of thing, but at least I can I have my own transportation in a way. But and because I have a bicycle, I have the option of sleeping outside if I want to or if I’m capable of doing it. So, yeah. So, actually, I got a sneak peek of this town from the videos by Sarah and Ryan.
Yeah, it’s interesting. You might think of this place as a like non-tourist town, right? Like no tourists ever come here, but it depends on how you define tourists because there are tons of tourists here, but they’re all Malaysian local people who come here for seafood, probably mainly on the weekend. And yeah, there’s lots of restaurants here that look all set up for big crowds of people. Probably serve good catch of the day sorts of seafood dishes. And there’s I even spotted a little hotel over there. Awesome place. Have to turn my bike around to get my GoPro Hero 9, which is aiming forward to capture some of this shop here. Like when you’re running a fishing boat, it means you need engine parts and other mechanical stuff to be fixed all the time. And here’s a here’s a great shop here. Endless spare parts.
Yeah. Machine shop. Fix anything and everything for you. Tech Hang Engineering Work.
Yeah, just for fun. Let’s go see what they charge for these hotel rooms over here.
Marina Lodging Rumah Tumpangan. Yeah, it would certainly be ideal to stay in a place like this right in town, but I’m guessing it is out of my normal budget, especially because we’re coming up on a weekend. Let’s find out.
Living in luxury once again on Planet Doug. Yeah, they they have rooms here. Marina Lodging right on the jetty and they showed me a very nice room for 60 ringgit. I just paid in cash. They handed me the key and I got a room just like that. Amazing. So, I’m just going to take off my bags and yeah, unpack.
And there you have it. I mean, come on. Home sweet home. Little table and chair. They supply some soap and drinking water, air con, and even have a little private bathroom right here. Emphasis on little, but hey, it looks perfect and the bed. And they even have Wi-Fi.
And she pointed out the Wi-Fi out here. And they have a nice lobby. Look at that. Drinking water. Might even be cold.
All unpacked, took a quick shower. I was going to make a cup of coffee, but I thought if I started doing that, I’ll never leave the room. So, while there’s still daylight outside, I’m going to head out and walk around the jetty. I thought I would be sleeping outside on the jetty or in a nearby park, but here I am. Living in the lap of luxury. Yeah, can’t complain about that. Yeah, the day definitely didn’t turn out the way I expected. Yeah, this room, I mean, it’s not like four-star luxury or anything, but here on Planet Doug, I really pay attention to the little things. To me, little details make a big difference. And yeah, this room kind of works out okay. You know, I’m just talking about the fact that it has hooks on the door, hangers, you know, just a hook. You can hang things. Makes life so much easier. It has a light switch beside the bed. So, you know, I love that it’s like it’s like a luxury hotel feature that you don’t every night have to get up out of your bed, walk across the room, turn out the light, and then walk back to your bed in the dark. You can just turn a light off and on right from your bed, which is really handy. And then in here, even in the bathroom, just a little just that just that little hook makes all the difference in the world. You can hang up your toiletries. Boom. And over here, I’m hanging up my towel to dry. I don’t know if you noticed during the time lapse, but I wasn’t paying attention and I put the towel on the toilet and then it fell into the toilet. That was the very first thing I did in my room was dump my towel in the toilet. But anyway, what I wanted to point out is that the window, look at that, is my height. I can actually see myself in the mirror, which is very, very rare. Tiny little tap, running water. I mean, it’s these little details make a big difference. Just a hook makes all the difference in the world. The one thing it is lacking is a second electrical outlet. That’s the only outlet in the whole room. And if you didn’t have an extension cord, cuz I have to basically run a cord from here to my power bar and then another cord from the power bar all the way around the bed to here to plug in my laptop. So, if you don’t have if you don’t have all that gear, how do you charge anything? How do you plug in your laptop when there’s only one outlet, you know, on the wall? So, but that’s how it often is in cheaper hotels. You get one electrical outlet by the door. But yeah, basically pretty cool room. I started the day talking about how the sun broke through the haze a little bit. And there it is in the afternoon. It’s just after 5:00 right now. Sun is still pretty high in the sky, but you can see it coming through the haze a little bit. There’s a temple right there. And Marina Lodging. It’s not listed on Google Maps. It’s not obviously it’s not on Agoda or anything like that, but this hotel, this Marina Lodging isn’t even listed on Google Maps. And we’ve got a seafood restaurant.
Lot of tables there. So, I think they get a lot of visitors on the weekend. I paid for just one night for my room. I probably should have paid for two, but I was scared to ask them. Come to Malaysia. Ah, thank you. Thank you. Where? I’m from I’m from Canada. Yeah. Ottawa. No, Toronto. Well, Ottawa is the capital of Canada. Yeah, that’s true. That’s true. Enjoy yourself. Thank you very much. Just going to walk around the jetty. How many day come to Malaysia? 3 months. Three months. Yeah. Three months. After Melaka? I already went to Melaka. Okay. Yeah. Nice. Nice city. Okay. Bye-bye. I was just saying I didn’t want to find out that like tonight is Friday night, 60 ringgit, and then if I said, “Oh, two nights.” I was worried she was going to say, “Oh, well, Saturday night, that’s 3,000 ringgit.” You know, like the price was going to go way, way up, or she was going to tell me, “Oh, we’re fully booked for Saturday night,” or something. I just snag the room for tonight, and I figure the future can take care of itself. But yeah, this is a very different proposition as a jetty compared to all the other ones that I’ve seen up and down the coast from Melaka. Big boats.
Look at that.
And yeah, these I could hear these fishermen over here. They were cracking open cans of beer and I was going, “Oh, oh, that would be so nice.” Can of cold beer right now.
Walking out on the gangplank.
Some nice views of the boats from here. Yeah, as I said, the other YouTubers that were here just a couple weeks ago, Sarah and Ryan, they got some really nice drone video of this. They flew their drone down this entire jetty, filming all of these from above.
Yeah. But when they were here in their video, they, as I said, they got off a bus, but their final destination for the day was actually Muar. So, they booked a hotel room in Muar in advance. So, they actually had no choice. So, they, you know, just trying to get off the beaten track, check out this little town. They probably saw it on Google Maps the same way I did and thought it looked interesting. So, they made plans to get off the bus mid-journey, check this place out, and then continue, get back to Muar on another bus, and then check into their hotel. But I was wondering like if they knew that that Marina Lodge where I’m staying, if they knew it existed, would they have decided to stay here overnight? Yeah, I don’t think so. I think they had a pretty rigid sort of schedule. They had a certain number of days in mind to get up the coast. But who knows? I just passed a small restaurant right there that looks like it’s my style. Looks like they had some containers out on display, and you can just sort of take the lid off and mix and match your own meal. So, going to go for a quick walk around the jetty, go back there, have my dinner. Though, it’s actually going to be breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Yeah, I just I just wanted to get on the road this morning, so I didn’t have breakfast. And yeah, I didn’t have lunch on the way here. So, this dinner is going to be my first meal of the day. Check this out. All these boat engines ripped out of a boat over the decades.
This this jetty very much lived in.
All right, this is something very exciting. I’m going to talk about that a little bit when I get up onto the bridge. That is a modern pintu air, a water exit, a water gate or whatever you want to call it.
So, as I’ve been talking about, these waterways are artificial. This one is big enough that I’m wondering whether there was some kind of an inlet here to begin with. Or maybe there was nothing at all here and they just cut a channel through the mangrove and then over the decades, like over the past century, the flow of the water just carved it out and made it bigger and bigger. So now it looks like a real river but it’s basically a artificial canal for draining the land to make it suitable for agriculture. And on the other side you can see the parit the canal continuing off in that direction and
not just going in that direction which is like perpendicular to the Melaka Strait. They carved these canals going parallel to the shore as well. Look at the size of these ones.
Look at that. So again, my understanding is this is all entirely dug by hand all the way along here stretching 6 7 km in that direction and then this canal following the shore in that direction as well. Something odd about that water. It looks almost black. It’s very very dense black water or something. I don’t know what’s going on. But the key to this whole operation, at least back in those days, I don’t know how important it is now. I’m starting to get the feeling like it isn’t as big a deal anymore, or maybe it’s only certain times a year, but what they needed to do was put in place gates like this one. The old ones of course are very small and not as a not as much technology but basically this allows the water to flow into the Melaka Strait but then when the tide comes up they close the gate and then the seawater can’t flow out into the land. And in terms of the name, you can see it right here. The pintu air meaning the water gate Parit Jawa.
Yeah. Like right now I can’t I have no idea whether it’s open like at all or fully closed. Like is it all the way down to the ground and blocking the flow completely or is there still can water still flow underneath down there? I’m not sure.
And when Sarah and Ryan were here, a local man, apparently, according to the video, he didn’t speak any English at all. It just reminded me of that older man who stopped on the scooter to talk to me because those conversations never seem to actually go anywhere. I’m not quite sure what they’re trying to say. They don’t really understand me, but he kept saying Ottawa. Like, are you I thought he was saying like, “Are you from Ottawa?” And I said, “Well, to be honest, well, no, I’m not. I’m from a small town, but I always tell people Toronto because my hometown is near Toronto.” So, if you had to pick Vancouver, Ottawa, Montreal, you know, I say Toronto. That’s the closest to get people oriented where I’m from. So, he kept saying Ottawa. He no, no, no, no, Toronto. He’s like, Ottawa. No, no, no, Toronto. I think what he was really doing is just mentioning a city that he knows is in Canada. He’s like, he’s just word associating, you know, Canada. Ah, capital city, Ottawa. So, he wasn’t he wasn’t asking me where I was from. He was just telling me something that he knows about Canada. Anyway, that little interaction reminded me. So, here’s the jetty Pantai Leka. That’s the beach and Parit Jawa is where we are. But yeah, Sarah and Ryan kind of got adopted by a local man like that and he didn’t speak a word of English, but he wanted to show them something and they ended up going he ended up being like an informal tour guide taking them all over Parit Jawa
and the main thing he wanted to show them was a place called I think it’s like Daily Happy Otak-Otak and it’s some kind of a it’s almost like a vintage restaurant or vintage reconstruction like a village or house or something and I guess they make and sell the local specialty right otak-otak but look at that just love these canals
and Daily Happy Otak-Otak is not that far away. It’s just up there. But I’m not going to be going there tonight. If I stay here another day, another day and night, I’ll go there tomorrow. Of course, it might be the one actual tourist attraction that they have here. The main town, as far as I understand, the layout is over in that direction. So, there’s not a lot of people living right around here, but Daily Happy Otak-Otak is up that main road. And then there’s a cluster of houses and homes and shophouses and a 7-Eleven. There’s even a 7-Eleven here in this small town cuz there’s a big intersection up there.
So I was wondering on my way here about the possibilities of camping and would there be a public toilet? Well, there it is. Tandas, but there is a door, but there just isn’t a wall. So, that one is definitely not available.
Approaching the Melaka shore. I on the jetty I ran into like a dead end there on the dock because there’s another canal here going horizontal and another control gate here controlling the flow of water.
Incredible.
Even I after reading about all of this it it’s impressing me like the scale of it these canals and the bund you know the dam system and the drainage system the canals it’s far exceeding the scale of my expectations like I of course I have no idea how it operates or whether it’s really operating at all anymore. I don’t know cuz these these things look pretty high-tech and very modern, but at the same time they don’t really look like anybody’s here. Like there’s nobody here every day monitoring the tides and opening and closing the gates. You know, I’m wondering now whether there’s certain seasons of the year. I read somewhere something about spring tides, like certain times of the year. Maybe the tides are just much more much bigger bigger tides and then they have to activate all of these gates to prevent the flooding of the seawater. I just don’t know. Couldn’t tell you how it all works. Fish farm over here. That’s a big one. Seems like a big one anyway. And you can see all the fish, the smaller fish growing inside that tub or that netting.
Yeah, I love junkyards.
Man, this is way bigger than anything that would have come out of those like the local fishing boats. They’re big boats, but nothing that requires anything on this scale. So, this must have been some sort of a ship wrecking yard, maybe breaking down big ships in the past. And yeah, look at the cam shaft here. Hey, yeah, yeah, yeah. That came out of a big engine. It’s not driving one of these little boats here.
Yeah. So many of these places, they feel almost like archaeological digs. Like all of this junk. And then here, there used to be a house. The house is completely gone. It looks almost like there was a tsunami here. Wiped out a lot of these houses and and then I guess there’s no point clearing away the debris.
It always feels a little bit like places are, you know, completely abandoned and then it turns out that no, it’s actually still lived in and in daily use like an area like this. You probably come here later on. There’s going to be five guys sitting around here having a cold beer and chatting about the day.
This feels like a junkyard dog is going to come. Oh, here you are. There’s a more tandas toilets. This one has walls but no door. So, you take your pick. You can have the toilet with a door but no wall or walls but no door. You choose. But yeah, like this place, I have no idea what’s going on here. I mean, to an eye like mine, it just looks completely abandoned, nonoperational, but clearly still tons of stuff going on. All of this fencing looks new. I’m sure they build cages, like fish cages out of these. I’ve seen them doing that in other areas. You know, people come here, park their motorbikes, so they must come here to do something. Get off and on their fishing boats.
Hey, kitty.
There’s the junkyard dog. He spotted me. That doesn’t seem very protective.
Look at this. They tried to organize some of this. If someday someone’s rebuilding something and they need… Oh,
there’s there’s the reception I was expecting.
That’s what I always do with you’re not sure about the dogs. Hello. You just bend down and pretend you’re picking up a rock and then then they just run away. But yeah, dogs like that. Sometimes I’m tempted to befriend them, you know, hold out my hand and they can turn into friendly puppies. These ones actually seemed like I could overcome that aggression and we could become friends. But yeah, it’s not worth the risk. One good bite on your hand and yeah, that’s you in the hospital for the next week. So, you don’t want to deal with that. So, yeah, taking a risk is not the smartest thing.
I came back to that spot that I pointed out for dinner. They have a bunch of dishes out there and I can just take the lid off each one and they didn’t have a lot of selection. It was mainly fish and fish and fish and fish and fish which is doesn’t really excite me. But I managed to get some rice and well some chicken and eggplant. So I ended up getting this but the eggplant was the only vegetable that they had. So this isn’t quite enough for dinner for me.
So, I also ordered roti canai. They’ve got a grill over there and they make roti and things like that. So, I’m just ordering things at random until I end up with enough food for dinner. But yeah, that’s it right there. And here’s here’s my site. Ah, thank you. And the last part of the dinner just arrived. I might get several of these just to fill all the corners of my stomach and teh ice over there. Dinner is done. Yeah, that was really nice for me. Simple meal and I got my favorite eggplant. So, that worked out great. Yeah. Sun is just about to set. Going to head back to my lodging. It’s actually right over there. I didn’t realize how close I was. Marina Lodging, but I just spotted this. I mentioned that fencing or that wire at the junkyard and how they make cages for fish. Here’s an example right here. They make these you know bare these frameworks out of rebar and then they string that fencing and make fish cages. So yeah, just before I go back to my hotel, thought I’d take one last walk around the jetty.
Yeah, this is the metal workshop that I walked by or cycled by when I first arrived here. Amazing. The guys who work here know how to operate all of this equipment. Probably know where every little piece of metal is, every tool, right down to this junkyard back here. Yeah, what a history a place like this must have. All the jobs they’ve done. How many years ago did they toss that hose up there, that drum, all those bits and pieces. Crazy.
This probably all belongs to the same place. All these parts.
One last look at the boats.
and the opening of the channel heading out to the Melaka Strait.
It’s funny how much I talk about the tides, you know, the tides coming in, the tides going out, and yet I never really see what I think of as a high tide. I mean, it was hours ago that I arrived here and all the boats seem to be sitting on the mud, but to me, it seems like they’re still just sitting on the mud. Like, I never see a full high tide like the where the water goes to the top of the channel or something. Maybe it happens and I’m just never out here at the right time, but it always seems like every jetty is always at low tide permanently. Well, speaking of low tide, I guess we are at low tide still. Even more low tide. I’m pretty sure the water was higher when I arrived this afternoon. So, I guess the internet could answer these questions for me. I just have to look this up and I can probably find out exactly when low tide happens, when high tide happens. Yeah. As always, everywhere in Malaysia gets more lively once the sun starts to go down. Even these little food shops over little food stands over there, some of them have opened up. Maybe tomorrow, Saturday, they a lot of them will open even more. And that is it for the day. I have to admit I feel a little bit like how this boat looks. I hardly went anywhere today. I certainly didn’t cycle very far. Or maybe I’ve cycled farther than I realize. But yeah, I’m feeling pretty tired at the end of the day. I’m shutting down internally just as much as Parit Jawa seems to be shutting down. Whoa. Okay, here goes one of the big boats. Like you look at most of these big boats and you swear they’re not seaworthy, you know? But as long as they don’t leak and the engine fires up, well, a way to sea it goes.
Like that boat does not look like it’s worth a million dollars or anything, but it can still go out to sea and go fishing.
It’s finally got it turned around. Headed in the right direction.
He’s done that a million times. It’s not a three-point turn. It was like a 10-point turn. Back and forth. Back and forth. All right. Now he’s got it pointed in the right direction. I wonder how long he’s going out for. All night, maybe. Is that how these fishermen operate?
Yeah. Makes me think Forest Gump should be there painting Jenny on the side jumping overboard.
And one of the small boats coming in.
Yeah, these jetties sure know how to collect stuff in piles. These paint cans probably got dumped there 10 years ago and they’ve never moved since. You know, who knows how long that chair has been sitting there.
I thought I saw some kind of fire. I have no idea why anyone would build a fire there, but yeah, there it is. It’s interesting. These boats are sitting on top of beams to keep them out of the mud when the tide goes down. Yeah, look at this collection of fish net.
And then all the men hanging out on the docks.
And that’s it. Shutting down. Hope you enjoyed that little glimpse into Malaysian life in the countryside. Extending my investigation of the jetties, the parit of Johor. Yeah, fascinating stuff. Yeah, I might look for the owner of this hotel and see if I can book a room for tomorrow night in advance. Be nice just to spend a relaxed day here. Explore a little bit on my bicycle. All right, shutting down. Shout out to the Crunch Club. I know you’re still here all the way to the end of the video. And yeah, shout out to everyone supporting these video adventures of mine on Planet Doug through Malaysia’s Touch ‘n Go e-wallet helps out an amazing amount. And all the members of the Planet Doug Patreon. Yeah, you guys are awesome. And of course, anyone supporting me through PayPal, links in the video description to all of these things, as well as QR codes to the Buy Me a Coffee platform for Planet Doug. It’s all there. All right, that’s it. Shutting down. Back at the square. Things are getting lit up. Some nice lighting on this temple.
And my lodging right here just around the corner. See you next time.