Malacca & Kuala Lumpur

Over the weekend we braved crossing the Singapore/Johor Strait into Malaysia again.  Last time we did this we got stuck in traffic for 4 hours over the Second Link bridge in-between the two immigration stations, so we had been traumatized from that experience.  This time, we picked a non-holiday weekend and left home at 6am.  We cleared both sides in no time, and the total drive time from our home to the historic town of Malacca took about 3 hours, as advertised by Google.


Malacca / Melaka

Both spellings are officially correct.  Malay is written with the basic Latin alphabet, like English, and Melaka is the way it is written in Malay.  The origin of the name Malacca is fanciful and includes a story about a mouse deer.  It has nothing to do with Greek, though... Malacca can refer to a Malay Sultanate dynasty which ruled the region, the current county/state in Malaysia, or our subject matter, its capital city.  It sits on the narrowest point in the Straits of Malacca - which is why it was historically significant.  It lost this significance due to a self-ransacking, and the rise of Singapore & Kuala Lumpur.

The town is quaint and has an interesting mix of architecture styles as it was ruled by the Malay, Portuguese, Dutch and British empires over the years.  The A Famosa fort, which was completely destroyed by the Brits when they left it in early 1800's (if we can't have it, no one will!), is the center of the historical district.  There are old dutch churches and state houses that now house several museums, and a little park.  There is some antiquing in the Jonker street quarter, and lots of restaurants selling Chicken Rice Balls.  I don't get the source of the excitement about this local cuisine, but basically it's rice cooked in chicken broth and mushed into two-bite-sized balls.  You get ~8 per person and a cut-up boiled chicken to share.  That was lunch.


After a brief walking tour of both these areas, and lunch, we drove off to Kuala Lumpur - another hour or so.  Driving in Malaysia is mostly comfortable, but drivers are very aggressive.  Speeding on the highway seems to be a national pastime and in the cities, if you're not aggressive yourself, you may get stuck at some turns for a very long time.


Kuala Lumpur


Entering the Malay capital we noted the urban sprawl and we passed through some nice-looking developments on a hilly terrain.  We followed our GPS through a criss-crossing, meandering and very confusing set of highways that loop around the city and its main business district - the City Centre.  Some parts felt like a roller coaster (big elevation changes combined with nasty turns).  At some point both the KL Tower and the KLCC/Petronas Towers became visible and dominated the skyline and our attention.  Traffic was bad on the main roads but opened up once we entered the smaller streets of the city centre.  We checked in to our hotel for 1 night just as it started to rain.


We chilled out waiting for the rain to stop, but it was getting late in the afternoon while still coming down hard, so we decided to drive the 500 meters to the convention centre, which houses an aquarium.  It was surprisingly nice.  The entrance has a small Piranha exhibit and we were sorry to have missed the feeding time.  There is also a small hands-on display where you can touch a small shark and a sea cucumber, and hold a horseshoe crab.  The rest is well-designed and houses all sorts of underwater and over-water creatures and was rated high as a plan B by our group.


The convention center has lots of eateries but we made our way by underground tunnels to the Suria shopping center and Madam Kwan's restaurant to sample some Malay cuisine.  By the time we finished the rain had let up and we walked around KLCC Park snapping photos.  We had an idea to drive around town for a bit, but after being stuck in traffic for 20 minutes and getting nowhere we decided to head back to the hotel and call it an evening.

The traffic had not let up by morning, and our trip to Merdeka Square was hampered by some army celebration that closed the area down to motorists.  On the way over we saw 7 paratroopers making their way down into the scene.  We ended up parking in Chinatown, did some knockoff shopping and wandered about.  We made our way by foot to Merdeka Square eventually, but the sun was beating down hard on the open space and we were squinting about the commotion of the army's event.  By this point we were all drenched and exhausted (Elizabeth had a bad morning as well), so we decided to call it quits.


Kuala Lumpur seems very interesting.  I need to figure out a better way or time to get about, as we are sure to return to see and eat some more of it.  Other than the immigration checkpoint (getting back was just as easy this time), the trip time/distance is about the same as NY-Boston.