Weekend in Malacca
We were supposed to go to Malacca yesterday. Thanks to our lazy bones, it didn’t happen. Instead, we started this morning to visit Malaysia’s historical city. For an Indian, Malacca is synonymous with Podicherry. If you have visited Pondy (as it is fondly known as), you’ll know the kind of ambience and the touch of class to expect from Malacca. It also has glint of Goa although we didn’t find any beach nearby in our one day’s trip.
Malacca is a nice place to visit. We had a good time. Warning to museum haters: there are at least a couple =). There’s a heap of Malacca’s pictures on Flickr. Do look-up.
One bouncer was the parking ticket. It seems Malacca has a unique parking rule. You have to buy prepaid parking tickets and leave it visible behind your windshield, no matter where you park. Failing to do so, the corporation police will penalize you for parking even in regular designated parking lots. For our luck, we found it out the hard way and ended up paying the denda (a Malay word for fine or penalty). It appears that only the locals are aware of this rule. The funnier fact is that parking tickets are sold in shopping malls, street corners, you can buy them anywhere as we later found out. But, how is one to know if you’re visiting the place for the first time? To us, it felt like extortion.
Have you had weirder parking stories? Do share.
You are not the only one who find the parking system in Malacca to be kinda weird and poor in practical usability. Me as a Malaccan, don’t like this system as well.
Actually, it’s quite recent (within a year) that the Malacca municipal council has changed the parking system. Previously, it used to be the convinient approach of paying the feeder. Instead of going ahead to a more technologically advanced city, it seems that the people behind the parking system is heading backward in the stream of urban planning.
Oct 25, 05 at 04:18Tien Soon: Nice to know that a Malaccan thinks this way too. We are so much used to the normal parking token and payment that this system totally threw us off.
Oct 26, 05 at 04:30