Chill out at the historical town of Melaka Day 2

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Day 2 of the Melaka trip would be the a large bulk of it, since day 1 is spent travelling up, and day 3 is spend travelling down.

Day 2 itinerary:

• Hotel buffet breakfast
• Massage
• Mall roaming
• Bert’s Garden
• Wings Music Cafe

Hotels nowadays tend to exclude buffet breakfast, which is largely a good thing in my opinion, since most of the time if I’m on holiday, I don’t wake up early enough for breakfast, or I would prefer to get local food off the streets. Hatten hotel provides buffet breakfast though, and since our group is quite a mix group, it’s a way to just eat together and chit chat.

Which was a good thing though. The buffet spread was one of the biggest I’ve seen for breakfast! To a point it almost looked like lunch to me.

There’s cheese, cold cut meat, yogurt and salads for those who eat light. There’s buns, toasts, pastries, puffs for those who needs their flour products. There’s pancakes and waffles, and there’s a porridge station for those who want a light meal. On top of that, there were numerous hot dish stations, such as a roti prata station, an entire row of spread which has nasi lemak, prawn paste chicken, fried kway teow, and many more.

In my opinion, this just makes the hotel stay more worth while. We went down for breakfast at 8am, and we only left at 10.30am. Of course, I skipped lunch after that.

After breakfast, it was more or less free and easy. Some of us went to do some light shopping, some of us went to chill at the hotel pool, while some of us went for massages.

I was intending to get a massage right after, but I figured it might not be so good to do a massage right after a heavy meal. So I decided to just venture around the shop houses, mainly to let the food digest a bit, as well as to take some photos.

One thing I’ve learnt about Melaka is that most of the massage places are legit and clean. That is, there’s not much funky business and the sex stuff happening in Melaka. Most of the time though, they might try to upsell you to extend your massage timing, or to sell you other spa services such as scrubs, ba guan, etc. From what I hear, the popular ones were Topic Healthcare, Scents and Senses, and Phoenix. Try not to go for those massage places within the malls, as apparently the skill level is not as good. Since I was deciding to walk first, I went to one further away from the hotel.

I finally settled on Galaxy Reflexology Mall. One good thing about massage here is that they are cheap! I paid RM$75 for 2 hours of massage. I believe it ranges from $70 to $90, depending how popular and how near the spa is to the malls.

Galaxy is a stand alone building, with the reception, foot reflex, chill zone on the first floor and the massage rooms on the second floor. I opted for a 1 hour massage first, as I didn’t want to lock myself into a 2 hour massage if the masseur wasn’t competent. I did mention I would extend if it was good.

I was then allocated a China masseur and led up to the second floor rooms. For one, the rooms didn’t have doors, and only had a translucent curtain. Thus, it’s almost quite obvious that there’s no hanky panky. The massage started out as a powder based tuina massage. At this point, I actually didn’t want to extend, since the masseur’s skill was quite rough. There was strength in the strokes, unfortunately, it was quite jarring and just didn’t feel professional.

I always say that people go for massage for 2 main reasons. 1 is to sooth and relieve. Thus, the main thing is to get a nice soothing long stroke massage where you fall asleep for that session. The other is to ease tension or knots. For those, a nice firm and even semi-painful massage might be welcomed. In this case, it was closer to the firm, semi-painful one, but it just lacked a bit of finesse.

Fortunately though, she switched to using oil after a while, and it was smooth sailing from there. Firm, painful strokes, yet soothing in some way. And of course, I extended to 2 hours. She did try to offer ba guan at another RM$25, but I gave it a miss.

After that, I headed to Dataran Pahlawan Melaka Megamall, which was probably one of the bigger malls in Melaka. For those who didn’t know, the surrounding areas were also owned by Hatten group, that is, Hatten hotel, Hatten Square, Dataran Pahlawan, and the upcoming Hatten city/Elements mall/Imperio Suites.

Your typical mall I suppose. I did see an indoor roller skating rink, and I was tempted to just head in to see what’s the crowd like and all. Any of  you been to a roller skating rink before?

I did get a bit hungry in the afternoon and I snacked. Yes, it was A&W. I was actually quite surprised at the price though. At around RM$10 or so, it was actually more expensive than a 2 piece chicken meal. If I was going to eat at A&W again, I would probably get 2 pieces of real chicken than a sausage. If only they had coney sauce on the side.

Didn’t buy anything else from the area though. I suppose females would go wild with the shopping.

Soon it was dinner time! We made plans to go to a place called Bert’s garden, which is really quite far off the town region. But I guess the main reason was to cater for our group size and all.

Unfortunately, it was a little drizzling, and by the time we got there, the skies were a bit darker. Being an outdoor beer garden, one of the main reasons is to enjoy the scenery and breeze. While we didn’t get wet from the rain, the view wasn’t as spectacular due to the overcast weather.

Food was pretty good! Again, my camera ran out of battery and I have no more photos. I gotta remember to get a spare battery the next time I travel! The salted fried rice was nice, the chicken wings are a must have with beer, the salted egg crabs were decent, but probably half of Singapore’s pricing, and the company was great!

After that, we decided to head to a local music cafe called Wings music cafe. It’s actually slightly off the main tourist area, though still quite near to our hotel. In fact, it would be rare to find any tourist there! The area where it’s located is actually quite dark and consists more of local seedy pubs/ktv area.  So make sure you know your way there!

It’s quite similar to Shuffle bistro and Switch @ Timbre in Singapore, where you have local singers crooning the popular chinese songs (and an occasional english song). Atmosphere wise, it’s definitely a nice place to chill out to.

The finger foods were very decently priced, and the beers were still cheaper than Singapore. It was a little funny to see the older adults acting young and doing silly things though. (Our group consists of 6 people above 50 years old, 4 people around 25-35 years old, and 1 younger than 15) Thing’s that alcohol can do!

By the time we’re done with that (and 2 buckets of beer), it’s almost 1am!

Take a quick rest, and it’s on to day 3!