Weekend in Malacca

We’d just spent a weekend in Malacca. Saturday was for a wedding dinner and for a full Sunday we wandered the heritage quarters with our daughter, who had driven us down from Kuala Lumpur. We deliberately skipped the Stadthuys and Christ Church, choosing instead to roam Jonker Street and the surrounds, ducking into the Cheng Hoon Teng Temple (青云亭) and the Malacca Sam Toh Temple (馬六甲三多廟) along the way, before moving over to the quieter Bunga Raya area. Crossing the Malacca River became part of the rhythm of our explorations.

Jonker Street was not overly busy even by mid-morning, though it was already bustling enough. Human traffic would pick up later. No matter, it was a slow-moving tide of visitors threading past souvenir stalls, dessert shops and cafés trading heavily on nostalgia. However, the shophouses looked almost too clinical, drained of a past that once defined the street before UNESCO recognition arrived. As we walked down the road, the occasional whiff of fresh coffee drifted from a shop. To me, Jonker has lost its old-world charm. On a Sunday afternoon, it felt more like a stage than a street, animated less by daily life than by tourism’s money!

Across the river, Bunga Raya Road was quiet and traditional by contrast. Sunday traffic was light, which may have helped, but the change in mood was immediate. A few residents moved about unhurried. Some shops had just enough customers to suggest life, nothing more, while many others were shuttered, perhaps for good. There were no tour groups, no queues forming for anything in particular and no one trying to sell you anything. Whatever business was taking place seemed meant for the people who lived there, not for passing visitors. Away from Jonker’s environment, the noise fell away and the walking became easier, almost absent-minded. 

So it was by chance that I walked into an old record shop, now attempting a transition into a coffee joint but, to my mind, not very successfully. Rows upon rows of compact discs, cassettes and cartridges were still on display. In a corner were stacks of long-play records and seven-inch singles. What a find! I wasn’t interested in the 12-inch LPs, only the seven-inch 45s, and I came away with four items, RM40 poorer.

The Malacca River itself had its own charm. Houses and small establishments lined both banks, freshly spruced in vivid colours, as though the river were a backdrop rather than a working waterway. Occasionally a river boat glided past loaded with tourists. We saw the river by day and night and the contrast was striking. During daylight, families and sightseers drifted along the banks at an unhurried pace. At night, the crowd shifted towards the bars and restaurants, more interested in food, drinks and atmosphere than the river itself. The water remained unchanged but the people using it behaved differently, occupying the same space for entirely different reasons.

Food, of course, was part of the story. We slipped up on Saturday with a riverside lunch at an establishment clearly aimed at tourists. The presentation tried hard but the flavours were ordinary and slightly off. 

Sunday, however, redeemed itself entirely. Breakfast of nyonya kueh at Baba Charlie Café was an adventure in itself, selecting treats one by one. Lunch at Swee Tin’s Nyonya Kitchen, a little pricey thanks to its prime side-street location off Jonker Street, was worth every bite, especially the curry chicken buah keluak, pictured here, which I heartily endorse. Theirs was one of the best I've tasted in Malacca. Dinner at Baba Ang Restaurant rounded off the day perfectly: generous portions, honest prices and flavours that left our taste buds delighted. Each meal was unpretentious, focused on getting the food right rather than putting on a show, reminding us that in Malacca, as elsewhere, eating well often comes down to making the right choices, sometimes accidentally.

In the end, the weekend felt like a series of contrasts: the bustling, almost theatrical energy of Jonker Street versus the quiet calm of Bunga Raya; the steady churn of daytime river traffic versus the relaxed drift of night; and the ordinary tourist traps against the carefully chosen local meals that truly satisfied. Crossing the river, moving from one pace to another, tasting the city in fragments, it became clear that Malacca is a place best experienced slowly, on foot and with the curiosity to look beyond the obvious.