Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Malacca & Me


NO WONDER Malaysia's Tourism income top the list among ASEAN nation since the country is politically stable and the government take care on their heritage. Second time I visited Malacca on last Friday without plan. First we intended to go JB for shopping and ended up going to Malaysia's world's heritage city. One of my friend's brother accompany us and we all made our group three together with my wife. I got a chance to visit Malacca about 4 years ago while I was working in KL, Malaysia. One of my colleague is Malacca resident and he invited us to come visit his home-town city. That time he arranged everything for us and we had no problem with touring the old city through our Malay Chinese Engineer friend.

One year later, I moved to Singapore to work in 2008 and I without planning get back the Malacca this CNY holiday. My wife and our friend is first time visitor and I am suppose to lead the trip and I braved myself to fulfill their expectation. Since the trip was unplanned, we encountered several uncomfortable experience from transportation to accommodation. Fortunately we could avoid the risk of seeing snatch thief or robbery. However we took extra care as Malaysia has reputation for its safety to all visitors.

Within 5 years, Malacca has changed a lot and whole city is covered with a lot of Hotels, Malls, Office towers, Residential buildings, etc. The day I visited last time was much look like a rural city that is quiet and now Malacca has become a big city that can boast new sky line and infrastructure. I thought it'ld be easy to go around as I have been there. In fact, I was wrong as there has been a lot new buildings in the down town area and tourist attraction area. We spent 1 day and 1 night in Malacca without having a room to rest. The town was full of tourist and all hotels and inns are fully booked. Also the bus ticket are sold out for the whole week. We luckily got bus return ticket from a staff who kind to us due to our continuous troubles.

I enjoyed new facilities such as river cruise tour along the Malacca river during night time. There are beautiful buildings and park on the bank along the canal. The colorful pedestrian bridges that cross the river are so nice under lighting. People on and off boats are shouting at each other and water are splashing at passengers. It cost us RM10 per head and I found it money worthy as the cruising time was about 1 hour up and down. Other than that, there is another addition with a 80m height tower for panorama view of town. I wanted to ride it but failed because my wife and friend not dare to ride it. I missed the chance to ride. But we enjoyed the shopping in the big malls. The price are relatively cheap compare to island state malls prices. So we purchased several items that we think is useful and expensive in Singapore.

Since the visa is granted for 1 year multi-entry basis, hope we can go somewhere else sooner or later.

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