Gastronomic Adventure in Malacca ... And Other Things ... (Part 1)

I was in Malacca for a gastronomic adventure recently.

When Angie and I reached Malacca, we decided to have chicken rice ball for lunch in the Jonker Walk area.

To our dismay, all 3 kopitiams we went to were crowded till the queue was overflowing onto the road. Look at the pics and you'll know what I mean.

Kopitiam 1: Queuing like nobody's business

Kopitiam 2: Not again!

Kopitiam 3: We give up lah!

In the end we had nyonya laksa at one of the other kopitiams. Couldn't tahan hunger anymore, so anything also makan lah.

Nyonya Laksa

After lunch, we walked along the small roads that the Jonker Walk area is famous for.

 Quaint and nice, reminds me of Luang Prabang

And we stumbled upon the oldest Chinese temple in Malaysia, the Cheng Hoon Teng temple.

Cheng Hoon Teng Temple

Despite coming to Malacca many, many times since I was a kid, I've yet to visit this temple. So we entered the temple and looked around. It was nothing to shout about.

After visiting the temple, we moved on and saw some pretty buildings like these:

I also stumbled upon the Koong On Loong Goldsmith where my late dad always goes to whenever he wants to buy gold for my mum. Heck, I even got my ears pierced here when I was 13-years-old!

I got my ears pierced here when I was 13-years-old.

By that time we were already thirsty with all the walking. So we headed to the Cendol Jam Besar beside the Stadthuys for a dose of one of my favourite Malaysian desserts.

Look how watery the cendol was

Unfortunately the cendol sucked big time. There were hardly any ingredients in the cendol. It was only shaved ice, green cendol, coconut milk, gula Melaka and some miserable corn. Where are the other ingredients like red beans and cincau? Luckily it costs only RM1.50 per bowl.

After that lousy cendol, we headed back to the hostel on Lorong Bukit Cina to snooze for a while before continuing our gastronomic journey in the evening.

It was raining when we woke up. So we waited for the rain to subside and walked our way to Jalan Bunga Raya for some tasty fried oysters.

The famous fried oysters on Jalan Bunga Raya is only available in the evenings.

Each batch the uncle fries is enough for 6 packets worth RM6.00 each. And if he dishes out an average of 30 batches a night, he would be earning a monthly gross salary equivalent to the salary of a Senior Vice President in a multinational. I wanna become a hawker too!

 Parsley completes the yummi-ness of the fried oyster

After that satisfying meal, we walked back to the car and drove to the Portuguese Settlement to see the houses there decked in colourful Christmas lights and deco.

The Portuguese Settlement organises a competition annually to see who has the best decorated house. This year not many houses took part and many houses didn't have their lights on. It was a totally different experience compared to a couple of years back when the entire place was decorated to the max and I was mesmerised with all the lights.

After Portuguese Settlement, we drove back to our hostel which was near the famous Capitol Satay Celup. The queue was like a bitch when we passed the place earlier.

Now that it was close to 12.00 midnight, the crowd had lessen. So we got into queue and after about 30 minutes we got a table.

Satay celup

Malacca is the birthplace of satay celup. What makes it great is the special peanut sauce to boil your skewers of food in. If not for the sauce, satay celup would only be as menial as the lok-lok in KL which uses water.

I whacked at least 10 sticks of various items. But I was happiest to chom down 2 whole Century eggs with ginger, quill eggs, sausages with cheese in the middle and fishballs. Cholesterol, cholesterol, cholesterol ... But it was hard to resist.

Stay tuned for Day 2 of my gastronomic adventure in Malacca ...