Monday, February 22, 2010

Journey to Melaka

We arrived in Malaysia on a Friday night, and, against all odds, we decided to spend Saturday afternoon in Melaka (or Malacca).

As we are staying in Petaling Jaya –  a Kuala Lumpur satellite city commonly known as PJ –  we had to take a LRT (Light Rain Transit) to the centre of KL in order to go to Puduraya, the main bus station of the city. The nearest LRT station to Puduraya is the Masjid Jamek station, and we had to walk about 10 minutes to get there. Almost everyone speaks English, or at least understands it, and Malaysian people usually are helpful, so communication shouldn't be a problem.

As soon as we got to Puduraya, we could notice how peculiar and different everything is. The station is pretty crowded, noisy and colourful – full of stalls selling all kind of things! I had googled earlier to check on bus schedules and fares from KL to Melaka, and had found out that Transnasional – a Government bus operator – was one of the best and safest ones. It costs us only 12.30 Ringitts (which is quite cheap in comparison to Dollars), but they couldn't inform us the platform. A funny thing was the waiting in front of an information desk, where five or six people worked on a board changing manually the time, platform and information on all the buses leaving the station. It was quite an interesting experience!  


The Transnasional bus was comfortable – with really nice and typical bright yellow curtains – and the journey took about 2:30h. The bus arrived at Melaka Sentral (central bus station for interstate and city buses), which is 5km from the Melaka historical centre. Either take a taxi, or take a bus (like we did, and which cost us less than 2 Ringitts). I don't advise walking because it's so hot and humid, that you'll probably get tired before even getting there!

No comments:

Post a Comment