On Labour Day (Sunday) this year, a few of us organized a one-day trip to Melaka, our country's "Historical City".
Note: Click to enlarge any of the photos. :)
With YC at the wheel and Rhea, Ruth and I as the passengers, we started out at 9 a.m. When we arrived at the turning into Ayer Keroh about 10.50 a.m., this is what we encountered...
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| Major traffic jam! |
After the toll, we waited for Yvonne to arrive, then we followed her aunt's car through many winding roads/shortcuts to reach the city center. It was practically jammed up everywhere! By the time we finally found a parking spot, it was already 1.15 p.m. and we'd gone through 4 or 5 CDs in the car, some of them twice. =X
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| Welcome to the jammed up city. |
All of us were starving by this time, so we walked the not-so-short distance to Jonker Street to queue up for chicken rice balls. People have been telling me they're not that special or anything, but what the heck la, we're playing tourist(s) today.
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| Hoe Kee Chicken Rice Balls |
This particular shop is not the first one to serve chicken rice balls in Melaka, but it is one of the oldest and as popular as the other one (where the queue was even crazier). I guess its popularity was also helped by the fact that Jason (Axian) had been there to try the food in his food show. We had to queue up for more than 30mins, with the stench of durians occasionally wafting around us as people tapao-ed durian cendol (I think?) from next door. It was really hot that day, so those of us with hand fans were fanning ourselves like mad. Ah, the things we do for food!
When we finally reached the front of the line and got a table, the first thing we noticed was the interior of the shop. It was really traditional and surprisingly spacious, with a small courtyard (四合院) in the middle and many small doorways into other rooms. We were lucky to get a table right in the middle, with a sky-well above us. We'd hardly finished admiring the architecture when the food was served.
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| I loved the chilli sauce! |
Remember when I mentioned that all of us were starving by that time? Almost forgot to take photos, we were so eager to dig in! Even though there were 5 of us, we only ordered for 3 people so that we could go and enjoy other food after the chicken rice.
After lunch, we had a leisurely walk to Dataran Pahlawan because we wanted to eat the famous Mille Crepe @ Nadeje. Unfortunately, when we got there the queue was super long and the cakes were all sold out. =( It had also started raining, which really dampened our spirits.
Since it was raining pretty heavily, we walked around the shopping mall to kill time while waiting for the rain to stop. Feeling hungry, Rhea and I bought some "spiral potatoes" to eat, while the others had a sweet tooth and bought some iced desserts. Seeing that the rain had slowed to a drizzle, we decided to set out for our next makan destination - Capitol Satay Celup.
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| The famous Capitol Satay (Celup). |
By the time we walked there, it was about 5 p.m. and the queue was already starting to form. We were considered early as we were only 2 shops away. O_o The queue here was even crazier than the previous two places we'd gone. The line extended until the end of the row, and probably longer than that!
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| Pics or it didn't happen, right? :P |
6 p.m. and we finally,
finally get the food and a table. We were all staring at the pot of bubbling satay sauce and waiting for one of the workers to come and mix in the condiments. We were pretty surprised when the tauke himself came to mix the sauce for us, carrying two metal pails of their 'secret recipe mix' and ground peanuts.
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| Super thick sauce/gravy for us to celup! |
The tauke was like scooping ladles and ladles of the mix for us, lol. Apparently, the 'secret recipe' is made up of more than 20 ingredients, one of which is gula melaka, hence the dark brown colour. As soon as our pot of satay sauce was mixed and done, we wasted no time dipping in our sticks of food.
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| I feel hungry just looking at these photos. |
So there we were, 5 girls with 2 whole trays full of food. :D They also give each table a 'seafood' platter according to the number of people per table, which included super giant prawns, abalone, sotong and pacific clams. The boss even came and replaced one of the smaller* (actually all were super big prawns to begin with) prawns with a super huge one!
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| "Imma take my sweet time consuming all these while you people wait in line." |
On the right is my super huge prawn! It was almost the size of a full grown lobster; I'm not kidding. ~_~ Eat also damn syok. XD Bottom left are my favourites: quail egg and prawn. Yes, I know all three are high cholesterol foods.
Screw that, I'm here to enjoy food. Oh, and the glass at the top left is coffee cream liqueur - on the house. :)
We were done eating by 7 p.m. and proceeded to take a leisurely stroll along the river back to Jonker for the night market. The whole stretch of Jonker Walk is closed to vehicles from 7 p.m. onwards (I think), so it's kinda like Petaling Street. The crowds that day was crazy, mostly because it was a Sunday and the next day was a replacement holiday.
Sights and sounds of the renowned Jonker Walk. The energy, as well as the heat, there was palpable and it had a really festive feel to it, even though it was just a reaaaaaly long
pasar malam. There was even a stage setup in the middle where a singing gig for senior citizens was going on. I bought a couple of souvenirs, tasted some durian popiah,
tapao-ed a meat dumpling and tried the egg-shaped ice-cream which was one of the popular snacks there.
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| Rhea's strawberry and my lychee ice-cream. :) |
We left Jonker Walk at around 9.30 p.m. and by the time we walked back to the car, it was almost 10 p.m.
2 hours and many conversations later, we reached PJ. =)
It was a great trip and an enjoyable day out with friends. Hopefully we'll be able to have more outings like this!
♥
