Weekend at Malacca: Part I

Last weekend my colleagues and I finally went on our vacation  that we have planned since forever lol. It started with one of us looking for deals on Groupon for a nice, affordable holiday which was not too far from KL. She stumbled upon an offer for chalets in the middle of town in Malacca called The Neem and basically the three of us girls fell in love with the place.

We booked this trip sometime around November or December last year. It was supposed to be more of us since we booked the biggest room, Ketapang, which could fit a maximum of 6 people, but it ended up just being the three of us girls ^^ We also did a lot of internet researching and found a lot of great reviews for The Neem (which reminds me I haven't reviewed them on TripAdvisor yet)

Our stay was for 8th to 9th February 2014 (Saturday and Sunday) which was the weekend after Chinese New Year so we knew the holiday crowd would be gone by then. Also, my birthday was to fall on the the Tuesday after so it was kind of an early birthday treat for me (ﾉﾟ▽ﾟ)ﾉ On Friday we stayed at our friend's place in Seremban so we could make our journey to Malacca easier the next day. 

Look at our savings! Scoreee

I'll be talking about what we did at Malacca along with our experience at our cozy little chalet just to give you guys an idea of what a really slow and relaxed holiday in Malacca will look like o(^^o)

So we reached Malacca quite late in the morning and went straight to the Malacca Zoo. Honestly, we were not zoo-goers, haha, but since it was so close to Ayer Keroh, where we entered Malacca, we decided to just stop by. And because we weren't used to zoos, we totally underestimated how long we would take there and we ended up skipping our other destination which was the bee farm. (we were really excited about up dressing like astronauts and risk getting stung by 183823290 bees.) 

Next we had our lunch at the old Aeon on the way to Malacca town. YES I KNOW - we went to one the Malaysia's best state for food just to end up eating at a hypermarket.. But it was crazy hot! So we really didn't think twice about choosing an air-conditioned food court over that renowned laksa at some warong we had to endure the heat at.

We were finally going to our chalet! Getting to town was easy but we had to depend on the internet to find The Neem. And as many of The Neem's previous residents would tell you, we got lost. We took a lot of turns thinking we were close but as it turns out we were still a distance from our destination. When we finally got into the right road, we missed the entrance and had to make a loong turn around town to get back into the same road. Thankfully it was nothing too strenuous and we found going around town useful to spot to visit on the next day.

Look out for this banner and signboard on your left!

The road that goes to The Neem (^ ^)

We reached our chalet at about 3.30 pm, half an hour after check-in time. We were greeted by an old aunty who was the mother of the caretakers of the chalet. Aunty was really friendly and made us fill a form in the quaint little welcoming room (kind of like a hotel lobby) before showing us to our room. The sight of the pool and the bright chalets immediately made our hearts light up and we knew we would love our room before we got in.

Inside our room!

The Neem chalets are really old school and rustic. The doors of the chalet are locked with a padlock and latches only and there is a lot of wood exterior. Our room was reallly wide and had a queen sized bed and mattress next to each other, both with mosquito nets. There was just TV, air conditioning and some plain drinking water ready in our room which we were cool with. The bathroom was wide too - it fit a tempayan area for bathing, a sink area, shower room and a toilet. Pretty sweet for a small chalet! 

Our Ketapang room

Our bathroom!

Our shower! lol

Our bathroom entrance!

We decided to rest and pray until 6.30 pm, after which we made our way to have our seafood dinner... YUMS. The destination was Medan Selera Ikan Bakar Muara Sungai Duyung... aka heaven on earth! 

Rowwws of cars parked before you reach the restaurant. It's so famous even Jackie Chan's been here!

At least the food was heavenly. There were LOADS of people by the time the sun was setting and we had to actually stalk customers who looked like they were almost finishing so that we could get a good table by the sea.

And we were successful!

Our awesome view of the stretching sea, fishermen boats and sea eagles ♥

Our heaven-sent dinner, just before we finished eating 

After our dinner we headed to town again for our river cruise. The queue for the ticket was really short so the only long queue was the one boarding the actual river cruises. We had about 3 groups ahead of us so we waited about 20-30 minutes to board. Before we boarded, a 3D photo of us were taken so that we could buy the photo after the cruise. The whole cruise took less than an hour and we stopped by the local pasar malam at Dataran Pahlawan (I think) before going back to our chalet afterwards.

The view queueing for the cruise. Not bad for a half hour wait..

Down the river we go~

Stuff we saw along the river.. 

Other cruises and people having their dinner. A lot of the shophouses are heavily designed with graffiti which makes it a really awesome sight to see..

Our expenses for today:
Malacca Zoo RM15 (with MyKad)
Seafood dinner less than RM25
River cruise: RM10 per adult (with MyKad)

Stay tuned for part two of our Malacca weekend! ♥