Short note: Today is the 30th, which marks our 21st month together. It has been a long, long journey. Since the inauguration of Malacca as one of the World Heritage City last year, there have been a lot of new projects carried out with the aim to attract and accommodate the increasing number of tourists to the city. From the surface, it may appears that it is a good thing to the tourism industry of the state and our country as a whole, but it is the opposite to Malaccan. Just ask any Malaccans what they think about the recent development in the town and you shall expect negative reply from nine out of ten people. The most obvious thing is the congested roads and heavy traffic during weekends and school holidays that I saw it myself during my short stay there late last year.
Anyway, this post is a happy post, so I will talk more happy stuff here. There are many stuff that I can relate my Sejarah book with Malacca. After all, the birth of our country began in this small town centuries ago. One of them would be Melaka River, or Sungai Melaka. It used to be just like any other rivers in our country, thick brown in color with an unpleasant odour and of course, full with rubbish many years back. That was until recently, when the local city council took the initiative to clean up the river and the state of the water in the river has improved very much.
With an improved condition, they are now able to introduce a new attraction along the river.
The weather wasn't perfect, because it was rather cloudy and it appeared as if it was going to rain. But time was against us because I was going to return to Japan very soon, in a matter of few days. So, we took the risk and decided to take a ride on the boat on New Year's Day.
Despite it being a public holiday, they weren't many people spotted at the jetty, mainly because it was cloudy and people preferred to stay at home, I suppose. Nevertheless, we looked for the ticket counter and it was that time when I cracked a super lame joke on the poor lady there. You see, there wasn't a fixed schedule for the boats and they usually runs it when the boat is almost full. After getting our tickets from her, I asked the lady what time would the next boat leave.
"You tunggu-lah, bila orang tu suruh masuk, you masuk."
So, this is how I replied her. "Macam mana kalau dia tak panggil? Tunggu sampai esok yer?"
Haha, I know I'm so bad to act so stupid to that poor little girl, but she was sporting enough to take my joke and gave me a slight smile in return. I bet she must be thinking hard what to answer me back at that time. We weren't made to wait for long because there were quite a number of boats operating that day. After waiting for roughly ten minutes, we were asked to produce our ticket and hop onto the boat.
When everyone had boarded the boat, we set off.
The people in our boat were so obedient that they didn't stand up from their seats when the boat had left the jetty. Everyone just sat there on their seat and enjoy the panoramic scenery of the town along the Melaka River which cuts through a huge part of the town. But with a mischievous boy like me there, how could I just keep myself on my seat without doing anything. That would be so boring.
The ride took us approximately forty-five minutes. The boat left the jetty until it reached the river mouth and then it will take a U-turn to return to the starting point. Along the journey, we passed through several small bridges across the Melaka River.
Take this as example.
Besides that, there are also quite a number of famous landmark that are synonym with Malacca.
Being together with me for quite some time already, I think she is slowly turning into a lame person like me. I can feel that, as she has been cracking up super lame jokes lately. However, she still have a long way to go to match my level lol. Anyway, there were still a lot of spared time during the ride, so we made good-use of the time by taking more self-taken pictures a.k.a. camwhore. You can skip this part if you feel like doing so (hint to Calvin LSH).
Finally, I've come to the final entry of our trip during my winter break. Thanks for reading.