205: 3D2N Melaka
I’m back from my Melaka trip! It wasn’t the most pleasant trip but it was great spending family time together. It’s probably some rare family time (with just the four of us). Since on typical school days, the only time we get to spend together will be the daily dinners on weekdays (we make it a habit to have dinner together at the dining table if we’re home by 7pm) and on weekends.
Anyway, Dad drove up to Melaka and I was in charge of the maps and directions. GPS is totally unreliable because it’s always giving us strange directions at times (we can only trust it 50% of the time). And we have to rely on the good old map. Printed out the route and map from the North-South highway into Melaka from Google Maps and it was really reliable! There were times when Daddy made a wrong turn but it wasn’t too huge a mistake (ie. when you miss a major exit and get lost as a result) so all we had to do was to make another round. After all, we learn from our mistakes, don’t we? And I got to thank my map-reading skills for everything, for bringing us safely to Melaka and back to Singapore. A skill I had honed back in Girl Guides in secondary school (thank goodness for that!). I was on alert the entire journey to and from Melaka because I was afraid we would lose our way if I lose sight of where we were (or some important signboards on the way) just once. I once read an excerpt from a book (“Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus”) that women cannot read maps! That is an overgeneralisation! Please, I am a woman and I can read maps! Who says women can’t read maps? Haha 🙂
Anyway, Melaka was rather okay. Just a mini getaway for the parents (Dad from his stressful work and Mum from housework) and for us (after slogging for one semester in school). Shopping was pretty okay, I got a good sturdy and comfy formal shoes and some pretty formal shirt blouses for work/internship in June. We did some sightseeing and walking around Melaka town, visited some historial sites, visited a museum (they have a lot of museums, but we didn’t visit the Baba and Nyonya Heritage Museum) and walked along Jonker Street (on a weekend evening). In my opinion, of them all, Jonker Street was the most interesting. Do visit Jonker Street on weekend evenings (Fri to Sun) because those are the days when the street will be lined with many interesting street vendors, selling quirky things.
Food was great, cheap and good food. Some pictures of food! One shouldn’t leave Melaka without trying their chendol. I love the chendol there! The gula melaka is just so good! Singapore’s chendol feels just like a watered down version, with gula melaka “essence” and not the real stuff. Mum bought home some of the gula melaka! I’m thinking, we can have vanilla ice-cream with some gula melaka syrup and coconut milk/cream drenched over. Yummy?:) I had chendol two days in a row. For the first time, I had durian chendol at this quaint shophouse on Jonker Street called Jonker 86. Then we had chendol (normal) again the next day at Jonker 88 (apparently the more famous of the two stalls). The two stalls are actually side-by-side on Jonker Street. I really like having meals in such old shophouses, the tables and chairs and the flooring may be old and all but they speak of history. I love sitting there, just soaking up the atmosphere.
And this was the Nyonya Laksa we had at Jonker 86 too. Pretty yummy:) and cheap too.
And I love this picture of the cinammon roll I took at the Starbucks in Melaka. We shared this cinammon roll. It tasted kind of like the Cinammon Melts from Mcdonald’s.
And I was so amused by this basket. We were shopping at Carrefour and there was this old man who started pulling this red basket past me. I was really surprised because in Singapore, we only have those huge metal trolleys or the plastic baskets we get to put our grocery in. In the Carrefour in Melaka, they have these plastic baskets with mini wheels at the bottom and the shoppers can just pull the long handle and drag the basket along as they move. Really amusing! Alright, I think it was only me who found it interesting because I was just giggling as I experimented with the basket.
And we had breakfast buffet at the hotel in the mornings. The spread was pretty limited but the food was still acceptable. Not fantastic but mediocre. This was what I had this morning, plus cereals with fresh milk. The usual western spread for hotel breakfast buffet.
Waffles:)
Rina's Silly Musings 