BERPETUALANG KE ACEH: Muar river cruise part I...

Ladies and gentlemen, without much further ado, as the title suggest...

You see, for me there's something mystical about the Muar river. After all it's the biggest and longest river in the southern parts of the Peninsular and I have spent a major part of my teenage years playing alongside its banks. But I've only been on the river cruising on a boat only 3 times my whole life! The first, if I'm not mistaken was some 10 years ago when the Muar river cruise was first started... The second I think was about 5 years ago or so when I was still a married man. Now I want to share some pictures of the 3rd cruise, made slightly over 2 weeks ago... Come!

Here is the yatch harbour next to the jetty seen in the previous picture. It is situated right at the immense mouth of the Muar river. If memory serves me right, works on it started sometime in 2002 and were completed early this year. But I have yet to see yatches mooring nearby... Then again I don't often come down to visit Muar nowadays although it is the town where I was born and grew up at...

On thing's for sure, they have gone a notch up or two in promoting tourism and the river cruise. Last time I remember, the boats used then were simple functional white. Now, it has a more classic look befitting a place for tourists... Especially one that is rich in history...

For information the Muar river has been featured in some prominent classic Malay literary pieces. In fact the Sulalatus Salatin (known also as the Sejarah Melayu or the Malay Annals) mentioned Muar as the place where the founder and first king of Melaka twice tried to set up new states but failed. Thus that's why he travelled furthered up north to open Melaka and this happened sometime 600 years ago!

Actually this picture was taken one afternoon while walking around Tanjung Emas (part of the southern tip of the Muar estuary). One look at this boat and I felt I must take a river cruise. And so I did 2 days later or so...

Now, this picture is taken just after embarking on the boat. You can see the second main mosque of Muar in it...

The boat starts to move along the much frequented parts of Tanjung Emas... The Muar town centre beckons...

And so, for the first time ever I had a view from the river of the Dataran Muar (literally translated as the Muar square) area built at Tanjung Emas and completed 3-4 years ago...