The shape of the seven nights
A Kuala Lumpur and Melaka vacation package puts four nights in the capital and three on the strait, and the join between them is a single coach ride of about two and a quarter hours. You sleep in the old commercial quarter in Kuala Lumpur and inside the heritage streets in Melaka, so on most mornings you walk out of the door and are already where you wanted to be. The one day that is neither is the day you move.
The split is four and three because Melaka is small and three days will finish it at a walking pace, while the capital keeps giving you another quarter to walk into. The price covers the two parts added together, two of you in one room. Getting into Malaysia and home again sits outside it, and so does anything that flies or sails.
Four nights in Kuala Lumpur
Mornings belong to the grid of shophouses around Medan Pasar and the lanes behind it, where the covered walkways run the length of the block and the ground floors are still money changers, coffee shops and hardware. The Jamek mosque stands where the two rivers meet and you can go inside outside prayer times; a robe is lent at the door and shoes come off. Two streets away sit the Hindu temple on Jalan Tun H S Lee and a Taoist temple founded in the 1860s, both open most of the day.
The covered markets are loud and wet underfoot and the produce end is mostly finished by mid morning, so go early if you want to watch them working rather than closing. The forest reserve inside the city is about nine hectares of old lowland trees with a raised walkway through the crowns, ten minutes uphill from the shopping street, and the traffic thins to a hum once you are in it. Museums are spread out rather than clustered, and the national one and the Islamic arts one together will take you a half day.
Three nights in Melaka
You can walk the old town in a morning and it still earns three days. The red block the Dutch left, the church behind it and the steps up to the roofless ruin at the crown of the hill are all within ten minutes of each other, and the slabs leaning against the ruin walls carry Portuguese and Dutch names. Down the far side stands the stone gate of the old fort. The river runs between the square and Jonker Street with a paved walk along both banks, used more after dark than in the afternoon.
Jonker Street and the two streets parallel to it are Peranakan shophouse fronts, narrow and deep, with goldsmiths weighing on the counter and a workshop or two still making beaded slippers to order. One block over, a Chinese temple from the 1640s, a mosque with a tiered roof and a small Hindu temple stand within a few hundred feet of each other. Nyonya cooking is why a lot of people come: laksa thick with coconut, chicken braised in fermented bean paste, cendol under shaved ice.
What is work, and what answers to a clock
About half this week bends to something posted. The coach has a departure time and you have to be out at a terminal on the edge of Kuala Lumpur to meet it. The street market only closes the road on Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings. Several museums shut one day a week, and in the Jonker quarter Tuesday is the day a good many shops and kitchens are dark as well. The other half of the week you decide over breakfast.
The work is on your feet. Both towns are walked on pavement that is broken in places, the covered walkways step up and down at every shophouse front, and the hill in Melaka is a real few minutes of climbing. Assume heat and humidity, and rain in any month; nobody can tell you in advance what your particular week will do. With luggage, the run between the Melaka terminal and the old town is not one to do on foot.
The move in the middle
The coach leaves from the big terminal at Bandar Tasik Selatan, on the southern edge of Kuala Lumpur, roughly ten kilometers out from where you have been sleeping. Get there on the rail line rather than by road if you can, because the terminal sits directly above a station served by the light rail, the commuter train and the airport line. Allow forty minutes from the old quarter, plus the wait inside.
Departures run about every half hour through the day and the ride is around two hours and fifteen minutes on the expressway. Melaka Sentral, where you get off, is out at Peringgit and not in the old town: the terminal itself lists Jonker Street at 3.6 kilometers and the Dutch square at 4.1. Town bus route 17 covers that in ten to fifteen minutes, or you take a taxi, which is what we book for you with luggage.
- How
- Scheduled coach, expressway
- How long
- About 2 hours 15 minutes
- How often
- Departures about every half hour through the day
- Who runs it
- Several licensed operators work the route between the two terminals. The one you travel with is fixed when the seat is reserved and printed on your ticket.
Each end taken by itself
- reserve a Kuala Lumpur vacation package, 4 nights, $1,290 on its own
- Melaka vacation package, three nights, 3 nights, $960 on its own
Seven nights is four plus three, and $2,250 per person is the Kuala Lumpur price added to the Melaka price, with two of you in one room.
Clocks that run this pair
- The coach runs to a posted departure time, with departures about every half hour from the terminal at Bandar Tasik Selatan.
- The street market closes Jonker Street to traffic on Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings, 6 pm to midnight. On other evenings the road is open and the shops keep normal hours.
- The Peranakan house museum on Jalan Tun Tan Cheng Lock opens 10 am to 5 pm and closes on Mondays. A guide walks you through it and cameras stay in the bag.
- Tuesday is the thin day in the Jonker quarter, when a lot of museums, shops and kitchens are shut.
- The palace museum below the hill keeps short hours on Tuesdays and Fridays, 12:15 pm to 2:45 pm, and longer hours the rest of the week.
What the figure holds and what it leaves to you
Held inside the figure
- Seven nights of rooms, four in Kuala Lumpur inside the old quarter and three in Melaka inside the heritage streets, two of you sharing one room.
- One reserved seat per person on a scheduled coach south, on a date and departure time fixed before you pay.
- A car between Melaka Sentral and your room on arrival, and back out to the terminal at the end.
- Breakfast on the mornings where the room rate carries it, which is most of them. We tell you which ones it does not.
- A printed day sheet with posted opening hours, closing days and the market evenings that fall inside your dates.
- Entry to the Peranakan house museum in Melaka and to two museums in Kuala Lumpur.
Left outside it, on purpose
- Getting to Malaysia and home again. Nothing that flies or sails is inside this price.
- Getting yourself out to the coach terminal in Kuala Lumpur on the morning you move.
- Food and drink beyond breakfast. Both towns are eaten at hawker counters for very little.
- Taxis, ride hailing and town buses inside each town, including route 17 if you use it.
- Entry to anything not named on your day sheet, and the boat on the Melaka river.
- A third person, a second room or a single room, all of which are quoted separately.
A price on this site covers the ground only: the rooms, the named transfers between them, and the people who meet you. It does not cover getting to the country or leaving it.
We write back within one business day with the coach date and departure time, both addresses, the walking distance from each door to the square or the market, and every closing day that falls inside your dates. Nothing is held and nothing is charged until you confirm in writing.
The months this pair holds together
We will not forecast a season for you. Rain is possible in every month on this coast of the peninsula, the pattern here differs from the east coast, and the week you book is the week you get. Plan around the things that are actually posted instead: which evenings the street market falls on inside your three nights, which museum closes on which day, and whether a public holiday lands in the middle and fills the expressway.
Two things move by the calendar and we check both before confirming anything. Lunar new year packs Jonker Street and shuts a good many family kitchens for several days, and the dates shift each year. Ramadan and the two Eid holidays shift as well, which changes visiting hours at some mosques and puts evening markets in places that do not usually have them. Give us rough dates and we will write back with what falls inside them.
Asked about this one more than once
- Can we run it the other way round and start in Melaka?
Yes, and the price is the same either way, since it is the two towns added together in either order. The route is worked in both directions and we confirm the posted departure time for the one you pick. Be clear about what starting in Melaka means: you arrive at a terminal several kilometers outside the old town with your bags on day one, which most people would rather do halfway through a week than at the start of it.
- How hard is the coach ride itself?
It is paved expressway the whole way and the seat is a reclining coach seat with your bag in the hold underneath. Two and a quarter hours is short enough that most people manage it in one sitting. Eat before you board rather than counting on anything en route, keep a layer with you because the air conditioning is set cold, and expect the terminal at each end to take longer than you think.
- What if our dates miss the market evenings?
Then you see Jonker Street the way it is the rest of the week, with the road open to traffic, the goldsmiths and the slipper workshop working normal hours, and somewhere to sit down in the evening without queueing. We will tell you before you commit exactly which evenings fall inside your three nights, so it is your call and not a surprise.
Reserve a month rather than a date
Tell the office which month you have in mind and it will answer with what that month makes possible and what it shuts.