Day 3

We had breakfast at the hotel. I expected a simple breakfast but I was pleasantly surprised with the generous buffet spread. Boy, another round of enticing food to start the day. Majority of us decided to do some sight-seeing and riding around Melaka town center. Oonta with fond experiences of the numerous long-timed traffic junctions  decided to skip the tour. Phang, having worked in Melaka for a couple of years before, volunteered as our ride leader. 

The old Melaka's town was chocked with traffic and people especially around the chinese temple areas. It was the first lunar day of the month, an auspicious day for Taoists to offer prayers at temples. We visited the Portuguese descendent settlement  and we were surprise by the new developments.  I could barely recognise the old Portuguese 'square.' The new-look settlement boasts a modern hotel with neat and clean sea-food stalls.  We also made a brief visit to Kampung Morten, a heritage malay village dated back to 1922.  Kampung Morten still houses some beautiful and  unique Melaka style village houses. We finished our little ride around Melaka with a stopover at Tan Kim Hock tidbits shop for iced durians cendol . Nice..     

It was already passed 1pm when we were ready to check out. The final route was to ride  back to the NS Expressway and re-exit back to Simpang Ampat.  Ivan had a little scared when his  bike refused to restart at a petrol station in Ayer Keroh. A frantic probing and digging around the bike finally pointed to the main fuse which had blown. I swore I could hear Ivan mumbling away "I’am really not having a good time now.."  

With the faulty fuse replaced, we nodded back to NS Expressway. Simpang Ampat  is just 6 km away from the toll. Meanwhile, Oonta called on the mobile that he would be riding back with Ismail to Melaka to see his daughter. The 14 km of road from Simpang Ampat to Lubok Cina was surprisingly twisty giving everyone a good workout as we had been dieting pretty much on straight roads diets. Lubok Cina is a small town with a few commercial shops along the main road.

As it was past 2pm, we decided to stop somewhere for lunch. We stopped at road side stall manned by Pak Mat.  The stall with ample parking is located next to the main town’s roundabout. We had Pak Mat’s supposedly famous chicken rice for lunch. Meanwhile, Zain’s stomach was giving up on him prompting him to skip much of his meal. He blamed the 2 cans of drinks he had the night before.

Another 8 km of riding past Lubok Cina took us right into Jalan Port Dickson which led us straight to Pasir Panjang. As we were at the tail end of our 3 days ride, we took it easy by riding lazily along the coastal road to Port Dickson. Zain broke off to join his family incidentally holidaying in Port Dickson and Rashid continued with his lone journey to Bagan Lalang to join his family holidaying there too ..

We had a brief stop at one of the public beaches to envy the weekend tourists frolicking on the beach. Ironically, we had been to both sides of coastal beaches and I did not even get my feet wet in any of them. We bade each other a heavy good-bye before darting back to the highway to our respective homes.

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