Three days in Malacca: four empires took this port, and each left a street behind

Two nights in the old town, everything on foot, with the Dutch square, Jonker Street and the Peranakan houses across the river.

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Length
3 days, 2 nights
Where you stay
Malacca
Places
8 across 3 days
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For a century Malacca was the most important port between India and China. A Malay sultanate ran it from about 1400, the Portuguese took it by force in 1511, the Dutch besieged it out of them in 1641, and the British acquired it by treaty in 1824. Each of them built, and because the town then stopped mattering, almost all of it is still standing.

What is left is a compact old quarter split by a river. On the east bank is the Dutch administrative square and the hill the Portuguese fortified. On the west is the Chinese town: Jonker Street, the clan temples, and the narrow Peranakan houses whose owners were Chinese by descent, Malay by kitchen and British by education.

It is a small place and three days is enough. Two nights lets you have a proper look, eat chicken rice balls, and be there on a Friday or Saturday evening when Jonker Street closes to traffic and turns into a night market.

Highlights

  • The bright red Dutch square, the oldest surviving Dutch building anywhere in Asia
  • St Paul's, a roofless Portuguese church on a hill, where Francis Xavier was buried for nine months
  • The Baba Nyonya house museum, three shophouses knocked together and still full of one family's things
  • Chicken rice balls, a Melaka invention nobody else bothers to make
  • The mosque on stilts off the reclaimed shore, best half an hour before sunset

Where to stay

Malacca, two nights

Stay on the west bank near Jonker Street. The restored shophouses there are the nicest rooms in town and put you inside the old quarter, so you can be out at seven in the morning when the streets are empty and the temples are open.

The alternative is one of the towers near the malls on the reclaimed land south of the square, which are cheaper, blander and still only a ten minute walk from everything. Avoid staying near Melaka Sentral; it is a bus station with hotels around it.

Day by day

Day 1 in Malacca

The Dutch square and the hill above it

Everything on the east bank sits around one square and the hill behind it, so the first afternoon writes itself. The buildings are painted a deep terracotta red that the Dutch never used; that came later, under the British, and now nobody will repaint them.

Climb the hill at the end of the afternoon. The Portuguese built a church at the top in 1521 and a fortress around it, the Dutch took both, the British blew most of the fort up in 1807 rather than garrison it, and one gate survives at the bottom of the steps.

  1. 15:00

    Christ Church

    Religious

    Built by the Dutch between 1741 and 1753, using bricks shipped from Zeeland, and still an Anglican parish church. Look down at the floor: the tombstones set into it are older than the building.

  2. 16:00

    Stadthuys

    Other

    The Dutch governor's residence and town hall, finished in 1660 and the oldest Dutch building left in Asia. It now holds the history and ethnography museum, which is worth an hour for the Peranakan and sultanate rooms.

  3. 18:00

    Saint Paul's Church

    Visit

    A roofless Portuguese shell on the summit, built 1521. Francis Xavier was buried here for nine months before his body was moved to Goa, and the empty grave is still marked. Climb from the Porta de Santiago gate at the bottom.

  4. 19:30

    Dinner by the river

    Eat

    The riverside walk on the west bank fills with tables after dark and the buildings behind it are lit. Nyonya laksa and otak-otak are the orders.

With more time: The Melaka Sultanate Palace Museum at the foot of the hill is a timber reconstruction of the sultan's istana, built without a single nail, and the Taming Sari revolving tower next to the mall gives you the whole town in seven minutes.

Day 2 in Malacca

Jonker Street, the Peranakan houses, and the mosque on the water

Cross the river and the town changes language. This is the Chinese quarter, laid out in the seventeenth century and still narrow, with shophouses two rooms wide and forty metres deep because the Dutch taxed street frontage. Jonker Street is the antiques and food one; Heeren Street, one block south, is where the rich merchants lived and where the best facades are.

The Straits Chinese, the Baba and Nyonya, are the reason this town looks and tastes the way it does: Hokkien traders who married local Malay women from the fifteenth century on and produced a culture with its own cooking, its own dress and its own dialect. One of their houses is open and it is the single best thing to see in Melaka.

End the day out on the reclaimed shore, where a mosque built in 2006 sits on stilts in the water and turns gold about twenty minutes before the sun goes.

  1. 09:00

    Jonker, Heeren and adjacent streets

    Landmark

    Start on Heeren Street at nine, before the coaches arrive, and work north through the lanes. Kampung Kling Mosque and the Hindu temple share a street with the Chinese temple two blocks over.

  2. 11:30

    Baba Nyonya Heritage Museum

    Culture

    Three shophouses knocked into one, lived in by the same family from 1861, and shown by guided tour only. Gilded screens, Victorian tiles, blackwood furniture inlaid with mother of pearl, and a spy hole in the upstairs floor for unmarried daughters.

  3. 12:30

    Ee Ji Ban Chicken Rice Ball

    Eat

    Chicken rice, but the rice is pressed into golf balls, which started here as a way of feeding market porters something they could eat standing up. Queues at noon; go at eleven.

  4. 18:00

    Melaka Straits Mosque

    Religious

    Out on Pulau Melaka, ten minutes by Grab from the old town. Built in 2006 on piles so it appears to float, and the point of coming is the half hour before sunset over the strait.

  5. 20:00

    Portuguese Settlement

    Other

    The Kristang community's stalls by the water, descendants of Portuguese settlers who kept the language and the surnames. Grilled sambal stingray and chilli squid at numbered stalls, cash only.

With more time: On a Friday, Saturday or Sunday, skip the trip out to the coast and stay for the Jonker Street night market instead, which closes the road from six and runs until midnight.

Day 3 in Malacca

The oldest Chinese temple in the country, then the bus

Two things are worth the last morning and both are five minutes from Jonker Street. Cheng Hoon Teng has been a working temple since the 1640s, which makes it the oldest functioning Chinese temple in Malaysia, and it was built with materials shipped from China by merchants who had already decided they were not going home.

Then walk back over the river to the ship. It is a full-size replica of the Portuguese carrack that went down in the strait in 1511 carrying the treasure taken from Malacca, and the museum inside covers the four hundred years of shipping that the strait outside still handles.

  1. 08:30

    Cheng Hoon Teng Temple

    Religious

    Carved beams and roof ridges built by craftsmen brought from Fujian, and an inscription from 1685 recording the deeds of the Kapitan China. Shoes on, incense at the door, and still busy with worshippers at eight in the morning.

  2. 10:00

    Maritime Museum

    Culture

    The Flor de la Mar reconstruction on the riverbank, three decks of exhibits about the spice trade and the sultanate. Better than it looks from outside and takes about an hour.

  3. 12:00

    To Melaka Sentral

    Travel

    Town bus 17 or a Grab, about fifteen minutes. Buses to Kuala Lumpur leave every half hour and do not need booking except on public holidays.

With more time: With more time, the hill of Chinese graves behind the temple is one of the largest such cemeteries outside China, with burials going back to the Ming dynasty, and Kampung Morten upriver is a village of traditional Malay stilt houses that the city grew around.

Before you go

Getting there and around

Melaka Sentral is the bus terminal, four kilometres north of the old town, and buses from Kuala Lumpur run every half hour and take two hours. From Singapore it is four to five hours by coach. There is no railway station and the nearest useful airport is Kuala Lumpur's.

Once you are in the old town you will not use transport again. The heritage zone is about a kilometre across and the two halves are joined by footbridges. Town buses and Grab cover the four kilometres to the bus terminal and the couple of kilometres out to the Portuguese Settlement.

When to come

Jonker Street's night market runs on Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings only, and it changes the feel of the whole town, so build a weekend into your dates if you can. The flip side is that hotel prices roughly double at the weekend and the crowds are Malaysian day-trippers by the coachload.

Weather is the usual peninsular pattern: hot, humid, and a violent shower most afternoons between September and November.

Eating

Peranakan cooking, called Nyonya here, is the local kitchen and it is what to eat: ayam pongteh, a slow chicken and fermented bean stew, otak-otak, spiced fish paste grilled in banana leaf, and cendol with palm sugar and coconut milk.

The town's own oddity is chicken rice served as compressed balls instead of a plate of rice, which started in Melaka and stayed there. The Portuguese Settlement out on the coast does grilled fish and sambal squid at plastic tables by the water and is a different evening entirely.

Malacca is a town that lost its purpose and kept its buildings. The strait outside is still one of the busiest shipping lanes on earth and not one of those ships stops here any more, which is exactly why the seventeenth century is still standing in the middle of it.

Stay two nights, walk both banks, and eat everything the Nyonya kitchen puts in front of you.

Or make it a longer trip

These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

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Common questions

Is Malacca worth visiting, or is it a day trip?
It gets done as a day trip from Kuala Lumpur and that is a mistake, because the town is at its best early in the morning and after dark, when the coaches have gone. Two nights is the right amount. Three would be generous unless you are here for a weekend night market.
Melaka or Malacca?
Same place. Malacca is the older English spelling, Melaka is the current Malaysian one, and both are used on signs in the town itself.
How do I get there from Kuala Lumpur or Singapore?
Buses from Kuala Lumpur's TBS terminal take two hours and run constantly. From Singapore it is four to five hours by coach including the border crossing, which is the slow part. There is no train.
What is Peranakan or Nyonya food?
The cooking of the Straits Chinese, who arrived as Hokkien traders and married Malay women, so Chinese technique met Malay spice: candlenut, tamarind, coconut milk, belacan. Ayam pongteh, itik tim and Nyonya laksa are the dishes to look for, and Melaka does them better than anywhere else in the country.
Can I combine Malacca with Penang?
Easily, and it makes sense because they were listed by UNESCO together in 2008 as two halves of the same trading history. Melaka to Kuala Lumpur is two hours by bus, then Kuala Lumpur to Penang is four by train. Copy this itinerary into the planner and add the northern legs to it.