VIDEO DESCRIPTION:
Exploring the beautiful and historic city of Melaka (Malacca), Malaysia at night! I took my GoPro out after dark to capture the completely different atmosphere once the sun goes down.
The biggest change from daytime Melaka is that you suddenly realize just how much of the historic center of the city is adorned with lights. Of course, you can’t miss the trishaws. They are everywhere, and the light shows from them can be blinding. But the buildings, the trees, the historic sites, the parks, and more are also all dripping with lights.
The sounds of Melaka also change dramatically. There is music everywhere. Of course, each trishaw is a rolling concert hall, but there are also concerts, dance performances, screaming ghosts, and music coming from the restaurants and bars. It’s a challenge to walk through Melaka at night with a GoPro. For YouTube, music must be avoided at all costs, but in Melaka at night, that is impossible.
I picked Saturday night for my nighttime stroll with a GoPro (and my Insta360 X3), and Melaka was bustling. I hope you enjoy this casual look at Melaka at night.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Welcome to Melaka at night. I just thought I’d bring my GoPro out at night. I think this is the first time I’ve taken the camera out at night. Just thought I should capture a little bit of the atmosphere at night as opposed to the daytime. My GoPro, of course, not the greatest at low light video, but yeah, I do have an Olympus camera, like a bigger camera that’s better for low light, but it’s just a lot of effort and work to use that camera. So I’m just going the casual route with my GoPro.
But yeah, this is the street just outside, just down the street from my hotel basically. There’s the tower as always, but there’s the tower at night and the trishaws. I’m actually still not clear on the local name for them. I think they call them trishaws, but they change dramatically at night, of course, because they all have sound systems. Of course you hear that during the day, but they also have their own built-in lighting systems hooked up to all the batteries. So it’s pretty wild to see them at night, especially when you see like 10 of them all on the move at the same time. It often seems like they coordinate that. Like I will see a whole bunch of them going down the road at the same time in the same direction. Maybe it’s just because they’re taking an entire tour group or something like that. I don’t know.
Yeah, actually they look quite different at night. Some of them are a little bit older. Maybe the decorations got worn out a little bit by the sun daytime, but at night you don’t see any of that. They’re all just bright. Very cool. That’s a big part of Melaka at night. And on the weekends, the street right here, which is normally it’s just like a seven or eight lane road, one-way road, very wide. Like I said, maybe eight lanes of traffic, six maybe. That’s all there is. It’s like a big empty stretch of pavement, but on the weekend it fills up and turns into sort of a pedestrian walkway.
And this is still far away from, well not far away but this isn’t Jonker Street or anything like that. This isn’t the real nighttime walkway. This is just what happens to the road outside my hotel. It’s pretty cool. Everybody can go snacking, of course, shopping for clothes.
It’s amazing how much the city transforms once the sun goes down and all the lights are turned on. It’s hard to believe there’s enough people visiting here to justify or to support all of the food stalls. I went through that giant area there. So much food and shopping. And this is a park near my hotel as well, all lit up. And then over here there’s like food stalls, food stalls, food stalls all up and down this park, all along here, all along the street.
Right up ahead is where I was the other day when I was tracing the pathway of the A Famosa fortress, the Portuguese fort from the 1500s. I shot a video where I was just trying to uncover where the walls used to run and tracking down all the bastions. And this is where the wall would have been right here. The fortress wall ran right along this area. Oh yeah. Right here is the transportation courtyard they called it where it has the Air Force plane on display and the train and some of the cannon here. Yeah, really beautiful at night.
Everything takes on a different look at night. There’s the Museum Islam Melaka all lit up and everywhere you go you have the trishaws. They turned off the music for me more or less. No, the music is still playing but perhaps not that loud. Parents are having a hard time keeping track of this little guy. He’s a sprinter. He keeps running away. There he goes picking up speed. There goes dad again. Got to track him down. Brave kid.
Dutch Square and the Stadthuys and Jonker Street are all just over there. But Bukit Melaka is just over here on my right. So I want to go for a walk up there at night. Get a look at the city at night all lit up. See what St. Paul’s Church looks like.
A lot cooler though. I was going to say a lot cooler doing this walk at night, but to be honest, it actually isn’t. It feels just as humid and hot and sweaty to me to be walking around at night as it does during the daytime. I don’t really feel a big change. That’s something I always talk to people about when they ask me about Canada, the differences, things I might miss. And it seems like in Canada, even in the summer during our hot summer, as soon as the sun goes down, the temperature plummets. There is no humidity at night and it becomes very comfortable. But I find in Southeast Asia the heat and humidity doesn’t seem to change that much from daytime to nighttime. It just sort of stays kind of steady.
There’s St. Paul’s Church up there. This reminds me of all the videos I watched from the American hobo when he was here in Melaka because he was a real night owl. He would actually hop on his bicycle and then he would go riding around the cities that he was in at nighttime. So he rode his bicycle in the dark all around Melaka. So he had a lot of video like this on his channel.
St. Paul’s at night has its own lights for lighting up the outer walls and the interior. I haven’t been inside yet. Looking down over there’s Dutch Square. All those bright lights. I hear someone whooping and hollering from down there. Somebody’s having fun down there. There it is again. I don’t know who that is. But I imagine the walkway along the river is all lit up. That’s where I want to go next. Just walk down there in that direction looking down over where my hotel is located. All those kind of cookie cutter buildings down there all look very much the same. But yeah, just for a minute, let’s go inside St. Paul’s at night. See how different the atmosphere is compared to the daytime. One big difference, of course, is that there’s very few people up here at night.
Yeah. Right now there’s just three or four on the outside and here on the inside it might be completely empty. Yeah, it is. Wow, what a different atmosphere. They have lights in the window archways, which is really nice. Adds a lot of atmosphere.
I wonder if this church had church bells. Must have right when it was built. And I wonder if there’s a history there, whether someone tracked the bells from this church where they went. Are they in a museum right now?
Yeah, very beautiful at night. Very serene.
During the day, the doorways are so bright with the daylight sun, but now it’s light in here and dark through the doorway.
Approaching a bustling Dutch Square. Got a whole set of the trishaws without passengers. I guess they’re heading out to look for some and some coming back with passengers. And walk around the horses. Don’t want to spook them, of course.
I think for little kids here, it would take a lot of courage to stand that close to a big animal like that. Like that little, is that a boy? Oh, a little girl there. Yeah, she’s quite brave.
Very nice. It’s always a good idea to go up as high as you can. Get some perspective on what’s below you. Look at that. What a scene. This used to be, there’s a concert going on. So that’s where that music is coming from. There’s a big crowd down there listening to the music from the concert.
Yeah, the horses are right down there below me.
Yeah, I don’t associate horses with Malaysia at all. Canada, of course, very common to have horses around, but I don’t think of them in Malaysia that often. But there they are.
There’s Jonker Street. It’s probably almost impossible to move right now walking down Jonker Street. It would be so crowded.
I keep hearing somebody scream. I’ve been hearing it from far away and I think I finally found the source. There’s a woman there dressed up as a ghost.
I nearly got run over by a trishaw. But anyway, I lost the ghost. She disappeared. Oh, there she is. That’s her there selling drinks. She’s pretty scary, actually. That’s pretty funny.
Yeah. I don’t know how much I can actually record because of the loud music. It’s all being picked up by my various cameras, but from here I’m just going to go out onto the bridge, look down the river, and maybe go for a walk along the river.
Yeah, it looks like it’d be nice and quiet down there. So let’s go for a walk along the river. Get away from the concert.
So I’m down on the river shore now. We can see one of the river boats going by. That’s a big one. A lot of people on board. They put a lot of tables down on the lower walkway there. There’s actually not much room to walk down there. So I think I have to stay up here on top.
These boats going up and down this river pretty fast. They’re actually creating quite a set of waves out there. This is another big one. Looks much bigger than the ones I’ve seen during the day. Maybe they just look bigger at night. Certainly going faster. Looks like ocean waves out there now.
Now I’ve already reached the spot where I came walking the other day looking for the end of the Portuguese fort. This is the Victoria Bastion or Bastion San Domingo. Yeah. So I was here during the daytime. Yeah. It looks very different at night, of course.
I’ve crossed over to the other side of the river. There’s the Mamee Monster Boat heading back and the hop on hop off cruise.
I got a little blast of cold air there. There was like a bit more modern nasty lac restaurant. They had air conditioning and an open door. So I got hit with some nice air conditioned air just for a minute. Felt good.
Yeah, this is the place to come to with friends, hang out for a drink and some good food. I saw a pizza place on the other side there that I walked by. Hello. Hello. Thank you. Okay. I’m okay. Thank you. Hello. Thank you. Thank you. Fresh juice. No thanks. Not right now.
All these places on this side of the river. I don’t know if it’s designed that way, but they tend to be bars over here. You can get a cold beer, I guess. Hello.
I don’t know how long I’m going to last doing this walking down Jonker Street at night, but let’s just dive into there for a few minutes, couple hundred meters or so through the crowd and see what’s going on down here. Yes, they close off Jonker Street of course to traffic at night and all these food stalls get put up so there’s not a lot of room to move.
One thing that feels nicer being down here is it’s a lot quieter. I appreciate that. You don’t have any of the loud music from any of the bars or the stage performance or from the trishaws. It’s a lot quieter here, which I like. But yeah, I don’t think I’m going to go all the way to the end of the street or anything like that. Just wanted to get a bit of the atmosphere on video to show Melaka at night.
Back on the other side of the river. There’s a brief lull in the stage show. The song just ended and they’re starting another one. So going to walk through here.
Ah, there’s one of my favorite sights. Not the panda bear, but the Middelburg Bastion. So before I head back to my hotel after exploring a little bit of Melaka at night, I need to climb up onto the Middelburg Bastion. Was designed to protect you from cannon fire that maybe I can use it to protect me from the nightlife. Yeah, I’m definitely a daytime guy. I prefer Melaka in the daytime especially Jonker Street. I mean if I had somebody with me who was highly skilled at getting snacks and drinks that would be amazing. I could find a place to sit and just have drinks and snacks delivered to me. I can just pick things out and say I’d love to try some of that. But then I don’t have to fight through the crowds and the bustle to get it myself.
But even at Jonker Street and that whole area back there, what really appeals to me is the history of it and the architecture and the buildings, the artwork. And at night, you don’t actually see any of that because the street is all taken over by food stalls and drink stalls and there’s no lights on the building. So yeah. So it’s a whole different atmosphere. If you go there during the day, you see the building so clearly. You can really feel the history, the art, but at night, it’s all about just enjoying yourself, having a snack, having a drink with friends.
Walking away from Dutch Square now. This entire street also transforms at night. It’s all food and drinks the entire way down. Still walking alongside the river and fired up my GoPro because we’re right beside one of my favorite places in Melaka, the Samudera Museum, maritime museum. The ship.
No, I don’t think you can see very much of me here in the dark alleyway. These are the dark alleyways heading back to my hotel. Even up there where the alleyways are a little bit brighter because it’s like behind the restaurants where all the staff are busy cleaning up and doing dishes and things. It’s getting later and later in the night now and even those have been turned into discos. You can just sort of hear a disco beat pounding back there. So basically I can’t record video anywhere in Melaka at night basically because there’s so much music coming at you from so many directions. It’s like my kryptonite. There’s nothing I can do as soon as I hit an area with music. Yeah, I have to turn off the camera. It’s just what you have to do. But yeah, I just wanted to capture a little bit of the flavor of the nightlife here in Melaka. Show people what it’s like. If you’re deciding to come to Melaka on a holiday and you are trying to wonder, you know, should I come on the weekend or the weekdays? Well, if you’re looking for that kind of environment, what I was just walking through that excitement and all of the good food, everything happening. Well, yeah, you come here on the weekend, Friday night, Saturday night. I don’t know about Sunday night. I don’t know if I’ve been out there on a Sunday night. I don’t think I have. So I’m not sure if it’s, I think Saturday night would be the night to go to come here and go out and enjoy yourself, you know, as long as you’re not shooting video for YouTube cuz then yeah, you can hardly ever turn on your camera. But yeah, that was very interesting. I think it showed a new side of Melaka. And with that, yeah, I’m actually back in my hotel now. I’m going to pop inside and recover from all of that excitement out there. So that’s it. Shutting down and I’ll see you in the next video.