These cafes are often packed full with queues of people waiting outside for a sweet pudding fix. They sell a range of desserts including snow ice or shaved ice in many flavours, paste desserts, cold soy beancurd, ice cream dishes, cold cake and fruit desserts. There is something (sweet) to please everyone, and prices are reasonable, from around SGD3 to SGD7.

Sawdust Cake at Ji De Chi (tastes much nicer than it sounds!)

Lucky Dessert is at Vivocity (and probably other malls too) and Ji De Chi has branches at Jurong Point, Dhoby Ghaut and Bugis.

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The museum features permanent and temporary exhibitions of modern Asian art, and although I enjoyed the museum’s interesting exhibits, of various types of visual art, I felt that it was smaller than I expected. If you’re really into contemporary art you should visit Singapore Art Museum, but if you’re just a casual visitor, Singapore’s other museums (the National Museum, Asian Civilisations Museum, etc.) have more to offer.

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As you can see, it is easily the tallest structure around, and the views were spectacular. Here is a selection of photos I took.

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Satay celup, or “dipping satay” is a Malacca speciality

1. Riverine Coffeehouse

This always seemed to be open while we were in Malacca (other places were randomly closed on some evenings). They serve up scrumptious Nyonya Cuisine, the traditional food of the Peranakan Baba Nyonya culture. We had a large pot of Ayam Masak O’, a chicken stew, with rice. One large portion was plenty for the two of us to share.

Price: We spent total MYR 28.50 including soft drinks.

Address: No 108, Lorong Hang Jebat,75200 Malacca

2. Big Bowl The City of Ice

We stumbled across this place by accident while walking back to our hotel, and it provided welcome relief from the hot weather. More than a hundred flavours of shaved ice and snow ice dishes are served at this café. The menu (shown below) offers a plethora of choices and left us wanting to come back to sample more of these sweet delights.

Address: No 23 Lorong Bukit China, Kawasan Bandar 24, 75100 Melaka

3. Famosa Chicken Rice Ball

This is the most well known of the chicken rice ball restaurants. I hadn’t been particularly excited about trying Malacca’s signature dish as friends had told me it was just like chicken rice but in balls. So I was pleasantly surprised. The rice balls tasted different to rice cooked normally, slightly saltier, with more flavour, and the chicken was delicious.

Price: Half a roasted chicken and twenty rice balls, with two orange juices, set us back MYR 29.60.

4. Calanthe Art Café

We came upon this colourful restaurant while looking for somewhere to have lunch. As well as serving up tasty main courses, they specialise in Malaysia 13 States’ Coffees. We ate yummy chicken curries and tried some coffee. Each state is represented by a different type of coffee and there are many choices of how to drink it.

Address: No 11 Jalan Hang Kasturi, 75200 Melaka

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Here are five that we found interesting:

1) Mesjid Kampung Hulu

The oldest functioning mosque in Malaysia, Mesjid Kampung Hulu was commissioned by the Dutch (who were keen to appease those who wished to practise Islam) in 1728. It has predominantly Javanese architecture, and we were surprised by how small it actually looks.

2) Kampung Kling Mosque

This mosque features a high tower, which was apparently inspired by the design of Hindu temples.

3) Christ Church

Part of the Stadhuys complex in the centre of the old town (a good focal point, and bus 17 from Melaka Sentral will drop you off here), this church features grave stones from 1800. While we were there a Chinese-language service was taking place, so we couldn’t walk around inside.

4) St Paul’s Church

This much older church sits on a hilltop over the town. Now in ruins, with no roof, it features graves from the 1600s, and spectacular views out to sea. The former tomb of St Francis Xavier is here (his body was moved to Goa, India).

Some unusual tourism – photo with a gravestone, anyone?

5) Cheng Hoon Teng Temple

This is Malaysia’s oldest traditional Chinese temple (dating from 1646). Its striking black and gold carved wood was totally different to the décor of other temples I have seen, which tend to be more colourful.

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Both sides of the street, which is actually called Jalan Hang Jebat, are lined with stalls selling everything from tasty dim sum and chocolate-dipped fruit to mobile phone covers and flip-flops. Browse your way down and eat on the way back up the street, or stop at one of the cafes that puts chairs and tables outside and enjoy the a bowl of noodles or icy cendol. Despite being crowded we found it was still possible to browse comfortably, so go there at dinner time and taste some of the street food.

Top marks for originality go to this stall!

The market is only open on Friday and Saturday nights; on other evenings it’s just a normal street, so plan your trip accordingly.

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We visited the Governor’s House Museum, the Sultan’s Palace Museum, the Independence Monument Museum, and Villa Sentosa Malay Living Museum.

We did not visit the History and Ethnography Museum, which is closed for renovation until February 2014. We also passed on the Democracy Museum, the Baba-Nyonya Museumm the Cheng Ho Cultural Museum and the Islam Museum.  As you can see there are so many to choose from!

Governor’s House Museum

The living room area

Having been previously used by Dutch and British governors, the house continued its role as a home for Malaysian governors after independence. It was actually in use as the governor’s house until 1996. We paid RM 5 each to enter the grounds and we had the museum to ourselves. A spacious white house on the hillside, the museum displays possessions of previous governors, with many gifts given to them by overseas dignitaries.

We saw the upstairs living room, with sofas, and a barrier to stop visitors entering. There is also an inspiration room where the governor would apparently engage in hobbies and recreational activities, and a dining room set up as if for a big dinner. Strangely, however, we were unable to find the bedroom. Usually a centrepiece in house-style museums, there was no room done up as the bedroom. Perhaps the governor wanted to take his bed with him.

Sultan’s Palace Museum

This museum, which costs RM 2 per person, is built in a replica Malay-style wooden palace and traces the history of the Melaka sultanate which lasted from the 1400s until the arrival of the Portuguese in 1511. The building is impressive and reminded me of the Minangkabau Museum in Bukittinggi, Sumatra, Indonesia, another museum in a replica traditional building. Apparently the Melaka Sultan’s Palace Museum was designed according to accounts in the Malay chronicles, and they don’t actually know what it looked like exactly.

The museum features models and pictures of other palaces around Malaysia, traditional costumes, and a bedroom area upstairs which was considered private – apparently even the Sultan’s wife had to ask permission to enter. There is also a lifesize diorama of the Sultan in session with his courtiers receiving guests from elsewhere. Models of traders from Java, China, Gujarat and Siam remind us that the Melaka Sultanate played an important role in international trade, before colonisation of the area.

Independence Monument Museum

At the Independence Monument Museum (free entry) we learnt about the struggle for Malaysian independence, and the development of the nation, presented in a to-be-expected nationalistic style. The displays contained so much detail that it was somewhat overwhelming. However, I didn’t know before visiting this museum that independence was actually announced in Malacca first, before being declared in Kuala Lumpur. We enjoyed watching an original film of the independence celebrations.

Villa Sentosa Malay Living Museum

The Malay Living Museum at Villa Sentosa (donation after the tour) was another kind of museum altogether. Located in a 1920s wooden Malay stilt-house, which is still inhabited, the aim of the museum is to preserve Malay heritage in a rapidly developing area. Kampung Sentosa is a whole neighbourhood of old-style Malay houses, outside the old city area of Malacca, with a backdrop of building sites and new blocks of condominiums. Many of the houses operate homestays, and if it wasn’t for the construction noise it would be a pleasant place to stay, right by the river.

Malay marriage chairs

The elderly owners and their relatives showed us around Villa Sentosa, where they display all sorts of objects collected by their family over the years. My husband and I were encouraged to try out the Malay marriage chairs, and another guest was shown how to hit a gong. They have china tea sets from England and Japan, and gifts from various important guests who’ve visited them. The décor is, for course, very much Malay style, with a great 1960s three-piece suite in the living room. We enjoyed looking round the house-cum-museum, but it did feel like nosing around someone’s home!

The kitchen at Villa Sentosa

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Originally we tried to book by telephone but we were told we had to book online at Hostelworld; the guesthouse does not take bookings directly. So we booked a double room with ensuite bathroom and air-conditioning for RM 40 per person per night.

A Room on the Roof

Our room (number 9) was on the top floor, next to the roof terrace, where I guess the name of the guesthouse comes from. It was spacious enough with a wardrobe and drawers, as well as a small desk and chair. The air conditioning was possibly the noisiest I have ever experienced, but fortunately the weather was cool enough to sleep without it. We had a nice bathroom with a hot shower and sit-down toilet, and a window that looked out directly on to the roof terrace. This meant that at times we could hear other guests talking and smoking outside our window, and on one night we were kept awake until 3am by some loud, drunk backpackers. This was a one-off, however, and it did not spoil our overall experience at Roof Top Guest House.

The roof terrace

That At-Home Feeling

What sets Roof Top Guest House and Hostel apart from other homestays, however, are the general facilities and atmosphere. It is set in a real house, with a large kitchen and dining area, a spacious living room with comfy sofas, DVD player and a bookswap. Guests are allowed to use the kitchen, and we really liked that there was free drinking water, tea, coffee and even fruit and cakes. Mani, who runs Roof Top, bakes cakes every day, but instead of running a timetabled breakfast system, the cakes and fruit are simply left out on the large dining table for guests to eat at their pleasure. We really enjoyed being able to get up whenever we wanted and know we could eat and drink.

The large living room was a great space for sitting around, and with free wifi throughout the guesthouse we were online all the time. Now, personally I would sometimes like to go on holiday and have no internet connection, to avoid the constant temptation to check email, but for most people, free wifi is a great bonus.

Up on the roof terrace, as well as being a smoking area with tables and chairs shrouded in greenery, there are clothes washing facilities, another plus-point.

The guesthouse felt very safe; there was a contactless card system for opening the front door, which meant that non-guests could not simply enter without ringing the doorbell and being let in. We found the atmosphere very friendly, with guests chatting to each other.

Overall I would totally recommend Roof Top Guest House and Hostel for anyone looking for relaxing budget accommodation in Malacca. We even extended our stay by a night because we liked it so much!

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Wanting an easy journey, we booked bus tickets online and took a Singapore–Malacca luxury bus. It called itself a massage coach, which sounded great…well actually it sounded a bit dodgy. It turned out to have massage chairs for seats, but we couldn’t make the massage function work. They were pretty comfy though, and the journey was very smooth.

Our Massage Coach

Crossing the border from Singapore to Malaysia was exciting for us, because we are so used to flying every time we travel internationally. From our previous home in Java, Indonesia, you can’t drive to another country.

Apparently the causeway between the two countries is over one kilometre long. We had to disembark on the Singapore side with our passports, and then we watched the sea on both sides as we sped across no man’s land before disembarking again on the Malaysia side, this time with our luggage as well.

No Man’s Land – the causeway between Singapore and Malaysia

Safely stamped into Malaysia, we were back on the bus, watching acres and acres of oil palm plantations whizz by. Malaysia has wonderfully smooth roads compared to Indonesia, and the journey only took four hours including stops.

We arrived at Malacca Sentral, the main bus terminal, and found a local bus (called a domestic bus in Malaysia, which is arranged in states, like the US). We took bus 17 to Stadhuys, known as Bangunan Merah (the Red Building), which is a central point in Malacca’s old city, for just RM 1.30 each. From there it was a short walk to our guesthouse, Roof Top Guesthouse and Hostel.

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We started at Uncle Ho’s River Hongbao at Marina Bay Float, where we saw enormous models of Chinese deities and other symbols. Then we moved on to Chinatown where stalls were set up along the side of the road selling all sorts of colourful decorations, food and flowers. The following day we visited Sentosa Flowers. Sculptures covered in flowers taught us some Chinese legends, with garden sections devoted to the four seasons and a giant sand snake sculpture on the beach.

Photo Gallery – please click on the images to view as a slideshow and read the captions.

If you are planning where to spend your next lunar new year, check out my recent article on Worldette: 10 Places to Celebrate Chinese New Year

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