Jonker Walk is a street in Melaka flanked on each side with heritage houses turned into hotels, shops and restaurants. There are temples, too. On weekends, it becomes a night market and the streets are closed to traffic. Apparently, Jonker Walk is famous for antiques but on weekends, clothes, souvenirs and food, among other stuff, are sold. It has sort of a touristy feel but it is masked by rows and rows of beautiful heritage buildings.
It is quite easy to reach Jonker Walk from the Dutch Square. Just cross the street, walk along the small bridge over the river and you'll see the street island with a marker: Jonker Walk. On its right, a huge red building with a restaurant and a souvenir shop selling local food items or "
pasalubong," mostly sweets, like the local dessert dodol, candied or dried this and that, biscuits, chips, etc. I think the building's name is San Shu Gong. It's usually packed with tourists on weekends buying just about everything they could carry back home. Anyway, Jonker Walk is very hard to miss and it'll take less than 2 minutes to walk from the Clock Tower to the marker.
We went to Melaka on a Sunday and apparently, the street market opens early during weekends, around lunch time. See, the crowd is starting to build up. It was taken just before 7:00 p.m. I know, right? It's not yet dark. On a side note: Do you know what is being sold on the left side of the photo? The one with the colorful boxes laid out on the table? They're facial masks from Taiwan, the famous My Beauty Diary. Imagine that. Lol.
An hour later and the street suddenly became congested with tourists.
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And, the party had began. There were some performers on stage.
Hungry? Don't worry. There are a lot of restaurants, some with tables and chairs propped outside on the streets for open-air dining and for drinking booze. Now I know why there were many people gathered around the stage. Dining, drinking plus free entertainment. You can't beat that.
There are dining options for every budget. This one below is street-side dining.
This one, on the other hand, is a good-sized restaurant, The Geographer, and it's a hit with westerners. They also provide al fresco dining. I've bought some sandwiches and noodles to go earlier in the afternoon there.
Speaking of food, here are some local delicacies sold on the streets, like cendol and dodol. If I am not mistaken, dodol is like our own delicacy, the "calamay," and some are even packaged in coconut shells, or what we call, "bao." I was not able to eat cendol but it's quite popular there, especially the durian cendol. It's perfect for the humid temperature as it contains shaved ice.
Remember the candied fruits popular in Beijing? They're also being sold in Melaka. Even Taiwanese sausage, although it is considerably smaller and pricier in Melaka. See, Melaka is very international.
There are several shops selling putuo (no idea but there are a couple of stores selling those) and tarts, and of course, a trip down to Jonker Walk would not be complete without eating the famed chicken rice ball.
There are many restaurants serving chicken rice balls to choose from, and I was too hungry to seek out the more popular ones, like Chung Wah which I observed had people lining outside around just past lunch time. So, it'll probably have people lining there, too, during dinner time. Chung Wah, if you want to look for it, is directly in front of San Shu Gong as shown below (I've used this photo, too, above). Can you see it in the far right side? Kedai Kopi Chung Wah.
We settled with this restaurant, Famosa Chicken Rice Balls, which we stumbled upon and which turned out to be quite well-known. It has a
website! We got there just before 9:30 p.m. and they were almost closing. Of course, I ordered chicken rice balls and hainese chicken rice. What's the difference? The rice balls were just hainese chicken-flavored rice rolled into tight little balls smaller than the size of ping pong balls. The rice balls have been molded almost smoothly, and well, for me, it was nothing special, except for the novelty. I'm sorry. However, it's still a treat to eat it just because I got to taste it while I was in Melaka. Maybe, I just had one too many hainese chicken rice since I've been eating it almost everyday while in Singapore and Malaysia. The hainese chicken I separately ordered was just your regular hainese chicken you can probably eat anywhere in South East Asia. There was nothing special, too, with the roast chicken which came with our chicken rice balls.
Our chicken rice balls with roast chicken. The rice balls are quite heavy, even if they look bite-sized. I think, 5 rice balls amount to 2 cups of rice since they're tightly packed; perhaps, even more. Some people says they won't be enough for people with good appetite. I have good appetite but I still found it quite heavy. I couldn't even finish 3 balls, and I was famished.
We were the only diners left, anyway, it was almost ten. The waitress told me if I'd like to make a final order since they're closing already. I get the feeling though that they wanted us to finish eating quickly.
Our run-of-the-mill hainese chicken rice. However, the plum drink is quite a treat. My mom didn't like it, since it's sour, but I did. I loved it. And I ordered a coffee jelly of some sorts as dessert. You have to put some sugar syrup to give it sweetness. Again, my mom didn't like it, since it couldn't get any sweeter, but I did.
Aside from food, you'd find stalls selling shirts, slippers, stationery, trinkets, souvenirs, etc. Not much different from other night markets in Asia. In essence, Jonker Walk is fun, vibrant and touristy, especially on weekends.
