Malacca - Part 2

In this concluding part on our trip to Malacca (as if this was some long-drawn epic serial, bah!), let me just go in a bit more detail on a particular place I had visited.

The Islet

Facing our hotel (club) room on the 18^th floor of the newly-constructed Holiday Inn hotel, was this strip of land which we initially thought was a small islet. It had a striking row of yellow and red-striped houses in exactly the same size and shape. They could either be (a) shops or (b) offices or (c) apartments. In my mind,

I called these the Mysterious Buildings That Look Strange or MBTLS for long. If you take a close hard look at the photo on the left, MBTLS can be found on the left-hand side of the islet.

At the end of the islet, there was another striking piece of architecture – a mosque that looked as if it was floating on the water! The islet, the MBTLS on them plus the mosque, against the backdrop of the historic Straits of Malacca – it was a marvelous feeling.

The time came for Friday prayer, and I decided to make a trip to the Mosque. The mosque was called the Floating Mosque, and since the trip there seemed like a million miles, decided to let the taxi driver overcharge me in return for a safe trip to and fro the islet.

MBTLS

During the taxi ride, I had many revelations, courtesy of the driver.

It was not an islet – it was a piece of totally reclaimed land called Malacca Island. It was to be a powerhouse tourist and business attraction to rake in the moolah. However, it was now nowhere near such a description.

We entered the main road, near the MBTLS. Then the next revelation came –

The MBTLS were none of the above – they were just empty. Abandoned. Nothing there. And trust me, it was bloody freaky and totally eerie. Apparently, during the great hooha after the creation of the islet, a developer built the rows and rows of identical flats for shop rental. But due to the unrealistically high price of the space, and after some other problems, the developer fled, leaving the buildings imcomplete and uninhabitated and unused. The taxi driver himself had wasted his money on one office space, pointing his finger at one of the few hundred rooms. And the whole islet had been abandoned for the last 10 years.

We reached the mosque, which was beautiful, but also had some abandoned areas. Nonetheless, the whole floating concept was superbly executed, and many others were snapping away long after the prayers had finished. The view from the ends of the mosque were a sight to marvel. Indeed, it was the place to contemplate the signs of Allah after a few rak’ats or a recitation of the Qur’an.

The time to head back came, and as we drove past the abandoned buildings, I could not help but have a sense of loss and regret that this place had so much more potential to offer to the Malaccan folks. The sheer waste of human effort, time and money on those buildings, and the look of neglect and dilapidation of the entire place is indeed sad. As I drove past some rusting pieces of foundation which I was told were the first irons bars put in place to build a lavish condominium, I recalled reading about the year 1795. Like how the British sacked Malacca in the 1800s to prevent it from being used by the Dutch, and thus making it look like a ghost town (or “sleepy hollow” as they call it), this little islet has become a sleepy hollow itself owing to economic pressures and poor planning.