Chill out at the historical town of Melaka Day 1 (Night)

Day 1 itinerary:
- Travel from Singapore to Melaka
- Pit stop at Pagoh
- Lunch @ Restoran Keng-Dom
- Check in to Hatten Hotel
- Free & Easy
- Dinner at Aunty Lee
- Jonker Street
After spending the large part of the morning travelling and checking in to Hatten hotel, there was only 2.5 hours left before we headed off to dinner.
Essentially I roamed around the Melaka Raya region, just taking a look at the shop houses, and the streets. As what most would imagine, it really is a sleepy town. Interestingly, there seems to be quite a few interesting restaurants. I figure I would aim to try all of them with every visit, rather than repeating restaurants. There are also numerous massage parlours around. From my understanding, most are typically clean in Melaka. The only thing is that they might upsell you other spa services. If you wanted to go for dodgy services, it seems you might have to look at other towns.
Dinner was suppose to be this place called Aunty Lee. It’s apparently a famous Nonya restaurant in Melaka and we had to reserve a table and pre-order our food beforehand.
However, Murphy’s Law says that anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. Apparently most of the food we pre-ordered was sold out. Even the curry chicken dish was left with lousy parts and there wasn’t much meat. To be fair, I will not be posting any photos and reviews on the food, but from what my friends say, the food here is suppose to be quite fantastic. I shall reserve my comments.
Our next stop is to the ‘must go’ Jonker Street. Jonker Street is a pedestrian night market, where certain areas are closed to traffic and peddlers/hawkers come out to sell their goods. A good thing too, considering that I’m still hungry after dinner!
One of the easiest way to get there is well, walk. Jonker Street is surrounded by hotels, and even for hotels like Hatten hotel which was at Melaka Raya area, it’s really not that far away. However, we decided to drive there, since there were young kids, and if you drive, a good place to park would be Casa De Rio hotel. If I had too much money, it would be quite a tough choice to choose between Casa De Rio and Hatten. On one hand, Casa De Rio is a really nice hotel, much like Raffles Hotel in Singapore. On the other hand, it’s 2.5 times more expensive than Hatten, and I’m not sure if you actually get good value from that.
But for one, the view is pretty sweet!
Compared to other night markets, I think the Melaka’s Jonker Street one looks more alive and bustling, as compared to say Bangkok’s Suan Lum or Tawanna Square. Perhaps it’s because there are more food options. I haven’t been to Taipei for a while, but I would guess Shi Lin night market would be tops from my memory.
Unfortunately, my camera ran out of battery. So there’s no photos of the street snacks and the beer we had.
After a night of good sleep, it’s time to head to Day 2 of chilling at Melaka!