Melaka, Malaysia — Towns & Travel Guide

What is Melaka known for?

Its capital, Malacca City, holds a UNESCO-listed core of red Dutch buildings, Peranakan shophouses and the ruins of a Portuguese fort above the Malacca River. Five hundred years of trade left the layers a visitor walks through. The Malay sultans came first, then the Portuguese, the Dutch and the British, each drawn to the same narrow waterway.

Jonker Street and the Baba-Nyonya houses carry the Straits Chinese heritage that grew up here between those powers.

Where is Melaka?

Melaka sits on the south-western coast of the Malay Peninsula, facing the Strait of Malacca. It is one of Malaysia's smallest states. Across that busy shipping strait lies the Indonesian island of Sumatra, and the water between them has carried trade for centuries. Negeri Sembilan wraps the state along its northern and western edge, while Johor borders it to the south and east.

The land is mostly level. It rises only gently inland, dotted with isolated hills called inselbergs, because the state lies just south of the Titiwangsa Mountains that form the spine of the peninsula and stop short before reaching here. The Malacca River threads the middle of the state and runs straight through the heart of Malacca City before emptying into the strait.

Three districts make up the whole: Alor Gajah in the north, Melaka Tengah around the capital on the coast, and Jasin toward the Johor border. None of it is far from the sea. The exclave of Tanjung Tuan, a small coastal cape, sits detached to the north within Negeri Sembilan.

That coastal, low-lying setting on a world shipping lane is the fact everything else here follows from.

What is Melaka like?

Culture in Melaka is a record of who passed through the port. The Malay sultanate set the base, and Islam and the Malay language remain the ground the rest sits on. Chinese traders who settled from the fifteenth century and married local women created the Peranakan, or Baba-Nyonya, community, whose beaded slippers, tiled shophouses and layered cooking are the state's signature.

You taste that mixture in Nyonya kitchens along Jonker Street, where Malay spice meets Chinese technique on the same plate. The colonial hands are still visible in stone. The Dutch left the terracotta-red Stadthuys and Christ Church around the square; the Portuguese left the A Famosa gatehouse and a small Kristang-speaking community descended from their soldiers.

Weekend evenings fill the Jonker Walk night market with antiques, food stalls and karaoke. It is loud. The mixture is the point.

The daytime pace is slower, spent drifting between the museums and the temples, mosques and churches that stand within a few streets of one another in the old core of Malacca City.

What is the history of Melaka?

The Malacca Sultanate was founded around 1400 by Parameswara, a prince who fled to this stretch of coast and turned a fishing village into the greatest trading port in the region. It commanded the strait. Ships from Ming China, Gujarat, Persia and Arabia met here to exchange spices, cloth and porcelain.

The Portuguese took the city by force in 1511 and raised the A Famosa fort a year later, then the Dutch seized it in 1641 with help from Johor. Britain took over the port in 1824, and from these Straits Settlements grew the modern state within Malaysia.

What is the climate of Melaka?

Melaka has a tropical rainforest climate, hot and humid every month of the year. Days sit near the high twenties to low thirties Celsius whatever the season. Rain falls year-round but comes hardest with the Northeast Monsoon from October to December, when thunderstorms build over the Strait of Malacca and break in heavy afternoon downpours.

February is the driest stretch, with the clearest skies for wandering the old streets. There is no cool season to wait for.

How do you get to Melaka?

Melaka has no busy passenger airport. Most travellers reach it overland from Kuala Lumpur instead, and the usual arrival point is Kuala Lumpur International Airport, roughly 135 kilometres to the north. Express coaches run straight from the airport and the city down the expressway to Melaka Sentral, the state's main bus terminal, in about two and a half hours.

From there a short local hop or taxi drops you at the Dutch Square. Driving down is just as simple.