Land of Nyonyas and Babas *by JS* Part 1/3

It was the weekend of May day and Monkey and JS had already planned a trip to Nyonya and Baba land. The plan was to depart at 10am and arrive at 11.30am and then head to Aunty Lee Nyonya restaurant for lunch before we start our walkabout around the historical town where Zheng He and Hang Li Poh used to tread.

According to historical records Admiral Zheng He made 7 trips on the treasured fleet in the early 1400s to this part of the world. He reached as far west as Sri Lanka, India and the east coast of Africa and as south as Indonesia where today he is still worshipped by the Chinese and there you will find a chinese temple dedicated to him. Strange though cos Zheng He was a Muslim!!

Back to the 21st century......as we approached the sg besi toll, OMG...look at the F***ing traffic. Yes, it was a start of a nightmare!!

chocker block at sg besi toll

crawling traffic along the NS highway.....that's what i call "the speed that kills"

The usual 1.5 hours journey took 4.5 hours but the driver for the day was still cool as a cucumber.......

On arrival at the Majestic Hotel, we couldn't wait to check in then quickly go for lunch. We couldn't make it to Aunty Lee cos they close at 2pm. In addition, the restaurant only have 6 tables. WTF. So we are in Nyonya land but no nyonya food!!

Reluctantly we headed out on foot and came across a coffee shop style hawker centre.

The aroma of the fry Kway Teoh and Satay was so damn tempting especially when we were so dead hungry!! so we sat down and ordered what our eyes saw......was the stomach hungry or was it the eyes that was hungry?? haha.

we were so late and kway teoh stall ran out of kway teoh so we settled for mee.

This is Melaka style pork satay. The sauce has smashed pineapples in it. Pork and pineapple are perfect partners.

The Melaka wan tan mee is pretty bland and has a clean after taste, Not everybody's "cup of tea"......or rather "bowl of mee".

Sui kow and wanton to accompany the wan tan mee.

and barley lime to cool off.

That was a sumptous meal of variety i guess and somehow we were still feeling .......errrrrrrrrr, hungry!!

So we continue to walk towards the town. Forgot to mention that Monkey grew up partially in Melaka and has got Portuguese blood running in her!! So i had a local tour guide bringing me around town and that was a somewhat comfortable feeling actually :)

Then we stumbled upon this stall along Jalan Bunga Raya.

Monkey : this is the most famous popiah seller in the whole of Melaka.

JS : really??!! why are they so famous??

Monkey : look at the queue at this time of the day!!! Don't think you get this in KUL.

JS : then what are we waiting for?? lets go for it.

Monkey then queued up and was given a "queue" number when she ordered!!!

Monkey : uncle, how long to wait??

Uncle : come back in 30mins!!

JS : o_O WTF!!

So monkey said lets go for some cool stuff first and we headed down Jln Bunga Raya to this very old fashion ice cafe which was Monkey's fav ........strange name.

Yes, they only serve ice kacang, chendol, etc. Having Chendol is a must when you are in Nyonya land.

The palm sugar has such great length.

what's this?? ice cream soda with a scope of vanilla ice cream....as the name suggest, it's ice cream soda lar.....ice cream and ice cream soda....get it!! you don't get this anywhere anymore.

After the ice stuff , its back to the popiah........

Look at the queue.....it's got longer!!!

Anyway we collected our popiah and couldn't wait to sink our teeth into the nice juicy filling.

JS took the first bite........and yes, there was pork scratching and that gave a nice texture in comparison to the soft filling.

They are also very generous with the filling.

One hell of an amazing popiah and i affirm it's one of the best i have had and eating it by the roadside made it even tastier!

For those of you who are interested, it's call Popiah Bunga Raya and it's outside Madam King's departmental store and they only open from 1.30pm to 9pm....strange opening hours!!

Incidently you will find the best O chien in Melaka along this street at night!

Then it was time for us to march on through the old town and finally arrived at Christ Church which is the town centre.

Watch this space for part 2 outta 3 parts series.