Melaka – St. Paul’s Hill & Menara Taming Sari

Our initial fears of the somewhat decentralized location of our hotel proved unfounded when we went about our first sightseeing activity on the second day of our Melaka trip. The itinerary I wrote up had us visiting St. Paul’s Hill, the Menara Taming Siri (Melaka Revolving Tower) and Dataran Pahlawan Melaka Megamall on the second day.

Part of the outbound journey to the first stop – St. Paul’s Hill – was a little tricky given how scarce pedestrian crossings were at along the main road, which resulted in us making mad dashes, usually carrying Hannah, across the road. Nothing quite as scary as in Shanghai or Beijing though; the drivers here in Melaka at least seem to be respectful of pedestrians, unlike in China where I felt like though I was to be roadkill. The weather mid-morning journeying up was both good and bad; good because there was a fierce overcast which saw the sun tucked safely away, bad because there was a very slight drizzle.

We navigated our way to St. Paul’s Hill without too much difficulty, thanks to the iOS maps on the trusty and new iPad – yep I double checked the directions with Google maps before we made the trip LOL – and the climb up was expedited by stone steps all the way up. There wasn’t much to see up top as the hill isn’t very high, but you do get a good part of the 360 degree view of Melaka, with the Menara Taming Siri being the most significant landmark in the viewpoint.

The Melaka Revolving Tower was a 10 minute short walk nearby, but we stopped by the Taman Merdeka park midway. This is a pretty small park with several crowd pleasing vehicle exhibits, including several carriages of a train and a turbo-prop plane. Our girl gamely took on the challenge that many other local kids were making a beeline for; essentially posing beside the vehicles.

The Revolving Tower is reportedly one of the more interesting sights in Melaka. It features an air-conditioned gyro tower that goes up 80 meters above ground, offering a full 360 degree view of the city. Pretty pricey at MY$20/adult and MY$10/child, and the ride isn’t very long at about 10 minutes. But the view was spectacular, helped also by the clear– if overcast– late morning weather. Hannah certainly enjoyed the ride, and asked for a pair of binoculars too so that she can see better “things that are far far away”!

The last stop was the Dataran Pahlawan Melaka Megamall, a fairly recent and large shopping mall just a few minutes walk away from the Tower. Prices for the branded apparel shops were about similar and in fact higher than in Singapore, so we ended up not buying anything, except for a pair of butterfly wings that Hannah wore and adored.:)