Tuna
Wednesday 15 May 2024
Our first stop this morning was the remains of A Fomosa Fort, also called St John’s Fort, which was built in the early in the 16th century by the Portuguese. Just up the hill (via too many steps) are the remains of St Pauls’ Church with a very white lighthouse. The place was swarming with school kids in lime green t-shirts and signing songs (they were rather cute) and a couple busloads of Chinese tourists (they weren’t cute or quiet). At the top there was a good view down over Melaka and out to the sea.
After catching our breathe, a drink of water and time to stop sweating, we headed back down the stairs. We had to have another rest to do the above again. It is rather humid and hot here and we are constantly being large puddles of sweat. We were feeling a bit cooked by this stage, so decided it would be best to go for a drive to the next attraction, as we get to sit in our air conditioned car. It helped us to feel a bit better.
Our destination was the Masjid Selat Melaka (Melaka Straits Mosque), which is built over the sea and is a very different architecture style to what you would expect a mosque to look like. They had a strict dress code where we had to have our arms and legs covered, and I had to have my hair covered. They had appropriate wear that we could put over our clothes and a hijab for my head. Then removing our shoes, we were able to wander around the mosque, but not into it as they don’t want tourists wandering around their place of worship. Makes sense and we have to respect that.
A quick trip to the supermarket to stock up on a few essentials, via a French architecture inspired hotel and shops. A little bit out of place.
The view from our apartment on the 12th floor looks out over some land and then to the sea, Straits of Melaka. The whole complex (Atlantis Residences) comprises of 4 towers with about 40 floors on each tower. The first 6 floors are parking spaces and there around 12 units per floor (well, there are 12 on our floor). Doing an interweb search and there are a total of 1,320 units in this whole complex. That is just for this complex, there are many of these apartment complex towers spread across this area. I would guess that this complex is probably about 20% occupied (being generous). They are building more of these tower complexes. Melaka isn’t that populous that it needs more housing. What we have noticed here is that there lots of buildings that are in various stages of being built but are now abandoned. Out near the mosque there is an abandoned International Cruise Terminal, Harbour city shopping mall (about 15 floors), Arab City and rows and rows of houses above shops. From our apartment we can see the abandoned Terra Square (it is just concrete pylons poking out to the ground), the second tower of the Amber Cove and The Cove. On our way back from the supermarket we drove past the Monorail Themepark and Studio, which as all the others is half built and then abandoned. Where does all the money for these building come from and where/who did all the money go to?
Chilling out this afternoon we watched the ships go up the Straits of Melaka, which made us wonder why it is such a major shipping lane. A quick look on marinetraffic.com showed it amazingly, with the straits creating a massive short cut for nearly all east-west shipping.
