Dearie and i head off for a short Malacca getaway over the weekends. We were really looking forward to going on an overseas trip together.
I think the last time we had such an outing was like...erm.... in september 2005. That's like almost 2 years. Since then she had been to places like USA and Japan with her friends while i had my fair share of travel to SEA countries to M'sia, Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand.
One thing we did not expect during this trip though, was the amount of food we ate in a span of 1.5 days. I thought we would spend most of the time walking around to sight see and expose ourselves to abit of sun, even though there wasnt really much historical sights in Malacca. Malacca wasnt really our ideal weekend getaway. Had intended to go Bangkok but realised that going there alone would cost us about 240 sgd per pax. Yeah, that's the budget airline pricing. You include the fuel surcharge and it suddenly makes a whole lot of difference even though the actual ticket cost from 10sgd-60sgd.
So on a saturday morning, the bus took us from golden mile to m'sia via 2nd link. Most of the travellers on board were older than us. I suddenly found myself falling into the visit-malaysia-middle-age-group gang. When i was much younger, i often pondered why my parents/ aunts love to go m'sia so much over the weekends.
By noon time, we checked into this accordion hotel that i booked online a week ago. It wasnt really a hotel. More so of a motel i would say. The rooms were small, especially the toilet. Imagine sitting on the toilet bowl; If you lean your head forward you could actually rest your head on the walls. That's how cramped it was.
Well, we did not really paid alot for the room but definitely accordion wasnt a place couples would choose to sleep over. The rooms were worst than those i stayed over in vietnam a few months back.
We both waited for dearie's friend chin ping(our hero of the trip) to show/drive us around malacca. This picture was taken outside the hotel. We didnt bother to use the hotel as the backdrop.
We waited quite awhile because the road leading to accordion was jam packed with traffic.
Was glad to meet chin ping in her nissan sentra (its called nissan sentra in malaysia instead of nissan sunny). The last thing we munched on was some roasted peanuts and biscuts on the bus. Hungry! So she drove us to try out some famous laksa/chendol she often visit when she was a school girl. But the shop closed by late noon and we had to skirt around for alternatives.
Chin peng walked us around after that. Seriously i thought she would leave us after meeting us for lunch. She also doubled up as our photographer... HA!
Sigh...when will i ever grow up?
Our next stop was to be a walk into JONKER STREET, this stretch that is stocked up with lots of food, food and GOOD FOOD. It was already close to 5pm. I was here with the pumpfest 05 gang back in 2005 january.
We held our temptations as chinpeng told us about more good food that's out of JONKER STREET. She promised to drive us there for dinner.
Meanwhile we had to sustain our craving for food by sampling various kinds of pineapple tarts. Those we tried were rich in butter, super appetizing. After visiting 3 famous pineapple tart shops we got ourselves a total of more than 5 boxes of tarts for our friends and relatives.
We kept seeing this huge restaurant selling chicken rice ball as we walked around, and decided to give it a shot. To be frank it was nothing great really. The chicken rice ball was given that name simply because they dont serve plates of rice; they serve rice that's rolled into balls the size of fishballs. Apart from that it tasted similar to the ones back here in Singapore.
Chinpeng told us not to miss this local delicacy called Satay Celup( shall elaborate more below ). She brought us to a famous one. But the queue was just too long. And we left for another satay celup outlet 5min drive from the one she intended to bring us to.
There was a little crowd outside this other celup eatery by the time we got off the car. But we didnt wait longer than 5min before someone ushered us towards the tables.
I didnt really know where this celup stall is located but i took some pictures of the sign board.
Thought we had quite some chicken rice balls since the time we parted JONKER STREET, both me and dear were really keen to try out this satay celup. Chin ping said it's superb, and we wanted to validate her words.
Basically, the word celup means dip in malay. There will be all kinds of food, be it tau kee, quill egg, taiwan sausage, chicken and pork, prawns etc etc. These food will already be skewed on satay sticks and all you need to do is to dip them in thick hot satay gravy sauce contained in a gravy pot( consistently heated up using LPG tanks below the table).
According to Chin ping,some people did not really like this satay celup concept because the satay gravy in the gravy pot is not refilled i.e you are simply using the satay gravy that previous customers had used. And what's more, the blunt and burnt ends of the satay sticks used suggest that the satay sticks might be washed and reused after daily operations.
But heck we didnt really care. Just whack!
I walked to the fridge area to get more re sup.
This one's taken when we all had our fill. Check out the number of sticks. WOOOT!
By the time we left the celup eatery, our stomach was quite bursty. Dearie and i had intended to go pubbing but realised that our fatigue had actually set in. Chin ping then drove us around to show us the places that we could go to shop on sunday as well as a little tour on some streets and buildings in malacca. Before our final stop in accordion, chin ping stopped by this famous oil fritters stall and treated us to some 'butterfly' and oil fritters(of course).
We headed back to our hotel with the 'butterfly' and oil fritters and purchased some soya bean milk to compliment those snacks. We decided to get 2 cans of beer to reward ourselves for the long day we had out there EATING...haha..
Long live youtiao and vitamilk!
The next morning, we headed out to St Peter's church, a real old one.
I was quite taken aback when they started to conduct part of their mass in malay. What's more interesting, is that you have to pay to take the newsletter
After sunday mass, chin ping met up with us, wanting to bring us to that chendol stall that was closed the previous noon.
Something that really caught my attention, was the presence of illegal parking attendants in malacca. I saw chin ping put a parking coupon in her car, and yet she proceeded to pay some money to this person lurking around her vehicle. Here's our illegal parking attendant
These people might do something funny to your vehicle if you dont pay up. And so chin ping handed over a 2RM note. Payment to these illegal parking attendant varies from carpark to carpark. Scary!
Again i forget to ask chin ping where this place of famous chendol was. Both me and felicia were too reliant on her nissan sentra to take note of the street names we cruised by. I only took pictures of the place though
This chendol we had tasted very different from the ones in spore. Visually it did not look fanciful. No jelly strips or chin chow strips. Apparently the coconut taste dominated the bowl of dessert. A very refreshing taste if you ask me.
Next we headed for bah ku teh. We were lucky;we didnt bump into those illegal carpark attendants as the blue sentra came to a halt.
Instead of normal white rice, we were served with yam rice. In addition, the bah ku teh was complimented with needle mushrooms and kuay chup dishes. Actually customers had the option of including pig's tail and other parts, but i wasnt ready for pig's tail, so we skipped that.
By the time we finished our bah ku teh lunch, it was almost close to 1pm. Our bus will leave by 230pm. Guess it was time to say good bye to our nice friend.
Thank you chin ping for showing us around. It certainly enriched our stay in malacca. If you hadnt drove us around i think we wont even know what's hot and what's not. If not for the car ride, we probably would have spent most of the time walking around, maybe falling under the prey of overcharging taxi drivers.
