Melaka | Welcome to Sweet Surrender

After we check-in, we went to visit the bird nest museum known as Jonker Bird House. I tried to look for information about bird nest museum when I found out that our room came with entrance tickets to the museum but I couldn’t find anything. Apparently Jonker Bird House is the museum it referred to.

It’s not far from The Baba Hotel, once you walk out from the back of the hotel, just turn left and walked till the end, you will see it. It belongs to the same boss of the hotel.

Before going into the museum, there’s Hoko products greeted you. Of course, they will let you try various products and hope that you would buy but we didn’t buy anything *LOL* Just for your information, this product is from Sabah, not Melaka. At first we thought it’s Melaka’s home grown product.

The journey to discover how bird nest came about starts here…

Left: The olden days transportation, pulled rickshaw and bicycle.
Right: Ancient Wishing Well, you can throw your money into designated hole (depending on what you wish for, longevity, peace, health, and etc.), don’t throw them into the well itself! The money will be collected to be used on worthy cause.

Left: Story of Cheng Ho discovery of bird nest while caught in a storm in South East Asia and when he got back, he gave it to the emperor in China as a gift. If you want to know more details of the story, you can do a search online.

Right: Various type of bird nests on display.

Lazy bird nest, old triangle bird nest, and hanging bird nest are just some of the types. By the way, the museum is also a swiftlet house where you can see it with your own eyes how the birds build its nests.

First time seeing the cleaning process of bird nest. After cleaning it, it was placed on the mould for drying. Then it can be packed and sold.

After the museum, we went on a walk around Jonker Street.

It reminded me of Kuching’s Carpenter Street but too bad… Most of our old buildings are gone.

Melaka preserved and maintained the old buildings but it’s an opposite for Kuching. It’s all being demolished for so-called development, how sad…

Saw this shop, Malaysia 13 State’s Coffees. Very interesting but no chance to pay there a visit. I guess if you’re there, you must try their coffees but for us… We’re not coffee drinkers. Maybe coffee lovers should check this place out if you’re in Melaka.

That’s all for now. More to come, not even half way hehehe… Chicken rice balls will come next.

The day after my birthday, I headed to KL with my family. The next day, 6/9/2013 (wow… more than a month ago ;p), we drove to Melaka for 2 days 1 night trip.

It was so cloudy and was expecting it to rain very soon.

Indeed! It rained right after we got into Red Square area (all the buildings are painted red).

First thing first, we looked for our hotel. I booked The Baba House Hotel (No 121 – 127 Jalan Tun Tan Cheng Lock, Jonker Street, Malacca / Melaka, Malaysia 75200 ) from Agoda. Got pretty good deal for it, very lucky, basically we’re paying one room price for two rooms, USD22+/night if not mistaken. Sweet! Took me days to find a place to stay there and finally found this, the cheapest of all for this standard and location. I noticed that many people actually booked it through Agoda. I guess that’s where the deals are. There’s a lot of cheaper places but with our group, it’s pretty impossible to just go to any backpacker.

Left: The lobby area. The interior is definitely giving you the feel of the Baba Nyonya heritage.

Right: The back of the hotel, it took us quite awhile to find it, they have free parking there. We actually went round and round to look for it even with GPS. It stated that we’re there already but we couldn’t recognize the place, kept thinking it’s the Bird Nest Museum as we saw the banner there rather than the hotel’s name. Very silly.

Left: Dining area of the hotel. This is where you’ll have your breakfast if your room comes with breakfast, not ours though. You don’t need it at all. There’s so much food out there! Eateries are just right outside the doorstep.

Right: The shop, part of the hotel where I got my kebaya.

Our rooms, Superior King – No Window and Superior Twin – No Window. They were very thoughtful to give us rooms next to each other, so we were able to just open the door in between. The floor was so cold because it’s not carpeted but don’t worry about that as there’s bedroom slippers for you.

Left: Only instant coffee, no tea for the room. Bottled waters were complimentary too. There’s also toiletries provided in a reusable and resealable transparent bag.

It can be really cold in the room so we had to switch the air-con to fan mode. The interior is quite dated but well-maintained. The best thing is that it’s located in the center of the tourist attractions, all in walking distant! Love it! One interesting fact, the hotel belongs to a guy from Kuching! We thought it belongs to someone from Melaka itself but it’s not, instead it’s someone all the way from East Malaysia.

If you manage to get offer for it, it’s a good deal. However, if you can’t, I won’t recommend that, it’s a bit pricey.

We went to Jonker 88 for lunch since we couldn’t check in, we reached there at 12pm but could only check-in at 2pm. It was raining and was a Friday, so the queue wasn’t too bad. If it’s on a weekend, goodness! Massive queue to brace.

Left: Baba Chendol (RM3).
Right: Baba Durian Chendol (RM4), the durian puree wasn’t enough, couldn’t really taste it. However, it is special in its own way.

I still prefer the chendol from Penang or even Kuching. The chendol here became hard after came in contact with the ice. Don’t like it that way. Sorry, I really don’t understand what is there for people to rave about it. It’s just the coconut milk and gula melaka that gave it the taste, otherwise, there’s really nothing much. I guess it’s because of the hot and humid climate that makes whatever cold yummy.

Left: Nyonya Asam Laksa, spicy but the taste was not too bad.
Right: Rojak, very different from what you get from Kuching, lots of fruits in there. Quite sweet. Portion wasn’t too bad.

Left: Yong Tau Fu, had better ones back home, this is just so-so. Nothing special. Didn’t like the noodle too, oh well… It’s just us disliking yellow noodle because of the bitter taste of this type of noodle.

Right: Was shocked by it. See it for yourself. Not shock? LOL! I don’t quite remember what’s this, I think it’s seafood soup.

Sorry… I thought I had taken photo of the menu, apparently I didn’t, so I have no idea of the price, I didn’t order them too as we split into two groups to order, one group ordered dessert, the other group ordered all the other dishes. Dessert was self-service. Meanwhile the other, you order, pay, and wait for them to send it to you.

Overall, Jonker88 has great environment but the food got not much to rave. I’m sure there are other places serve much better food. Maybe… I don’t know… Didn’t stay long enough to discover more. It’s just conveniently located in Jonker Street and it was easy to spot due to the crowd.

To be continued…