VIDEO DESCRIPTION:
Welcome back to Planet Doug! After touring the Hang Tuah Museum in Melaka, Malaysia, I jump on my bike for what I hoped would be a beautiful, scenic ride back to my hotel — following rivers and the Strait of Malacca along quiet back roads instead of crazy highways.
What started as a relaxing adventure quickly turned into a fun (and frustrating) challenge filled with dead ends, muddy paths, massive sluice gates, river crossings, and surprise encounters with monkeys and a whole herd of bullocks! I also test out my new 360 camera mount on the bike, which… didn’t go exactly as planned.
Watch as I get completely turned around by the tides, battle non-stop Malaysian traffic, sneak through local neighborhoods, and even get chased off by high-end hotel security guards. Sometimes the journey is more interesting than the destination!
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Welcome back to Planet Doug. And I just finished a tour of this museum behind me. This is the Hang Tuah Center or Hang Tuah Museum here in Melaka, Malaysia. And so I’m about 9 kilometers away from my hotel because this museum is sort of on the outskirts of Melaka. And I got here this morning basically through the main part of the city. So, I was following big roads and highways, going through crazy intersections and one-way streets, all that crazy stuff here in Malaysia. But what I want to do now is ride back to my hotel in downtown Melaka, but try to follow rivers and the coastline going down smaller roads. So, yeah, that’s a small adventure I’m embarking on right now. And I thought since I’m doing that, why don’t I record it on video? So, let’s go see how many dead ends we can find on our way. So, let’s set off on this little adventure. And as far as I can tell from Google Maps, there’s two pathways following this river. There’s this road, which you can see behind me. So, I could follow the river down to the coast on this side, but I think there’s a smaller trail on the other side of the river. And I want to see whether I can cross the river here.
There’s a kind of a sluice gate or something here. Or maybe there’s a little bridge right here. Oh, okay. Yeah, here’s a sluice gate. And I noticed a bunch of scooters coming this way.
There we go. That’s a steep little climb. And now, yeah, I’m on the other side of this river. And I think this is the Sungai Duyong or something like that. Like it’s named after this district. And this is the birthplace of Hang Tuah. Now I’m really confused. The river is flowing in the wrong direction. This must be the tide coming in. Check that out. There’s the beast. I’ll talk about something a new addition on that bike in a minute. It looks like it’s bristling with camera gear. But yeah, look at that. There’s the river. And unless I am completely turned around, the river is flowing upstream because I don’t think the coast is in that direction. My internal compass is telling me the Strait of Malacca is down there. And if that’s true, why is the water flowing in this direction? It should be flowing in that direction. I wanted to stop in the middle of this bridge to take some video, but there were so many scooters going across. There’s one directly behind me. I couldn’t stop my bicycle partway across, so I’m walking backwards. But yeah, you can see the flow of the water very, very fast. As far as I can tell, it should be going in the other direction. So, I better check Google Maps carefully. Make sure I don’t go miles out of my way. I think the water should be going the other way. Yeah, they’ve done a lot of work over the years controlling the water flow in all these rivers just to control flooding. So, this is an example of some of these massive sluice gates that they’ve built. Of course, that whole thing can be lowered and then the flow of the water can be diverted or blocked at least. And yeah, so this is where my journey is beginning right here. And what I’ve added to my bicycle is a mount for my 360 camera. So right now I have I used to have two or three mounts. So this one on the broomstick for a GoPro facing backwards and then this one for a GoPro facing forward. And then I have a third one here which gives an unobstructed view facing forward. But quite often I’ll be riding my bike and then I’ll stop to talk to somebody at the side of the road and even though I’ve got GoPro cameras everywhere, none of these cameras are pointing to the side like to the left or to the right. So I end up having these conversations with people, but then I have no video of our conversations. So, I thought maybe a 360 camera can solve that so that if I have a 360 camera mounted here permanently, if I ever pull over to the side of the road to buy some food or a drink, I just pull off the cover, hit record, and then I can walk away from my bicycle, and now the 360 camera is recording in all directions. So, if somebody walks up to my bicycle from this side or from behind me or from in front of me or from the other side, this camera will be capturing video of the entire scene. So, the idea is to just have this sitting here all the time, covered up, keeping it safe, but not using it all the time, but only using it when, you know, whenever there’s an opportunity. So, it doesn’t have to be so high. I have it on an invisible selfie stick. So, this is the normal selfie stick for the 360 camera. So, I could put the camera right down there on that keeping it nice and much lower, less obtrusive, but then the angle isn’t quite right. So, just for fun, I thought I would raise it up a little bit, you know, raise it up on this selfie stick. And then yeah, there’s the new camera rig for my bicycle. Well, it’s a good thing I noticed the water flow, which made me check Google Maps because I was completely turned around. I thought the Strait of Malacca was in that direction. It isn’t. It’s down there. So, the water is flowing in the right direction. I just got completely turned around in terms of my orientation. So yeah, but I am on the correct side of the river that I wanted to be on. There’s a small road on this side. So even though I’m basically right beside one of the major museums of Melaka, you can see I’m kind of out in the countryside.
Very small road here. I think these are like mangrove trees off on my right. Those are all lining the shore of the river. And I’m hoping the landscape will open up a little bit. And as I ride here, I’ll get views of the river from time to time until I get down to the shoreline. This way I can avoid all of the highways and one-way streets and all the complexities of cycling through a city like Melaka. This would be a nice route to follow. Yeah, Melaka. I mean, if they wanted to pour a ton of money into it, they could take advantage of all of these rivers and create quite a fascinating series of bicycle paths following the shore, the Strait of Malacca and then going up one of the rivers down the river back to the shore, you know, just sort of meandering along the coastline. They could have a nice bicycle path, like basically taking this road that I’m on and turning it into a bicycle path. But yeah, it would cost a lot of money.
This is something that’s very distinctive of Malaysia and Indonesia in general. Outdoor wedding venues. So this is the Al Amira wedding house and they would host big wedding events here outside. Yeah, we tend not to have that in Canada. I don’t think almost any wedding venue would tend to be inside. Having an outdoor wedding is always taking a risk with the weather. But here it’s very very common to have your weddings big banquets outside like that. So you see wedding halls like this all over the place. My 360 camera mount is going to take some time to dial it in. Already I went over just a few bumps and the whole thing kind of tilted downward. It’s very hard to mount something on your handlebars secure enough to keep it straight even when you go over bumps on your bicycle. Yeah, I have too many mounts and too many weak points on that mounting apparatus. I’m going to have to work out something a bit more solid, I think.
Coming up on what I thought might be my very first barrier. There’s a big road here with a bridge going over the river. I wasn’t sure whether I can get past it.
There is some sort of a pathway here going to the other side. A scooter just came across it. But if I go to the other side or can I go underneath the bridge? Oh, awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. There is a bridge, but this path goes across the bridge and it goes under the highway. Yeah, my 360 camera just bent downward again after those bumps. So, yeah, this mounting apparatus is not going to work.
Yeah, it’s the thing with shooting video. My bicycle, this mountain bike, is designed for bumpy roads like this. But once you start mounting cameras on your bicycle, that’s a whole different ballgame.
My 360 camera was like this and already it’s horizontal to the ground. So that is not going to work. Going to have to come up with something else.
Yeah, this is amazing. Still following the river. I can see all of the mangrove style vegetation along the shore. Very nice. And I don’t have to deal with any traffic. Just have to try and get past all of these roads crossing the river. We’ll see what happens. There’s another road coming up right now. See whether I can cross it or not.
Let’s see. I can’t go under this one. Can I cross it? Does the path continue on the other side? I have no idea.
Oh, yeah. It does continue on the other side, but I have to cross this busy road. Not going to be easy.
Malaysia, man.
More cars than people. I swear.
Non-stop flow of traffic. Whenever I talk about this on video, people from Malaysia, they just say, “I have to master the Malaysian hand.” You just hold out your hand and stop traffic so that you can get across.
But I just wait until there’s a break. There we go. That wasn’t so bad.
Yeah, I’m not far. I’m not sure how far I can go alongside the river like this.
Going to see if I can make a small adjustment to my 360 camera rig. Maybe if I have it.
Well, I think what I’m going to do for now, I’ll still have it pointing straight up, but I’ll just put my camera directly on the mount. That will put less pressure on it.
This is my invisible selfie stick. Put that away for now. But now that I’m here, I better double check Google Maps. Make sure I’m still heading in the right direction. Just sometimes on Google Maps it shows you the blue dot and then it gives you like headlights to indicate the direction you’re heading, but they can sometimes be 180° wrong sometimes, so it’s pointing in the complete wrong direction. But no, I’m still heading towards the Strait of Malacca. On Google Maps right here where I am, it shows no road at all, but there is a path.
Well, let’s keep following the path for now.
See how far we can go on this side of the river. So,
Coming up on another road here. And this might be a good time to test my 360 camera theory. I just hit quick capture on my 360 camera because I saw this big bullock ahead of me and like I never know whether my GoPro is pointing in the right direction or not. Actually, there’s a whole herd of them down on the shore of the river. Yeah, lots of fresh grass for them to eat down there, I guess.
But if I happen to be riding my bicycle right beside creature like this. Yeah, I mean I can aim one of my GoPros in that direction, but if it happened to be directly beside me, then the 360 camera would capture it. It’s crazy, isn’t it? In a way, my presence can make them so nervous.
Like even the tiniest calf outweighs me and is far far stronger than I am. And yet the whole herd thunders away when it hears my voice. One of the adults could just pick me up and wear me like a hat. You know, they’re so much stronger than I am. But they don’t know that they have the advantage. They’re frightened of me and they run away. Another street, another road that I have to cross. Yeah. I don’t know.
Yeah, I think I might cross over to the other side of the river from here because I’m getting close to the shore of the Strait of Malacca and then I have to turn to the right and may not be easy to do from this side. So, got to check Google Maps.
Yeah, good call on my part. This is the last bridge across the river. So, if I continue down to the shore here, I’ll be stuck. I’ll hit a dead end and I’ll just have to turn around. So here I have to cross the bridge and go down the other side of the river. Yeah, my wheels are covered in orange clay from that muddy road.
So on this side. Yeah, actually I’ve been here before. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember this. I rode down this side before and I hit a dead end on this side because I was trying to head to the south, I mean, and I ran into a dead end. Yeah, I’ve got a nice deep puddle. See if I can clear some of the mud off my rear wheel.
Yeah, I came down here before checking out this river and all the boats.
And it was along here that I spotted all of the handmade fish tanks, the fish traps that they’re building out of chicken wire. It’s all up and down this road here.
And now that I think about it, I can’t remember if I was able to follow the shore, the Strait of Malacca from here or not. But it’s not such a great distance. So, I’m just going to ride all the way down to the end, see where I end up, and then if I have to turn around, well, I have to turn around. Yeah. So, there’s the dead end up ahead. I remember that. But there is a bridge going across heading back towards Melaka. So I might be okay. I can’t go south. It’s blocked up ahead. But maybe I can cross the river and head north along the Strait of Malacca. We’ll find out right here. Be very cool if I could. First part is easy. Here’s the bridge.
And there’s a little bit of a pathway.
Ah, this is awesome. It’s exactly what I was looking for. We’ll see how far it can take me. Yeah, they’re building something pretty major over here. That’s interesting. Let me aim one of my GoPros in that direction. Look at that. Building a big bridge and a dam. Some sort of water control device. They’ve rerouted the river to go through this narrow channel.
So, this might be a dead end. Oh no.
Oh. So yeah, this dead ends at somebody’s house and garage, but there is a pathway that turns off. Man, that looks great. Oh, and people are coming out by motorcycle and scooter. Let’s find out how far I can go down in this direction. This is actually taking me in the direction I want to go. This is heading back towards Melaka along the Strait of Malacca. It’s off to my left somewhere. But we’ll see whether I can put together enough of these little pathways to get me somewhere. I don’t know. Maybe not. It’s getting Oh, look at that monkey.
Lots of monkeys here.
Huh. Yeah, I might have been able to do a little bit of a detour here. That is very cool. The small pathways are petering out, but it looks like they’re joining up with a bridge over here back across the river or part of the river. No idea what’s going on.
Huh. Well, I’m still heading towards the Strait of Malacca, but I’m on the wrong side of the river now.
But maybe there’s another bridge when I need it because yeah, the road certainly got a whole lot bigger. I have no idea where I am. Later on, I’ll have to look at the Strava 3D map so I can figure out exactly where I went. Because right now, yeah, I have no clue where I am or where I’m going.
But it’s feeling good. Feeling like I’m heading in the right direction. We’ll see how this goes.
So, I was able to turn down to the left and get to the Strait of Malacca, but yeah, I’m blocked by another section. Get a beautiful view of the waters of the Strait of Malacca. Check that out. Gorgeous.
So, that’s where I am. And there’s the Hilton DoubleTree is right there. The Imperial Residence Ghost Island over there. Oh, you can see the ghost ship. Just make out the right in that direction there. The tip of the abandoned restaurant tourist ship that’s beached there. And I think off in this direction that would be the island Pulau Besar big island over there. That’s where I went the last time I tried to cycle away from Melaka. That’s as far as I got out to that island before I turned back. But yeah, there’s no way to follow the coast here.
Yeah, over here you can see maybe you can see that there’s yeah a long beach mangrove area. I’ve got to somehow get around that. So I’ve got to go back to the main road to get around that section of the coast.
I eventually had to give up. I just could not find a way to get to the shore and follow the shore. I thought I did it when I rode my bicycle out of Melaka in that direction. I thought I managed to find little bits and pieces of road. Really interesting, you know, village life. Countryside road along the shore, but coming from this direction, I just couldn’t find it and I just kept ending up lost and running into dead ends and having to turn around and yeah, so I eventually just gave up and zoomed ahead and now I’m back in the Portuguese settlement because I’ve been here a couple of times like sort of passing through on my bike already. And hello.
Well, that did not work out. It’s amazing to me how much animosity high-end hotels have towards bicycles. Like if you show up on a bicycle at any place like an expensive hotel, the guards just come running out of nowhere and they’re just I don’t know what it is. They see a bicycle and they just start shouting at you and waving their arms and telling you to go away like they don’t even give you a chance. So can’t check out the Lisbon Hotel. Unfortunately, it looks like they have a nice area at the front like a shoreline area. I thought I could go take a look at it, but yeah, you can’t get past the guards. If you walk in, you know, you could probably have a nice conversation, but if you come in on a bicycle, yeah, it’s like they’re going to tackle you and drag you to the ground. I don’t know what it is. They just don’t like bicycles. It’s funny. Yeah. I thought I saw some kind of a walking path at the end of this road, like on Google Maps. Could get me across this river, connect this neighborhood with the one over there. But I don’t know if it’s possible.
Maybe there’s a little bridge here. Ah, this is what I was looking for. Yeah, I thought there had to be some sort of a connection between the Portuguese settlement and the rest of Melaka. It’s kind of hard to get in and out of this area, but there is a little bridge here.
So, this is what I’m trying to get across. Yeah, there’s another little bridge right there. I guess local people built it. Just sort of a drainage canal. And then off in this direction as well. And there’s the Portuguese settlement over there. And this is my bridge that is getting me across. And then maybe I can make my way forward. There’s the Hilton DoubleTree.
I mentioned in another video the other day about the crows of Melaka. There’s so many of them here. There’s a good example.
See these two trees right here filled with crows. They all got quite excited when they saw me or heard me. They were all in this green tree, but they flew off to that other tree that doesn’t have any leaves.
All right. Little connection here going from one neighborhood to the other and see if I can follow this road to get me somewhere. I must admit I’m not at my best when I go to one of those like a fancy hotel on a bicycle and then the guards start shouting at me and then telling me to go away. I always feel this like surge of irritation that rises up in me. Which is kind of why I’m very reluctant to go to those places because I know even approaching them I’m going to get into trouble and it just bothers me. So I’m usually very hesitant to go anywhere near those places. You know the guards they see it as their job to protect the guests. I mean guests pay a lot of money to stay in those places so they don’t have to deal with the outside world. They’re paying for security and the security just protect them, keep people like me out if I’m not a paying guest basically. That was a very nice little shortcut. Got me to a place where I’m quite familiar with.
I have to do a right hand turn here.
Yeah, I was here during the holidays trying to make this right-hand turn, but this whole road behind me was so busy I couldn’t cross it. I couldn’t get across without help.
But today it’s much quieter.
And that is it basically. I was hoping that bicycle ride would be a lot more scenic, a lot more interesting. I would come across all kinds of interesting places, but it was just such a struggle to try to follow the shoreline that couldn’t really do it. And I was hoping to top it off with like walking through the Lisbon Hotel. They have that beautiful central courtyard and then that kind of a shoreline there. They have a bunch of cannons set up. Thought it would be visually kind of interesting, but the security guards wanted nothing to do with me and my bicycle, so I didn’t manage to get that either. So, yeah, just back in my own neighborhood. My hotel is just up ahead in this apartment or building blocks up there. So, that is it. Cycling back from the Hang Tuah Museum. I enjoyed visiting the museum, so I enjoyed that quite a bit. I was hoping for more of interest on the bike ride coming back into town, but didn’t really work out the way I hoped. But hey, who knows? Sometimes a failure is as good as a success perhaps. So that’s it. Shutting down. I just got one more corner to turn after this one to end up back at my hotel. So, shutting down here. Yeah. Shout out to the crunch club. If you made it all the way to the end of the video, put CC in the comments to let me know that you made it all the way to the end of another epic Planet Doug video. And a shout out to everyone else out there supporting Planet Doug. Back at the Makakota Vibe Inn. Park my bike and time to go take a nice cold shower and get a cold drink. So that’s it. Shutting down. See you next time.