VIDEO SUMMARY:
- Melaka is full of history that isn’t immediately visible to visitors. Some of the most fascinating stories I discovered here came from my own research and from viewers—not from the signs around the city.
- The physical landscape makes much more sense once you understand what used to be here. The fortress, the river, the shoreline, the Sultanate’s royal compound, and even today’s streets all look different when you know their historical context.
- A lot of Melaka’s attractions are recognizable without being understandable. Tourists photograph the murals, bridges, churches, ships and ruins, but often have no idea why they matter.
- So I imagined a city covered in “Planet Doug invisible signs”: information panels showing visitors what they’re actually looking at, with historians, archaeologists, architects and naturalists filling in the details.
The Problem With Knowing Just Enough History
After spending months walking around Melaka, researching its history and making videos about it, I’ve reached an odd point where the city has become much more interesting to me—but also much more confusing.
Everywhere I walk, I now see things that I didn’t understand when I first arrived.
A pile of old foundations turns out to be part of a fortress. A seemingly ordinary bridge was once a critical military objective. A modern road is actually running over land that didn’t exist a few centuries ago. A church sits on what was once part of the royal complex of the Melaka Sultanate.
And then there are the things that are visually obvious but historically unexplained.
You can see a huge mural of Hang Tuah and Hang Jebat and know that it must be important. You can see the replica of the Flor de la Mar and know that it must be there for a reason. You can stand beside the remains of A Famosa and assume you know what you’re looking at.
But unless you’ve already learned the history, you may have absolutely no idea what any of it means.
That’s where my imaginary signs come in.
The Fortress You Can’t See Anymore
I’ve become slightly obsessed with the old Melaka fortress.
Part of the problem is that what’s left today doesn’t always make much sense when you’re standing in front of it.
At the Victoria Bastion, for example, archaeologists have exposed the foundations of the old fortress. But looking at those rectangular spaces, my first thought was that they must have been rooms.
They weren’t.
They were structural cells inside the enormous fortress walls, packed with earth, rock and other material. Once you understand how the walls were actually constructed, the ruins start making more sense—but only if somebody explains it to you.
That’s exactly the sort of thing I’d put on an invisible sign.
Even better, I’d include a huge three-dimensional reconstruction showing what stood here during the Portuguese or Dutch period.
Because sometimes the most useful historical information isn’t another paragraph of text.
It’s simply:
“This is what you would have seen if you had stood here 300 years ago.”
That same idea applies along the old fortress walls. Today there are buildings, roads, parking areas and modern development everywhere.
But during the Portuguese and Dutch periods, much of that simply wasn’t there.
The fortress wall ran along the edge of the river, and from the outside you would have been looking at a massive defensive wall rather than the modern city we see today.
A good reconstruction could make that instantly obvious.
The Moment the Geography Finally Clicked
One of the biggest revelations for me was realizing just how much the modern geography of Melaka has changed.
The land around the old fortress has been extensively reclaimed.
That means that when you’re standing beside the reconstructed Middelburg Bastion today, the landscape you’re looking at is fundamentally different from the one the Portuguese and Dutch knew.
The Melaka Strait used to come right up against the fortress.
The water was essentially outside the walls.
Suddenly, all those old cannon positions made sense.
I had previously looked at them and wondered: What exactly were these cannons supposed to be shooting at?
Once I understood where the shoreline used to be, the answer became obvious.
Ships would have been approaching across the water directly in front of the fortress.
That’s the kind of historical connection that can completely transform the way you experience a city. You haven’t necessarily discovered a new ruin. You’ve discovered how the existing ruins fit together.
The Bridge That Helped Decide the Fate of Melaka
Perhaps my favorite invisible sign would be placed on the bridge across the Melaka River.
Today it’s just a bridge connecting Dutch Square with Jonker Walk.
Historically, it was much more important.
During the Melaka Sultanate, the bridge connected the royal compound with the communities and commercial areas on the opposite side of the river. It wasn’t simply a crossing—it was a major part of how the city functioned.
And when the Portuguese attacked Melaka in 1511, the bridge became a crucial military objective.
The Portuguese understood that controlling it could effectively divide the city and separate the Sultan’s forces from other parts of the population.
The bridge itself also changed dramatically over the centuries. Under the Dutch, it was apparently raised high enough to allow ships to pass underneath, forcing people carrying goods to climb stairs, cross the bridge and descend the other side.
That’s an entire piece of urban history hiding underneath something most tourists regard simply as a convenient place to take a photograph.
I’d like a sign that tells that story.
The Sultanate That Disappeared Beneath the Colonial City
There’s another recurring problem in Melaka: the colonial history is physically obvious.
The Dutch buildings are still standing. Portuguese ruins remain. British structures survive.
But the Melaka Sultanate left far fewer obvious structures behind.
That makes it easy for a visitor to unconsciously experience Melaka as primarily a Portuguese, Dutch and British colonial city.
It wasn’t.
Before all of that, this was the center of the Melaka Sultanate.
The royal compound occupied the hill. The Grand Mosque stood somewhere around the area that is now Dutch Square. The Sultan’s palace was somewhere on the hillside, although its precise location remains a matter of historical debate.
The original palace was a wooden structure and was destroyed by the Portuguese.
The modern Sultanate Palace Museum is a reconstruction—not the original building standing in its original location.
I’d love to see a sign that makes that distinction crystal clear, perhaps with a model showing the best current reconstruction of where the royal compound stood.
The same goes for the Grand Mosque and the original Portuguese fortress tower commonly associated with the name A Famosa.
The physical remains are gone, but the historical landscape doesn’t have to disappear with them.
A Famosa—or Not A Famosa?
This is one of my favorite examples of how a small naming problem can create enormous confusion.
Most tourists are told that the famous surviving gate is A Famosa.
But historically, that’s not quite right.
The name A Famosa originally referred to the famous Portuguese fortress tower, not this surviving gate.
The gate was the Porta de Santiago during the Portuguese period. And even that gets complicated because the Dutch later demolished the Portuguese gate and built their own gate on the same site.
So the structure standing today is not simply an untouched Portuguese gate.
Then there’s the official plaque, whose wording seems to have helped perpetuate the confusion. The word “Famosa” appears prominently in the text, even though the sentence is actually referring to the fortress rather than identifying the gate itself as Famosa.
This is exactly the kind of thing that seems trivial until you realize how many thousands of visitors walk away with the wrong impression.
I’d put a big, simple sign here:
What is this actually called?
Then explain the Portuguese gate, the Dutch reconstruction, the fortress, and where the original A Famosa tower actually stood.
Problem solved.
The Story Behind the Destruction of the Fortress
The history of the fortress gets even more interesting when you reach the story of its destruction.
The simplified version makes it sound as though William Farquhar was responsible for destroying the fortress and Stamford Raffles heroically arrived at the last minute to save the final gate.
The deeper story is much more complicated.
Farquhar was acting under orders from the East India Company, and the evidence I found indicates that he actually opposed the destruction. He collected petitions from local people protesting the demolition and added his own arguments against it.
Stamford Raffles, meanwhile, wasn’t some senior colonial official arriving dramatically at the last moment.
He was a young East India Company official who happened to be in Melaka while ill. He discussed the situation with Farquhar, prepared a memorandum arguing against the destruction, and that report eventually reached Lord Minto.
Minto agreed with the argument and ordered the destruction stopped.
That’s a much more interesting story than the simple version.
And that’s another invisible sign I’d love to see here—not to replace the existing interpretation, but to give visitors enough context to understand that the story wasn’t nearly as straightforward as the plaque makes it sound.
Churches, Saints and Stories That Get Lost
St. Paul’s Hill could probably support an entire museum’s worth of invisible signs.
There’s the statue of St. Francis Xavier, for example.
When I first arrived, I recognized the name but knew almost nothing about his connection to Melaka.
Only after doing more research did I realize how important Melaka was to his missionary work. His journeys toward Japan and China were closely connected with the city.
Yet a visitor can stand beside his statue without necessarily knowing who they’re looking at.
Then there’s the history of St. Paul’s Church itself.
It began as a much smaller chapel and went through several transformations over the centuries, passing through Portuguese, Dutch and British periods.
And even the story of its founding has competing versions.
The popular tourist version says Duarte Coelho survived a terrible storm and built the chapel in gratitude.
But the version I encountered in historical material is almost the reverse: Coelho and his crew were trapped by a Chinese fleet, prayed to Mary for assistance, and a storm scattered the opposing fleet and allowed the Portuguese to escape.
The storm didn’t nearly kill him.
The storm saved him.
That’s exactly the kind of historical wrinkle that makes a place fascinating—and exactly the sort of thing that tends to disappear when a complicated story gets reduced to one sentence on a tourist brochure.
What Was Here Before the Portuguese?
There’s another layer of history on St. Paul’s Hill that is especially easy to overlook.
Before the Portuguese arrived, this was part of the royal complex of the Melaka Sultanate.
That means that the hill wasn’t simply an empty piece of land waiting for the Portuguese to build a church.
There were royal structures and, apparently, royal burial grounds associated with the Sultanate.
So when you’re standing inside St. Paul’s Church looking at Portuguese and Dutch tombstones, you’re seeing one layer of the site’s history.
Beneath that story is another one.
The hill itself was part of the world of the Melaka Sultanate.
I’d love an interpretation panel that made those layers visible instead of presenting the Portuguese and Dutch remains in isolation.
The Things Tourists Photograph Without Understanding
This idea goes far beyond the fortress.
The Flor de la Mar is a perfect example.
It’s an enormous replica ship sitting beside a museum complex. People photograph it constantly.
But why is it there?
It represents a Portuguese ship associated with the conquest of Melaka. After the conquest, the ship was reportedly carrying valuable cargo taken from Melaka when it sank off Sumatra.
That’s a pretty extraordinary story.
Yet you can walk past the ship without necessarily learning any of it.
The same goes for the Hang Tuah and Hang Jebat mural.
It’s an obvious photo opportunity, but unless you already know the story, you don’t know who these two people are or why their conflict matters.
The same applies to Zheng He, the historic bridges, Heerenstraat, the old riverside warehouses and even the British lighthouse on St. Paul’s Hill.
The objects are there.
The context isn’t always there.
Even the River Deserves a Sign
The Melaka River has become one of my favorite places in the city, partly because the modern tourist landscape hides what the river used to be.
Those colorful cafés and hotels along the waterfront look like they’re facing the front of the city.
Historically, many of these buildings were actually oriented the other way.
The riverfront was the back entrance—the practical side used for loading and unloading goods. The impressive front entrances faced the streets on the opposite side.
That little realization completely changes the way you see the riverfront.
I’d also like to see signs explaining the river itself: its environmental history, the major rehabilitation and reclamation projects, and the wildlife that has returned.
Because the river isn’t just scenery.
It’s a living part of the city.
And yes, I absolutely want a sign about the monitor lizards.
I’ve counted some enormous ones along the river, and once you start looking for them, they’re everywhere.
Why not tell visitors what they’re looking at?
Bridges, Warehouses and Even Movie Locations
Once you start thinking this way, the invisible signs multiply.
Every bridge could have one.
Even a bridge with a name like Jambatan Old Bus Station immediately raises a question: where was the old bus station?
The old riverside warehouses deserve interpretation too. These “godowns” were part of the commercial machinery that made Melaka work, with goods arriving by water and moving directly into storage.
And sometimes the history doesn’t have to be ancient.
One building along the river could have a sign saying that scenes from Entrapment, starring Sean Connery, were filmed there.
That’s not necessarily a world-changing historical fact.
But it’s interesting.
And that’s really the point.
The Japanese Occupation Shouldn’t Be Forgotten
Some stories are much darker.
One of the bridges along the river is associated with stories from the Japanese occupation, including accounts that severed heads of executed prisoners were displayed from bridges as a warning to the population.
I’d want a sign here, but not simply repeating the most dramatic version of the story.
I’d want it to explain what is documented, what is part of local memory, what evidence survives, and what remains uncertain.
That’s especially important with wartime history.
The absence of photographs doesn’t necessarily mean the event didn’t happen. During the Japanese occupation, photography, printing and information were heavily controlled, making visual documentation extremely difficult.
The story deserves to be told—but carefully.
Heerenstraat: Look Down, Not Just Forward
Heerenstraat is another place where a tourist can see something beautiful without understanding what makes it special.
From street level, you see a row of magnificent old houses.
But look down from above and their unusual architecture becomes much more obvious.
These are long, narrow houses with courtyards, air wells, internal spaces and architectural features that reflect the way the buildings evolved over time.
There’s also the famous “Millionaire’s Row” association and the transformation of the street from its earlier Dutch origins into the Peranakan world that visitors see today.
A sign here could show an overhead diagram of one of the houses.
That would probably explain more in five minutes than simply putting another paragraph on a wall.
And Yes, I Found Melaka Trees
Finally, we come back to the name itself.
Melaka.
According to the famous founding story, Parameswara was resting beneath a tree when he witnessed a tiny mouse deer kick one of his hunting dogs into the river.
He interpreted the event as an omen and decided to establish his new settlement there.
The tree became part of the story of how Melaka got its name.
So when viewers told me that there were actual Melaka trees growing here in the city, I had to investigate.
And now, assuming my most recent informant wasn’t sending me on a wild goose chase, I’m standing beside some of them.
That deserves an invisible sign too.
Why I Keep Wanting These Signs
The more I walked around Melaka, the more I realized that my imaginary signs aren’t really about adding information for its own sake.
They’re about connections.
A fortress foundation becomes understandable when you can see the fortress reconstructed.
A cannon emplacement makes sense when you know where the shoreline used to be.
A bridge becomes fascinating when you understand that controlling it once meant controlling access to the city.
A church becomes more meaningful when you know what stood there before it.
A palace replica becomes more interesting when you understand that the real palace was somewhere else.
A mural becomes something more than a selfie backdrop when you know the story of the people depicted.
And a river becomes something more than a pretty tourist attraction when you understand that it was once the commercial lifeline of the city.
I don’t actually expect Melaka to cover the entire heritage zone with giant Planet Doug signs.
But I do think there’s a huge opportunity here.
Melaka has an extraordinary amount of history.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Good morning. Welcome back to Planet Doug and welcome back to the historic city of Melaka, Malaysia. And today I am making a video all about Planet Doug’s invisible signs. Stick with me here. It makes a little bit of sense. The basic idea is that I’ve spent a lot of time here in Melaka, shot a lot of videos. So I did a fair amount of research into the history of Melaka. So, I was very lucky as a YouTuber that I learned so much about the city through my own research, through walking around, poking my nose everywhere around the city. And so many viewers of Planet Doug videos would leave comments, correcting things I said, adding additional information, pointing out other areas of interest. So I have uncovered a lot of factoids, fascinating stories, interesting perspectives, a lot of history in my time here. And I thought I would share it in one kind of overview video. And the thing is, a lot of these things that I learned, I had to learn on my own. There wasn’t a sign there telling me these things. It’s like there wasn’t a tourism sign saying anything. These were things that I uncovered through my own reading, watching YouTube videos, through input from viewers. So, what I’m going to do today is walk around the historic zone, the UNESCO heritage site of Melaka, and then every time I remember, oh, in this spot, I learned something interesting. I’m gonna put up a Planet Doug sign, an invisible Planet Doug sign because it doesn’t exist. So, it’s kind of a Planet Doug wishlist of if there was a huge budget in the tourism infrastructure of Melaka for putting up information and history signs, this is where I’d put one. This is what the sign would say. This is where I would put one. This is what the sign would tell visitors. All these things that I had no idea about. I didn’t know when I came to Melaka. And now that I know these things, the city means so much more to me. I’m going to do my best to keep this a little bit fast-paced and light-hearted. I’m not going to be diving into exact names and dates and years and details. Basically, I’m just going to say there should be a sign here and then I’m going to leave it up to all of the official professional Melaka historians to put their heads together and then find all of the relevant information and then put it on Planet Doug’s invisible sign. And I’m not doing any of this in any particular order. It’s just based on where I am and what I encounter as I walk around.
And since my hostel is right over there, and when I start walking, the first thing I come across is the remains of one of the many bastions of the Melaka fortress. And this is very appropriate as the first place for a Planet Doug invisible, did you know kind of sign because I’ve become obsessed with this fortress. I have spent an incredible amount of time trying to understand it and put it in context and I still feel like I just don’t get it in many ways. So here for example they have uncovered the foundations of one of the bastions. This is the Victoria Bastion. I believe the Portuguese called it San Domingo Bastion. So, it’s had different names. And I find this really fascinating because it exposed the foundations of the fortress walls and the bastion. But even me, having done so much research, I have no idea what I’m looking at, right? It’s like, okay, these look like little rooms, right? And I’m like, okay, were these rooms underneath the bastion? And like, I just don’t know. I did a little bit of research and the research told me that no, these were not rooms. These were what they call a kind of cell. So they would build these walls as the structure of the fortress wall and the bastion and then inside here they would just fill it and pack it down with dirt and rock. So you’ve got an outer layer of laterite and brick and stone and then a massive wide interior of dirt and sand and rock. So these are not rooms. These are cells that were filled in. But my idea is there has to be a giant sign here where all the historians of Melaka come together and recreate from these foundations what was here. Like show me. I would love to get like a giant three-dimensional representation of exactly what this spot looked like at the height of the Portuguese era or preferably the Dutch era because you’ve got this big area over here has been uncovered and on the other side over here, this was clearly a well. I think it’s marked as a well. Another well, but it looks like there’s like two more wells. Like why so many wells? And then again, if this is a well and yet these were all filled in, like these were not open rooms, then how does anybody get to the well? Like, I don’t know. Like, I have no idea. My brain is not powerful enough to look at these foundations, take everything I read, everything I found online, and imagine what was here. So, I need help from the experts, and I need a plan. I’m going to put a Planet Doug invisible sign right here with a completely detailed graphic of what this looked like back in the day before it was blown up and demolished. I want to see exactly what this looked like.
And in this fantasy land where I have the budget to put up as many signs as I want, I would put another fortress related sign, a Planet Doug invisible sign right here ahead of me. And this sign wouldn’t contain new information, but it would just help you realize that in the times of the fortress during the Portuguese and Dutch era spanning centuries, none of these buildings would have existed. And that’s pretty obvious when you think about it because we’ve got this giant bastion here and then that leads into the fortress walls. And that’s where the fortress wall went, right down here beside the river. So obviously there were no buildings here. If you were standing here on the shore of the river and then you were looking in this direction, you’re just looking at a 20, 30 foot wall, a fortress wall right in front of you going all the way down the river. Basically, it would cut through all of these buildings. None of them were here at that time. So, I need a sign that somehow conveys that idea. Maybe an image from across the river. If you were standing there in the year 1750 and looking in this direction, what would you see? You would just see a solid wall, a fortress going the entire length along the river. And to me, that’s such an amazing visual. But I don’t see that visual in any of the information like being offered up to a casual tourist like me.
Let’s put another Planet Doug invisible sign right over there in front of the Church of St. Francis Xavier because people take selfies in front of this church by the thousands every week. It’s an incredibly popular spot. So many foreigners, visitors, tour groups, they come here and they take thousands of pictures of this church, but of course nobody know its history or anything about it. They might see the date 1849. Even I don’t know very much about the church because it is it hasn’t been something I focused on. And you can see how it is leaning sharply to the right. It is a crazy distinct lean. And where did that come from? So, Planet Doug invisible sign right there telling you the history of this church, the significance perhaps of St. Francis Xavier, but we’ll talk about him more in a little while and the history of the church and everything about it.
And of course, of course, another Planet Doug invisible sign is going right here to tell people who these two dudes are. I know, of course, that we’re talking about Hang Tuah and Hang Jebat, one of the greatest stories of Malaysian history. It’s just such an amazing story and I’ve become fascinated with it. And this, as well, is an incredibly popular selfie location. People come here by the thousands, it seems, every week, taking a picture of this mural, pictures of themselves posing with the mural. But based on this alone, I mean, Malaysians of course automatically know what this is about, but no foreigner would have any clue. Okay, it’s two guys fighting and they take a picture and they move on. So, Planet Doug invisible sign telling the legendary story, the tragic story, this incredibly dramatic story of Hang Tuah and Hang Jebat right here. So all you Melaka historians, get on that. Put your heads together. Put together a nice succinct summary of the legend of the story and we’ll put it on a Planet Doug sign right here. Of course, the mural is probably going to be moved at some point. They’ll paint over with a new mural. So this sign, we have to keep moving it. Wherever we see a giant mural of Hang Tuah and Hang Jebat, then we have to put the Planet Doug sign right in front of it.
I’ve become equally fascinated by the Melaka River in my time here. And I could probably line the whole river with did you know Planet Doug invisible signs, but perhaps one would be kind of interesting. And it’s not like a big reveal or something some secret hidden fact of history. It’s just this realization that slowly grew on me that all of these fancy cafes and brightly colored shophouses that you see along the river historically. These were the back entrances to the buildings. Like as a tourist, you walk up and down the river and you stop off at a restaurant, a bar, little cafe over there, and you think you’re going in the front entrance of the restaurant, the front doors of the cafe, the hotel, whatever it is. But in fact, when these houses were built, they’re very long, narrow, what I call tunnel houses. And the front entrance is on the street on the other side. And this was the rear entrance on the river where you know loading and unloading would take place. So in fact it’s the reverse of how you would think about it. Again as a tourist you think, well that’s the front entrance of the little cafe. But if you walk through the alley and go to the street, you’ll realize that this was actually the backyard. The front entrance is on the street on the other side. And I’d put a Planet Doug invisible sign planted right here. Just sort of opening people’s eyes to that fact and have them think back centuries to how the city grew around the river.
I’ve made my way down to Dutch Square, also known as Red Square for obvious reasons, but I tend to call it Dutch Square because I associate the official Red Square with Moscow. So anyway, I always think of it as Dutch Square, but it is also Red Square. And of course, I could cover this place with Planet Doug invisible signs. But the first one that I’m going to plant is kind of a fun one, a discovery for me that came totally out of left field and it was thanks to a Planet Doug viewer who told me this story and it has to do with what I’m looking at right now. And this, of course, is the reconstruction of the Middelburg Bastion. And the Planet Doug sign would not be about the bastion, the fortress walls. You can read all of that here. So there is a sign about that. The Planet Doug sign would talk about the history of this recreation and how the original the lost foundations of the bastion were uncovered. And the story goes, as far as I understand it, is that the tower, the tourist attraction, the Menara Taming Sari, can’t quite see it, but if we walk over here, get around this museum building there, that tall tower there, and that’s an observation tower for tourists. You can pay to climb into this observation platform that goes up and down and you get an aerial view of the city. That tower was supposed to be built right here or somewhere in this area. Anyway, probably right here. This was back in 2006, I think. And they started digging the foundations for the tower. And as they had excavators here digging into the ground, they ran into all of this laterite, they dug into and then they hit the foundations for this massive fortress complex, the bastion, the Middelburg Bastion, the wall, and that halted construction. And of course all of the local historians and societies and preservation people and tourism people, they all put their heads together and they says, “Well, this is pretty important. Why don’t we move the tower?” So once they hit the foundations of the bastion, they decided to change their plans and they built the observation tower over there instead. And then they preserved the foundations of the bastion and built this recreation of what the bastion would have looked like. And a fascinating thing that I’ve slowly discovered is that you got the bastion and then a wall would come out and then there was another bastion over there. So you’ve got not just the Middelburg Bastion, but I think that’s the Frederick Bastion over there and then a connecting wall to here.
So Planet Doug sign that would be right here. And it would tell the story of how in 2006 they accidentally uncovered the foundations of this historic bastion and fortress and then yeah in a very wise move they decided to preserve it and take their tower and build it somewhere else. It’s a fascinating story that I think most visitors to Melaka never learn. Like you have to stumble across it. And the Planet Doug sign would lay it out because I think it’s so fun and it’s so interesting.
I’m walking right beside the Middelburg Bastion still because there’s something really important here. Something that I stumbled across. It took me a long time. I’m such a dummy. It just took me forever to figure this out. So, there has to be another Planet Doug sign. So, I’m planting a Planet Doug invisible sign right here to tell people about land reclamation and how that completely altered the shape of the land and the Melaka Strait here in Melaka. So, what I need this sign to do is give a very, very clear image. Again, you know, make it 3D. Let’s spend all the money we have and make a brilliant 3D image or a big billboard that shows that right here historically was the Melaka Strait. You see all these cars driving down that road, the tower over there, all these shopping centers, parking lots, housing complexes, everything in that direction. None of that existed originally. That has all been built on top of reclaimed land. And when the fortress was here, the Melaka Strait ran right along here. So, as I pointed out, here’s the bastion, the Middelburg Bastion, and there was a wall here going across to another bastion. And then the fortress wall went in this direction in a circle hugging the base of Melaka Hill. And the Melaka Strait, the water was just outside of the fortress walls. So all of this would have been water. And once I made that simple realization, everything kind of clicked into place for me because I would see like cannon emplacements here and I’m wondering what are the cannons aiming at exactly? But it turns out that these cannon were aiming right over the water. So if enemy ships were on their way, they would be right here. This is the Melaka Strait and these cannon are firing at the ships because this was the shoreline right here. And as you walk around Melaka Hill and take in all of these tourist attractions, you are essentially walking along the shore of the Melaka Strait. And it’s such a crazy thing when you finally figure that out. It’s like the visual the geographic layout of the city. It all clicks into place for me. So yeah, I’m planting another Planet Doug invisible sign right here. Making that as clear as possible. So all of you geographers, historians, graphic artists, put your heads together. I need that Planet Doug sign right here.
For me, maybe the most important Planet Doug invisible sign. I’m going to put right here beside the bridge. And at first that might seem like an odd thing to do or to say because when you look at this bridge, you wonder, well, what’s the big deal? We’ve got a river. They got a bridge. It’s not a particularly large bridge. It’s not particularly interesting in its architecture right now. So why would there be the most important invisible sign right here on the bridge? And that’s because the history of this bridge is really important and key to Melaka. It’s absolutely fascinating. I was talking about how fascinated I’ve become with the river, with the fortress, but I’ve been equally fascinated by this bridge. And this goes all the way back, of course, to the Melaka Sultanate when the royal compound, which I’ll be talking about in a minute or two. You know, the royal compound of the Melaka Sultanate was spread out over the hill. That’s where they lived. And then there was a bridge leading across to the other side of the river and that is where all of the communities of the merchants would live which I believe they called Upeh at that time. So this bridge connected the majority of the population of Melaka under the Melaka Sultanate. They all lived over here in different communities. The Javanese, the Chinese, etc., etc. And then this bridge connected them with the Sultan and the Sultan’s palace and the royal compound. And according to what I read when I was digging into this, the bridge was very very different in the time of the Melaka Sultanate. And a lot of the descriptions of the bridge come from the Portuguese themselves because the Portuguese came here a fleet of ships in 1511 and they conquered the Melaka Sultanate. The fleet was under the control of Afonso de Albuquerque and the historical record kept by the Portuguese was that his military strategy was to take the bridge. And that is just such a classic idea we’re so familiar with from like World War II movies, any war movie. You’re always trying to bomb the bridge. The bridge is the key to victory. We have to take the bridge. And that was true in the battle, a major battle that went on between the Portuguese and the Melaka Sultanate, Afonso de Albuquerque and his advisers, whoever he had working with him. They had information about Melaka that had been funneled to them. And they decided that the key to defeating the Melaka Sultanate was to take the bridge. And at that time, the bridge was described as being like an open air market. It was lined on both sides with shops and like it was just a bit much bigger bridge than you might imagine. Covered in shops, traders going about their work. And it was heavily defended. I’m not exactly sure how it was defended. Reading all the descriptions, I can’t quite put it together in my mind. That’s where I need all the historians to make the Planet Doug sign for me because I found it way too confusing to figure out. But it seemed pretty obvious that the bridge was heavily defended and it was the key to taking the city because the Portuguese thought if they could take the bridge, they cut the opposing forces in half. The Royal Compound on one side, other fighting forces on the other, and they can control the city from here. And the Portuguese tried to take the bridge on their first assault, and I believe they did, and then the Sultanate forces drove them back. And it was just such it was yeah they were driven back back to their ships. So they took the bridge but then they had to give it up again and they kept fighting for possession of the bridge. And if you read the actual history of that battle, it’s a pure Hollywood movie waiting to be shot. It’s an incredible story that the you know what I’ve read about it. And then the bridge over the centuries under the Portuguese, under the Dutch, under the British and modern times, it kept evolving. The bridge kept changing. So what I need is the Planet Doug sign giving the history of the bridge as I kind of outlined its key role in the fight between the Portuguese and the Melaka Sultanate its key functional role in the city under the Portuguese and the Dutch and the British. And the bridge kept changing. I saw this incredible drawing of the bridge under the Dutch where they built it high up to allow ships to go underneath it and then they had to put stairs climbing to the top of the bridge going across and then down the other side. And I guess the local people just hated that because they could no longer just walk across the bridge with their loads of goods, you know, wagon like bullock carts, wheeled vehicles couldn’t cross the bridge anymore. Everything had to be carried on their backs up the stairs across and then down the stairs on the other side. So the bridge changed constantly and I’d love to see a big sign giving the history and significance of this bridge. Give it its rightful place in history because as you can imagine all the modern tourists of today, they don’t know any of that history. You wouldn’t become aware of any of this until you start doing your own reading and research for them. It’s just a way to get from Dutch Square to Jonker Walk over there and then take a beautiful picture of the river.
I’m now standing in the middle of Dutch Square. Stadthuys over there, of course, Christ Church behind me, the clock tower rising above me. And of course, I could easily put a dozen Planet Doug invisible signs here just giving interesting factoids like did you know stories about the Stadthuys, about Christ Church, about the clock tower, about the fountain, about everything you see here. But the Planet Doug invisible sign that I’m going to plant today. I want a sign telling visitors about the Melaka Sultanate’s Grand Mosque. What did it look like and where was it? I think most visitors again, they come here and they see all of the colonial buildings, but the Melaka Sultanate because it didn’t leave behind physical brick remnants like these gets kind of overlooked, kind of forgotten. I’m not going to dive into all of the history and the primary sources, everything that I saw online talking about the Grand Mosque and the Sultanate Palace, things like that. I will leave all of that to the historians who are going to make these signs. I’ll let the historians put their heads together and they can decide exactly based on the most accurate historical descriptions what the mosque looked like and more importantly to me where it was because that’s where I want the sign to go. So we’ve got the bridge crossing here. And the bridge from the Melaka Sultanate days was, you know, roughly in the same place, maybe exactly the same place. And then when you read a bit about the history, people would walk across the bridge and then somewhere in here was the Grand Palace. Maybe down here on the flat area, a little bit up on the sides of the Melaka Hill. I don’t know where exactly it was. I don’t know if anybody really does. That’s why, as I said, I’m going to depend on the historians to figure that out for me, put together the Planet Doug sign, and then maybe they decide that the Grand Mosque was right here. Like this would have been the center of the Grand Mosque right here. And then I need the sign. It would be amazing to have a model like a full not full scale but you know a big model saying that this was where the grand mosque of the Melaka Sultanate was located right here. So a very detailed model the historians best guess of what it looked like. And I think it’d be it’s a very important thing to document because again according to the history that I’ve read, one of the first things the Portuguese did was tear it down. They tore down the mosque and then they used the brick and the laterite, all the building material used to build that mosque and other buildings here in the royal compound. And they started construction of their A Famosa fortress, a five-story tower. And again, that’s also missing from Dutch Square because again, as far as I know, this is where the Portuguese tower, the keep that was called A Famosa, this is where it was located. And I can’t say for certain that they tore down the mosque and built their tower in the exact same spot, but it’s a possibility. Again, I’ll leave that up to the historians to figure out. But yeah, so I want two Planet Doug signs here. One showing the Grand Mosque where it probably was sitting at the time of the Melaka Sultanate. And I want a sign and a model of the original Portuguese tower A Famosa that was built in its place.
I’m standing right across the road from the Flor de la Mar which is essentially a museum on the inside and it’s part of a complex of three different museums. And if you’ve seen any of my previous videos, you can probably guess that I’d have to put a Planet Doug invisible sign right here because it took me so long, even me, with kind of an active interest in figuring things out. It took me a long time to figure out the significance of this ship. I’ve watched a number of YouTube travel vlogs of people who go through Melaka and they’ll often walk by this and they aim their camera at it and go, “Oh, look. There’s a European ship, probably Dutch.” And then they walk on because on the outside of it, it does not really tell you what it is or why it’s important. So, Planet Doug invisible sign right here telling you that this is an actual Portuguese ship called the Flor de la Mar. It’s a recreation of it. I don’t know whether it’s exactly to scale. I’ve never been able to figure that out. I don’t think it is. But this ship was involved in the Portuguese assault on Melaka. So it was part of the fleet of ships under Afonso de Albuquerque when he fought with the Melaka Sultanate, defeated them and took over Melaka. That alone needs to be on a clear sign to tell people why this ship is important and why you should pay your 20 ringgit to go in and take a look at it. But even more than that, after the defeat of the Melaka Sultanate, the Portuguese essentially looted Melaka and took as much of the valuables as they could, loaded it onto this ship, and they were going to take it all back to Europe. All the gold and the statues and the finery, anything they could find of value was loaded onto the Flor de la Mar. It was on its way back to Europe and then it encountered a storm, ran aground off the coast of Sumatra and sank. So again, the Planet Doug sign would tell you this, you know, big letters, come see the Flor de la Mar, one of the great lost treasure ships of history. I mean, that’s a pretty compelling story, but from the outside, you would never know that. You would never figure it out. So, Planet Doug invisible sign right here.
I’ve just walked down the curve away from Dutch Square following this road. There’s the architecture museum there. And right here, I’m going to plant another Planet Doug invisible sign because I’m right across the road from the stairway. This is the main stairs leading up to St. Paul’s Hill and St. Paul’s Church up there. And this isn’t a particularly huge part of history, but I discovered something about these stairs quite recently that I think deserves a Planet Doug sign. And I learned this thanks to a Planet Doug viewer who wrote this in a comment basically saying, “Hey Doug, did you know that when Queen Elizabeth II visited Melaka, she walked up these stairs on her tour of Melaka and visited St. Paul’s Church ruins up at the top?” I’m like, “Yeah, absolutely. I did not know that.” And that seems kind of fascinating to me. And of course, in preparation for Queen Elizabeth II’s visit, they did a lot of renovation of the stairs, making sure everything was neat and tidy, strengthening the guard rails, making sure everything looked good and was safe, of course. And then, I think it’d be very cool if we had a Planet Doug sign right here with a photograph. I assume such a thing exists, of Queen Elizabeth and her entourage actually going up the stairs. I think that that’s a very fascinating little bit of a modern history.
And right across the street from the stairway, I would probably put another Planet Doug sign right over here because again, it took me a long time to figure out what the deal was with this. And I think it needs a certain amount of explanation. And again, because I’m fascinated with the fortress walls, I definitely going to put a Planet Doug invisible sign right here because they excavated a section of the fortress wall. You can see the foundations right here. And I saw all of these like picket fences all over the place. There’s little chunks of picket fences. Boom, boom, boom, boom. All the way along here. And it took me a while to figure out. It’s like ah all of this is tracing the outline of the fortress wall. So this is where the fortress outer edge of the fortress would have been going in a curve around the hill and then that means the waters of the Melaka Strait would be right here. And I find that’s kind of key to understanding Melaka when you’re just a casual tourist checking the place out. So right here we are on the outside of the fortress walls and these buildings in the hill would have been on the inside of the fortress. So, we walk along here, this little picket fence, and they’ve excavated the foundations of the wall, and you can actually see the line, you know, that the pattern that they follow right through here. And then there’s another chunk. Like I said, these little little bits of picket fencing kind of confused me. It’s like, okay, what the heck is this all about? And then you realize like, ah, this is the remnants of the fortress wall going from here over to here. You see what I mean? Each little piece is like just a tiny little chunk right here. They put a fence around it like this for some reason. And I guess that’s marking the outer edges of the fortress wall. And then another chunk here. And then eventually it’s getting over to a much much bigger area. And I guess this was another bastion, the Mauritius Bastion. There is a sign over there talking about the bastion saying that it was triangular in shape and there were hospitals out here as well. So yeah, I’m planting a Planet Doug invisible sign. Just trying to make it really really clear to people what the significance of this is and the fact that this is marking the outer edge of the fortress as it curves around the base of Melaka Hill and that the Melaka Strait was right here. This would have been the shoreline back then.
I’ve made my way all the way around to the other side of Bukit Melaka. You can see it up there. St. Paul’s Church up there. We’ll be walking up there in a few minutes. And here in this area, I definitely put up a whole bunch of Planet Doug invisible signs. That’s what I’m going to do right now. And I’m going to start with a sign that just talks about the name of this place because the name of this place has been such a pet peeve of mine and such a confusing thing. And the confusion stems from all of the tourism blurbs, all of the brochures, all of the signs, even Google Maps calls this A Famosa. So when I showed up as a casual visitor and I like, oh, I’m going to go look at A Famosa. But then calling this that leads into all kinds of confusion because this is not A Famosa. So I’m going to plant a Planet Doug invisible sign right here next to the official signs explaining the name of this place and where all the confusion comes from. And I will leave it to the experts, to the historians to get all of the details, all of the facts, all of the years, everything like that completely straight. But the basic idea for me is that A Famosa historically it refers to the tower that the Portuguese built on the other side of the hill. I already talked about that earlier when I was talking about the Portuguese. They tore down the grand mosque of the Melaka Sultanate and a lot of that material that went into the construction of the mosque. They used it to build a fortress like a defensive tower. That five-story tower the Portuguese called A Famosa kind of like the famous one. So that is A Famosa not this. I think historically like as the decades as the centuries went by I think that name A Famosa started to be applied to the whole fortress maybe but I still don’t like that because I like to keep it nice and clear in my head. The tower that was A Famosa. The fortress, I think the Portuguese just called it Fortaleza Melaka, you know, they just called it the fortress. So, a purist like me would say, well, this is not A Famosa. That’s wrong. Stop calling it A Famosa. You’re confusing everyone. But if it isn’t A Famosa, then what is it? Well, it is a gate into the fortress and it was called Porta de Santiago. So that would be technically a more accurate name. This is the gate of Santiago. The Porta de Santiago. But even that needs some nuance because the Porta de Santiago technically that was the gate that the Portuguese built. But when the Dutch took over Melaka, again, depending on which historical records you read, the ones that I was reading says that the Dutch tore down the Portuguese gate and built a brand new one. So, in fact, this isn’t even the Porta de Santiago. This is a brand new gate built by the Dutch after they defeated the Portuguese and they had their own names for it. I think that, you know, the Dutch, I always think of them as very simple people. They’re my people. They don’t get very fancy. And you could just call it, I think they just called it Landpoort, the land gate. And I think at one time they also called it like Bort’s gate after the Dutch governor Bort. That was his name. So technically this well definitely it’s not A Famosa but it’s not even Porta de Santiago it the real name of it would be Land Gate or Bort’s Gate but the Dutch gate was built on the exact same site as the Portuguese gate. So, I mean, if you want to be romantic about the history, yeah, you can stick with calling this the Porta de Santiago, the original gate built by the Portuguese. Though, you have to acknowledge that that gate was torn down and then rebuilt by the Dutch, so it’s actually a brand new gate, but it is definitely not A Famosa and never had anything to do with that name.
One thing I really like about this gate, which is like the last remaining original still standing part of the fortress, is you do get a sense of how tall the walls are. And this is important because I shot a whole video about this earlier, the Middelburg Bastion, you know, that recreation of the bastion over by Dutch Square. That always bothered me because the walls seemed too low. Like a man in good physical condition could probably run at the wall, jump, and then hop up onto it because it’s not it doesn’t really look as formidable as a fortress wall as all of the historical descriptions. I mean, if a man can jump up, grab the bottom of the wall, and then climb over it, well, it’s not much of a military defense. So when you come here to this gate, yeah, you’re not jumping up there. Like if there’s somebody up there aiming a gun down at you, well, they have the they have the advantage of high ground. Nobody is jumping up to the top of there and getting over this fortress wall. So I find that this gate is a much better example of what an attacker would be facing when they came to attack Melaka and they had to get through something of this height. It really gets across the more formidable aspect of the original fortress.
I was talking about this with someone in the YouTube comments and we were chatting about this confusion around the name A Famosa and I was wondering like well who started it who who caused all this trouble calling this gate A Famosa and then everybody started repeating it and then his suggestion and I think he’s absolutely right is that the confusion started with this official plaque that is on the gate itself and the wording in the layout leads you to believe that it’s called Famosa but it’s actually just a trick of the layout. So when you read the sentence in natural English it says the only remaining part of the ancient fortress of Melaka built by Afonso de Albuquerque and by him named Famosa. Right? But what is Famosa referring to in this sentence? And if you read it in proper English, Famosa is referring to the fortress, the ancient fortress of Melaka named by him Famosa. So the fortress, this plaque is saying the fortress is called Famosa, but they put the word Famosa in the middle of the plaque all by itself. So, you know, a normal person looking at that would just assume, oh, this is Famosa. But if you read the sentence carefully in English, it doesn’t say that. It says that this is a part of a fortress that was called Famosa. This gate was never called Famosa. And I think this plaque is the one that started all the trouble.
Of course, that isn’t the only invisible Planet Doug sign that I’m putting up here today. I would also put up a sign giving the true story of Stamford Raffles, William Farquhar, and the destruction of the fortress as a whole. And they do have their own signs here. There’s a tourism sign, and this paragraph tells the story. But I need the Planet Doug sign beside it, a much bigger sign with a lot more detail and hopefully one that tells the real story of what happened. I shot a whole video about this, so you can watch that video to get the full story, at least as far as I understood it. But the basic idea is that these signs offer up a simplified version. And when you read the sign, you get the impression that William Farquhar, the British resident of Melaka, was blowing up the fortress. The British were blowing it up. And then Sir Stamford Raffles intervened and stopped the destruction just in time to save this one gate. And that’s the story that every tourist is told. But then I did my own reading and I found out that the real story is much more interesting than that, much more nuanced in the sense that starting with William Farquhar, he was the resident of the British resident of Melaka at that time, he was overseeing the destruction of the fortress, but he was doing it under orders. He had no choice about it. It was the East India Company, not the British, that were destroying the fortress. And William Farquhar, he protested. He did not want to do it. Local people were against all this destruction and they put together petitions to the East India Company. William Farquhar collected those petitions, added his own letter in support of them detailing why they shouldn’t do this demolition. So he fought against it. He was not he was not the bad guy blowing up the fortress. He just happened to be the guy ordered to oversee it and he resisted the orders as much as he could. But in the end the East India Company decided no, the fortress walls have to go. And then the intervention by Sir Stamford Raffles has a much more interesting story because it implies that he was Sir Stamford Raffles, a figure of authority who showed up at the last minute like a Hollywood hero and stopped the destruction. But the real story is that at that time he was a 26-year-old junior secretary of the East India Company in Penang. He was very ill and he came to Melaka on sick leave to rest and recover. And while he was here, he met William Farquhar and the two of them discussed what was going on and how, you know, dismantling Melaka and the fortress was a bad idea. And then Raffles put together a report, a memorandum. He typed up a report, a very good report, and then he submitted it to his superiors. They went up the chain of command. Lord Minto read the report at the urging of Stamford Raffles’s friend Dr. John Leyden. And then Lord Minto agreed with his conclusions that the East India Company plan to demolish Melaka, not just the fort but all the government buildings and let the river silt up and like basically abandon Melaka and force the population to move to Penang. This was a bad idea and it wasn’t going to work anyway. And then because of that report, Lord Minto ordered the destruction to stop. So, that’s a thumbnail sketch of what really happened. And it’s a really fascinating story. And the Planet Doug invisible sign that I’m putting up today tells that story in detail. And I’ll leave it up to the experts, the historians to put their heads together and write out that story in a clear, relatively short manner. And then tourists who come here will get the real story rather than the simplified somewhat misleading story.
Right next to the last remaining gate of the fortress that I was just talking about, you find this model, this replica of the Sultanate Palace Museum, the Istana. And it is a museum. You can buy a ticket, go inside and and they have tell a lot of stories, have a lot of exhibits in there. And I’m definitely putting a Planet Doug invisible sign right here to better explain what this building is and its significance to visiting tourists. A lot of these sorts of places in Melaka do have a sign like there is one right here I believe which talks about the Melaka Malay Sultanate Museum right there. But I find a lot of these signs for some reason they’re obsessed with the history of the building of the museum. So somebody formed this committee and they they established a southern subcommittee of instruction and this committee did this and submit how much money was spent and it was actually about all the organizational levels of government and committees that went into funding building and designing this place. And you can read all of that. It’s kind of hard to read because the text is just one giant formatted block. It’s really hard to read. But after you read that, you still don’t know what you’re looking at, why you should care about this place. So, Planet Doug invisible sign right there, a lot of information. One key point, of course, is that this palace of the Sultan originally, it was not located here at all. Of course not. It was located on the other side of the hill. Though. In fact, there’s a huge debate about where it was located. I just found a blog post this morning, a very long, very detailed, heavily annotated report discussing all the different theories about the palace, what it really looked like back in the days of the Melaka Sultanate, and where exactly was it located on the hill. Some people argue it was actually on the very top of the hill. Some argue for this side of the hill, that side of the hill. And the author of that blog post, he came up with his conclusion based on the location of certain wells, maps made by the Portuguese historical records in Malay literature. And then he drew a map where he thinks exactly where the royal compound was situated. But anyway, that’s an important thing to realize is that this is a model, a replica of the Sultanate Palace as described mainly in Malaysian literature. This entire building made out of wood was burnt to the ground by the Portuguese. So nothing was left of it, but its original location was not here. It was on the other side of the hill, near the Grand Mosque, near the bridge, sort of on that side of the hill. So I would have all of that kind of information on the Planet Doug tourist oriented sign.
I’m up at the top of the hill walking along the outside of St. Paul’s Church. I guess I’ll just aim the GoPro on the inside for just a minute to remind you of where I am. Or maybe you’ve never seen this before. So, just to show you what the interior looks like with the well-known tombstones all lined up against the wall.
So, there is a lot a lot a lot a lot going on up here. So, I’m putting up my Planet Doug invisible signs all over the place. I’m putting them everywhere. Simple ones, big complicated ones, everywhere where I can find space because there’s so much up here that yeah, you could talk about.
A very simple Planet Doug invisible sign. It’s going right over here because that is a statue of St. Francis Xavier. And I must admit that when I came to Melaka originally, I saw his name dotted around here and there, there was a church with his name on it. And I figured out that that’s a statue of him. And I’m like, okay. And then I saw there was a the stone there’s some kind of a stone preserved in a park related to him, but I didn’t know exactly anything about him. Like I’d been a long time since I’d read about him. I didn’t know anything about his connection to Melaka. I didn’t even know there was one. So, I just basically went through months without ever thinking about him. And then finally, I put all the pieces together and realized just how important St. Francis Xavier is to Melaka and that he was based here. His missionary work to Japan and China was starting and ending here. So yeah, I mean he was a very important part of Melaka history and that is a statue of St. Francis himself, but even on the statue you don’t see his name anywhere. So, of course, a Planet Doug invisible sign going right here at the very least telling you who this is. And then hopefully, if there’s room up here, another sign giving his entire life history as a founder of the Jesuits and then his history here in Melaka and his role, his connection with this church on the hill. Again, I’ll leave all the details up to the historians, the experts to get all of that straight. But I’m putting my Planet Doug invisible sign right here headlined St. Francis Xavier and Melaka and then I’ll let the historians of the future actually write the contents of the sign and put all that information here. But yeah, it’s a story that needs to be on display up here. I think most people visit this spot, take a couple of selfies, and they leave. And a lot of them, they see that statue, they may not even know who that is. There’s no sign on it. So, how could they know unless they do their own research?
Another big Planet Doug invisible sign. I’m planting it right here. And I want that sign to tell the entire history of the chapels and the churches on this hill. And I would I’m going to need a lot of help from the expert historians because read as I might take notes as I do, as much memorizing as I might attempt, I can’t keep the names straight. I’ve had nightmares about the various names involved in the history of this hill and the chapels and the churches. So, the historians, they’re the ones going to have to get it all straight for me. But the basic idea is that originally there was a small chapel built on this hill and the chapel was built by a Portuguese nobleman, a sea captain I believe named Duarte Coelho. And the crazy thing here, this is like drives me crazy. Every story in Melaka has two or three different versions. And there was one version I read everywhere. Every website I visited, every blog post, every YouTube video told me the same story. And I repeated that story in my videos that this Portuguese sea captain was in his ship returning from China, I believe, and he ran into a storm, terrible storm. But then he survived. His ship didn’t sink and he made it back to Melaka safely. And then to give thanks for being saved, he built a chapel here on the hill to give thanks. And it was dedicated to the mother of God to Mary, mother of God. And there’s different names I’ve seen for that original chapel. I’ll let the historians sort that out. But that’s the story I heard everywhere. I even put that story, I think, in a YouTube comment and someone replied to that comment and said, “No, that is not the real story.” If you look at the primary historical documents, the true story is that Duarte Coelho, this Portuguese sea captain, he his ship was being blockaded by a fleet from the Ming dynasty. There was a very famous battle that that happened in this time period and I guess he was caught up in this battle and a bunch of Portuguese ships were stuck in a harbor blockaded by the Ming dynasty fleet. They were trapped. They were in trouble. And then a big Oh, the story goes even further that it happened to be like the Saint day of Mary. And then the story goes as told in these historical documents that Duarte Coelho encouraged all the crew on his ship to pray to Mary for salvation on her name day and then a storm appeared like a typhoon, a terrible storm and it caused the Chinese fleet to be scattered and the winds were favorable to the Portuguese. And then Duarte took advantage of the storm, of the chaos and the confusion, the favorable winds and they escaped. That appears to be the real story. But you see how opposite that is. The story I heard everywhere on in all the tourist websites was he nearly died in a storm and then built a chapel to honor Mary. But the in reality the storm saved him. So, the true story was the exact opposite of what I’ve been reading everywhere. And it took me months to figure that out. So, the Planet Doug invisible sign right here is at least telling that story.
And then somewhere perhaps on the inside, discreetly, not being too gaudy, I’m going to plant another Planet Doug invisible sign. I guess maybe it can be moved to the outside so it doesn’t disturb the atmosphere in here. But this sign will give basically the evolution of this church from its beginnings as that small chapel founded by Duarte Coelho. And then over the decades over the centuries that small chapel kind of they it was expanded in size in different time periods. Renamed here and there and then over time in the same spot though. I mean the chapel was here but then eventually of course the chapel the original small humble chapel was gone torn down and then they built this much larger laterite stone structure that you see today. And then it has a long history going through, of course, the Portuguese era, the Dutch era, and the British. And all of that story is fascinating. And I’m not going to go over it today in this video. I’m just telling you it is a fascinating story. And it’s all on the Planet Doug invisible sign out there. And then someday the historians will pull it all together in a very clear, understandable way. Just lay out the chronology. Basically the chronology of St. Paul’s Church from its very beginning as a humble chapel to this huge laterite structure without a roof that you see before me today.
And of course in that sign or a completely different sign the history of these tombstones which I find very fascinating. Though, as I pointed out in my video about the tombstones, there is a sign out here, but a lot of people miss it because it’s on the backside. People don’t see it sometimes. There is a lot of amazing information here about the tombstones. So, that has kind of been covered. Something I noticed is that there is a sign here. It might have a lot of history about the church, but the whole thing is in Malay. There’s no English translation that I’ve been able to find. And I can see there are things in here talking about the original name, you know, Our Lady of the Hill. I remember that. I don’t know what this means. The hill of the animal. I never came across that. You know, it’s talking about the name St. Paul. You know, where it came from. The Jesuit college. College of the Jesuits, I think, was called St. Paul. So, it looks like it goes through a lot of the history of the church and the various names that were used, but it’s all in Malay. There’s nothing in English.
And there is one more Planet Doug invisible sign that I’m going to put up here for now. And that sign would be all about what was going on on this hill before the Portuguese during the time of the Melaka Sultanate. And this idea is courtesy of a Planet Doug viewer because I posted a video talking all about the tombstones inside the church. I did a deep dive into the names of all the people that are buried here underneath the church floor and they are all Dutch, Portuguese, perhaps a scattering of British. And a viewer of that video noted that well, if you’re talking about the history of this hill, you can’t overlook the fact that before the Portuguese, this was the site of the royal complex of the Melaka Sultanate. So, as I’ve been talking about, there was the Grand Mosque down near the bridge in Dutch Square. You’ve got the Sultanate Palace, which was located somewhere on the hillside or even all the way up here on the very top of the hill. And as part of the royal complex, you had grave sites up here. So there were royal grave sites and tombs from the Melaka Sultanate from the royal family all over this hill. Though the precise details about that again I’m going to have to leave that to the historians. I’m putting up the invisible Planet Doug sign right now and I’ll let the historians track down all the dates, figures, exact locations, the names, because I remember coming across the name of this grave site for the royal tombs, but I can’t think of it right now. But that could have been located right here at the very top of the hill. And based on what I read, I think it was. So, as you think about perhaps the Portuguese and the Dutch who are buried underneath the church floor here, you should also recognize that buried alongside them, buried here on the hillside are also the royal tombs of the Melaka Sultanate. Predating any of the Yeah. Any of the Dutch or Portuguese that were buried here. And there were, I believe, stone tombstones out here, but again, those are all torn down by the Portuguese and used in their other constructions. So, one more sign that Planet Doug is putting up here. All dedicated to the history of this hill and this site, but as a site of the Melaka Sultanate, like the royal complex and in particular the royal tombs that were also up here.
Just leaving from St. Paul’s Hill, coming to the end of my video for today. And yeah, I mean I could just keep going and going, but a lot of the remaining Planet Doug invisible signs I would plant are actually pretty much the obvious ones. Like this white building up there. On my first visit up here, I had no idea what it was. As far as I’m aware, there isn’t a single sign up here telling you. So, you actually have to do your research afterwards, but the Planet Doug sign would tell you that that is a British-built lighthouse. And as for all the rest of the details, the history, what year it was built, exactly its significance, I’m leaving all that to the historians. I’m putting my invisible sign there for now, just telling you that actually is a British lighthouse. And then the historians will have to fill in all the details later. And from that perspective, there’s actually a ton more Planet Doug signs I could drop all around the city because a lot of things have just gone unsignposted. And my theory is that whoever organized these places, they weren’t thinking about foreign visitors like me. They were they basically had Malaysian visitors in mind. And of course, Malaysians know their own history. They don’t need to be told the obvious. So, a lot of the things that are on display, museum exhibits, giant murals, things like that, they just go unexplained. They’re there as an illustration of something that all Malaysians already know. They learn about it in school. They learn about it growing up, so they don’t need to be told. But a dumb, dumb foreigner like me, yeah, we don’t know these things. I didn’t know that was a lighthouse. I didn’t know that was a St. Francis Xavier. I didn’t know that the Melaka Sultanate royal compound was spread all the way up this hill to the very top and that there was a royal tomb like grave site up there as well. Yeah, I didn’t know these things. I need signs telling me these things.
I’m walking along the Melaka River once again, which I do all the time, on a different day, and it occurs to me how many more Planet Doug invisible signs I could put down alongside the river. And one of one of Planet Doug’s invisible signs would be dedicated to the monitor lizards. I’m just fascinated by these creatures and you see them all up and down the river if you’re keeping an eye out for them. And if you really want to see them, this is where you come right beside the Swiss Garden Hotel complex right here just before Kampung Morten is up there. And on this walkway, there’s all these like mangrove root structures here. And just now as I walk through there, I counted seven big ones, like the 5ft, 6ft long ones. There’s seven of them all swimming around, hanging out right in there. And if you walk up and down the river, of course, you’ll see these monitor lizards, different sizes all over the place. And I just love to know more about them. And there could easily be a tourist sign talking about the lizards, their habitat, their yeah, just all the biological information about them, the population of monitor lizards all up and down the Melaka River, just stuff like that. So again, now I’d be calling on the biologists and naturalists of Melaka to put their heads together and take that Planet Doug invisible sign and fill it up with fascinating information about Melaka’s monitor lizards.
Another Planet Doug invisible sign. I’ll plant it right here. Could be anywhere along the river. But again, just talking about the natural habitat of the river and its history, like from a human point of view, because my understanding is that in the not too distant past, the river was in really bad shape and then there was a major reclamation project. All of this work controlling the water flow with sluices and dams and yeah, they just basically transformed the river and it’s much much healthier today with a fish population, monitor lizards, even river otter, things like that. So basically a sign just talking about the river as a natural habitat, the various fish and animals that live in this river and about the massive reclamation project. I remember reading about it, but I don’t have all the facts and figures what years it took place. One day here, I rode my bicycle all the way up the river as far as I could go following this entire project where they reclaimed the river and developed it. And it’s a massive project and I think they spent a lot of money on it. So, a sign right here, Planet Doug invisible sign, will tell you all about that.
An absolute no-brainer for a Planet Doug invisible sign or basically invisible signs plural would be one sign at every single one of the bridges. I mean, every tourist that goes by here will stop, wonder about this bridge, take a picture of it, take a selfie with it, and read the sign, Jambatan Old Bus Station, which means in a mix of Malay and English, old bus station bridge. So, yeah, you you instantly wonder, okay, that that must mean something. What where was this bus station and what happened to it? Is it still here today? So, every single bridge needs a sign giving you the history of the bridge where the name came from. And as far as I know, every bridge here does come with a fascinating story. And I think you hear some of them when you take one of the river cruises like on the boat on one of the journeys like in one direction either going up river or down river. They tell you the history of some of these bridges and yeah there should be a sign at every bridge breaking it down for us poor visitors who just stand here and look at it and then we wonder and then we have to go back to our hotels and look it up on the internet. But yeah, a sign here would be very cool just telling you all about the Jambatan Old Bus Station.
In a more light-hearted vein, I could put a Planet Doug invisible sign right here next to this building. Though I don’t think the building is going to be here much longer. It is marked as condemned. It’s right beside the Jambatan Pasar, the market bridge. And this Planet Doug sign would tell you that scenes from the movie Entrapment with Sean Connery was filmed here. I found out about that only recently. A Planet Doug viewer offered that information up in a YouTube comment where I was walking around this area shooting a video and then he said, “Yeah, did you know that there was a scene from that movie with Sean Connery?” And I think he was having a meal or drinks with Ving Rhames, the actor, and they were sitting in maybe in one of these little cafes. And they shot a scene for the movie Entrapment.
Another Planet Doug invisible sign perhaps could go right here because I’m standing right beside an old warehouse building. I’m guessing here, but I think they were called or are called godown. Godown something like that. A warehouse and they were central to the lifeblood of Melaka. You know, the river ships coming here unloading their goods directly into these huge warehouses that were, you know, alongside the river. And I don’t know if there’s a great story to be told there, but every time I walk by this one in particular, I notice it and I wonder about it. You know, look, you can see the giant door right there that would open for goods to flow in and out. So, the history of these riverside warehouses would be very interesting for a Planet Doug sign.
I’m definitely planting a Planet Doug invisible sign right here telling the history of the Jambatan Kampung Jawa, the Kampung Jawa Bridge. And I think this sign is important because I’ve read the story that during the Japanese occupation they had kind of a reign of terror going on all across Malaysia and they held public executions to instill fear in the local population and suppress rebellion and things like that. And there is this story I’ve read many times that the Japanese would take severed heads of the people they’ve executed and hang them from this bridge and from the Jambatan Pasar up the river. So there were severed heads suspended from this bridge by the Japanese to instill fear in the local population. And I think if you take the river cruise boat, they the recorded tour guide that you get tells the story there. And it kind of astonishes me to be honest that the story of the Japanese occupation is not more widespread. It’s not told. There is a gallery in the history and ethnography museum about the Japanese occupation, but I walked through it and I read everything and it was more of a dry summary of like administrative procedures, things like that. Like the true story of what it meant for the local people didn’t seem to be told there. So there definitely needs to be a sign here telling the truth. The real history of this bridge and the suspension of severed heads. I believe local people even started calling this the ghost bridge because there were stories of the ghosts of these people that were executed haunting the area near this bridge. But again, we need a sign to tell the story, the popular story, and then dig down into the reality. And one thing I wondered instantly when I first heard that story was, are there any photographs of this? And I did a little bit of digging into that. It’s like, oh, are there any photographs of the heads suspended from this bridge? And there aren’t any, as far as I’m aware. And then the explanation is that well the Japanese heavily censored and controlled anything to do with information. They confiscated cameras tightly controlled anything to do with printing photo development. So the local people they couldn’t nobody could take a picture of what the Japanese were doing and then bring it down to their local photo shop and have them print out copies, right? That that was completely impossible at the time. So little things like that, little like did you know moments could fill out the Planet Doug sign for this bridge in particular.
I am definitely putting up a big Planet Doug invisible sign somewhere in Melaka, maybe somewhere in Dutch Square to make it as visible as possible. And this sign will be all about Zheng He or Cheng Ho. And of course he gets his own museum. He has an entire museum dedicated to him. So, you might think, well, he doesn’t need his own sign. But I think he does because most foreigners walking by this museum wouldn’t even know why they should go in there. Like, they don’t know who that is. We’ve never heard of him. I certainly had not heard of him until I started doing reading about the history of Melaka. And he’s such an important figure, so key to the history of Melaka. It’d be nice to have a big sign somewhere, many signs maybe, people can read about him, find out why he’s so significant, and then when they see that museum, it’s like, “Ah, that’s the guy I read about on the Big Planet Doug sign. I should go into that museum and learn more about him.”
And if you’ve been watching videos on Planet Doug, you know that I would absolutely put a giant Planet Doug invisible sign, which I’m doing today. I’m putting the Planet Doug invisible sign right here at the base of Heeren Street or Heerenstraat. And the idea here is I think most visitors know it’s important. They walk up and down the street and they see the front of these amazing historic homes and that’s what they see. But the real history of these homes, you don’t see it directly from the front. You have to get up above them and look down like a satellite view. And then you realize that these are, as I called them, long narrow tunnel houses with all kinds of unusual architectural details such as the air wells and the open courtyards and the wells on the inside. Anyway, this street known by many of course as Millionaire’s Row, that little factoid would be on the Planet Doug sign. But this street has an incredible history about the architecture, the design, the history, the evolution from its origins as a series of shophouses of homes built by the Dutch and then purchased by the Peranakan and all that kind of thing. Anyway, there’s like a thousand interesting factoids about Heerenstraat, the history and the design of these homes, and there needs to be a big sign right here to lay that out for people. They would have a much much better understanding of what they’re looking at, assuming they take the time to stop and read the Planet Doug sign.
And I’m going to plant one more Planet Doug invisible sign right here. And can you guess why? If you look in this direction, do you know what my sign is going to be all about? Look behind me in this direction. Look up. Well, it’s because I believe and I was just told the other day that these are actually Melaka trees. And I made a big deal a while back in a Planet Doug video about the story of the founding of Melaka. Parameswara sitting under a Melaka tree and he sees a mouse deer kick his hunting dog into the river and he takes that as an omen to found the city of Melaka right here because this small mouse deer overpowered a powerful hunting dog and he took that as an omen. And ever since then, I’ve been wandering around Melaka wondering, is this a Melaka tree? Is this a Melaka tree? And Planet Doug viewers keep telling me where I can find them, but I keep forgetting to follow their instructions. But just the other day, someone was talking to me. I was actually on the street over there, kind of in the market area, and then he says, “Hey, do you know you’re really really close to some Melaka trees? Do you know where they are?” And then he said they were right down here. So I’m assuming this is a Melaka tree. You can tell by the distinctive leaves and I guess from the bark. This is what a Melaka tree looks like. Assuming my informant was telling me the truth. So right here, Planet Doug invisible sign identifying these as actual Melaka trees telling visitors that this is where the name of the city comes from from these trees. And of course, the sign would tell the story of Parameswara, the mouse deer and his hunting dog.
So unless something else jumps out at me, I think that is it for today. That is it. Going to head back to my hostel, get out of the sun. Had a really nice day today, by the way. Heavy heavy rains last night and but that cleared out the sky like of all that haze that we’ve had lately. So, we’ve actually had some pretty nice blue skies today thanks to that rainstorm and the temperature came down quite a bit. So, it’s been a very very nice day. So, one last look around the city of Melaka.
Dutch Square down in this direction. Shout out to the Crunch Club if you made it this far all the way to the end of the video. Love you guys. Shout out to the members of the Planet Doug Patreon. Appreciate you guys very very much. My supporters through the buy me a coffee platform. Yeah, QR codes to all of those as well as the Malaysian Touch ‘n Go e-wallet are right there on the screen in case you want to support Planet Doug Video Productions. Yeah, links also in the video description, of course. So, that’s it. Shutting down for now. Hope you enjoyed that little tour and I’ll see you in the next video.