So I've realized that of all my blogposts,
the one that got the most views is the Haunted Ria Apartment post. Link here http://thepinktimes.blogspot.co.nz/2012/09/haunted-ria-apartment.html. It was about my crazy one night stay at one of the most haunted apartments in Genting Highlands with a bunch of mates, without knowing that it was haunted in the first place. It was really scary living in a place as 'dirty' as Ria. Then again, with my 'luck', I've had several other episodes when I visited Malacca about 2 years ago.
I've always heard about Malacca being another food haven apart from Penang and other places in Malaysia. I've been to Malacca when I was a kid, and probably have forgotten my experience or what I devoured there. I sometimes brought up Malacca to my dad (who's from Malacca) , and he would tell me of all the good places to have yummy food. So, I decided to make a trip there, knowing what to eat and so forth, with a bunch of mates.
I've had a fairly fun time visiting the zoo, historical places, museums and doing some tacky touristy stuff. I got so excited with the food too! Chicken rice balls, pork satay, Satay Celup and more things to contribute to a grand food coma at the end of the day. The sky got really dark as the day approached nightfall. I thought that Malacca was really really dark if you're not in happening places like Jonker Street. Being a KL chick, I was used to the bright lights of the city even at night (and headlights illuminating the highway when there's a jam).
One of the days that we were there was a Sunday. I went for morning mass at St.Francis Xavier church with X. After the mass, we had a mini tour around. There was a stall selling rosaries, prayer books and stuff outside the church. X decided to go have a look at the stall. At a distance, I saw a lady who had a very sad expression on her face and from what I could tell, she was Indian, with a red dot on her forehead.
What caught my eye was that her skin colour was a shade of pale blue and lips were very red, her eyes reddish as well. I lowered my shades to see if my eyes were fooling me, but she looked even bluer. I quickly asked X to look, he says he can't see anything. She was still right there! Nevermind, I thought, poor lady who probably has a skin disease or something.
We turned to leave to catch up with other mates. I looked back for a split second she was gone. Decided to shrug it off anyway, cos I didn't wanna scare myself knowing that I'm surrounded with graveyards and stuff.
At night, we all went to Jonker Street for dinner. Decided to park nearby a school and walk to Jonker as there were no parking there. After dinner, we walked back to the car at about 10.15pm. Like I said, it was really dark with only one or two dimly lit streetlamps. As I was walking, I felt cold all of a sudden. The school was on my right, and I was walking along the walkway. I heard a noise of which sounded like a person in the school area. I turned to look and I saw someone moving - it was a security guard. Thank God, I'm just probably scaring myself. But about a few steps next to him, I saw an old man walking and swinging his arms, clapping them as they swung - like old people usually do when exercising at parks. "Meh," I thought.. until I realized that he was also in the same pale shade of blue as the lady I saw at the church.
At this point, I was like o_o poor man. What's with blue people and Malacca?
I looked a little longer and realized that his legs only ended to his shins. Okay. No. What's this.
I realized that what I saw was not human. Ok. No. Look away.
Chills ran down my spine, my heart was pounding.
I didn't wanna scare anyone but at the same time, I wanted to GTFO and run to the car. So I just told them to walk faster, cos I needed to use the toilet at the hotel. Needless to say, I had almost no sleep that night. I kept it to myself as well, because I didn't wanna freak anyone out while we were there.
The next morning, we visited Hang Li Poh's Well, another historical site. We parked in front of a graveyard. Not that there's no better place to park - it's just that there were graveyards everywhere. I still felt super creeped out by what I saw the previous day and felt uneasy the entire day despite walking around in broad daylight.
My uneasy-ness got worse the next day when we decided to extend our stay to one more day, this time at an inn called Yellow Mansion. I seriously regretted the decision. Booking it last minutely, when we were taken to our room, we found out that there was a funeral parlor right in front of the building. Great. It didn't help that the whole building looked run down, really old, dirty and there was a funeral ceremony happening at the parlor that night. I could not sleep. Looking at the room just made me want to cry because not only was the place eerie, it was dirty and cramped too. The rooms are definitely not how they look like in the pictures in Google, or booking websites. The sounds of from the funeral parlor made me wish morning would come soon enough for us to skedaddle from this horrendous inn. None of us enjoyed our stay.
When we reached KL, I was so glad to be home. The lights, the life and the familiarity made me feel so at home again. Not to mention, having a nice Chinese dinner with my family again. I was still quite haunted by the 'things' I saw during the trip, whispers I heard and felt next to my ear when I visited the ruins of St.Paul's church, feeling cold when I walked by the Muslim, Chinese, Dutch graveyards and trying hard to focus on looking at my feet while walking back to my room at the Yellow Mansion so that I don't see any 'other things'.
Doesn't help when X didn't believe in such things and thought I was being stupid about it, instead of comforting me like he should. I told my dad about the creepy things I saw. He believes me. Growing up, he had many of these experiences in Melaka, especially when cycling at night with my uncle and stealing fruits from neighbours. Sidetracking here - there was a Pontianak (Malay female vampire) that resided in a tree in front of the house of my grandaunt, in Malacca, and that our family members know about her are used to it. She's heard cackling by herself or seen combing her hair if you look up, according to dad. Eek. Never looking up at trees randomly at night.
As dad told me, it is normal for a historical place for Malacca to have spirits that are not at rest. Malacca has a colourful past with the Dutch, Portugese and British invasion. War, or "Perang", as we learn in textbooks in school means lotsa deceased people. Myths about Hang Tuah's spirit appearing as a white crocodile at the Hang Tuah Well, Hang Jebat's tomb and things like that have also become attractions of Malacca to tourists. But if you've my sort of luck to see faceless people in First World hotel in Genting Highlands, ending up in Ria Apartment not knowing that it's haunted and an eerie inn facing a funeral parlor, just beware that Malacca is old and haunted. Skeptical? Google "Melaka Haunted" and you'll see all sorts of posts.
This is one of them.
^ photo of me then.
Ps. Got an unusual fever for 2 weeks on the last day of my trip,
which also happened when I stayed at Genting Permai Apartments during a reality competition filmed for TV2 and few of us contestants saw 'things'. Sigh. Just my luck.
xxx,
Ashley Mah.
