In the 1st part of my ‘travel to Malacca‘ series, I talked about how to book a bus from Singapore.

Today, I’ll show you where I stayed and my thoughts on the hotel.

I stayed at Casa Del Rio, which is along the bank of the Melaka River. It’s a 5-star hotel with an infinity pool.

To be honest, I picked the hotel because the buses from Singapore stopped at the hotel. It was not the only hotel destination the buses stopped at but the nearest to Jonker Street. After arriving, I felt that going with other choices, such as Straits Hotel & Suites might be better. Let me tell you why at the end of this post.

First, the hotel welcomed us (me + Mom) with a sweet, refreshing dessert and towels. This was a lovely touch after my 3 hours bus ride.

Next, they quickly let us get to the hotel room on our own. We were greeted by a lizard when we first stepped into the room, which made us scream and run from the room in fear. Yes, I’m very scared of lizards. I know tropical weather means it’s impossible to keep them out, but a freshly cleaned area shouldn’t have reptilian visitors. So that made me wonder if they had checked and cleaned the room before we entered.

So we requested to change rooms. Surprisingly, the hotel room placed us just two rooms down the corridor. I was expecting a higher floor since we’d already told them we were sceptical of the cleanliness since there were lizards. Anyway, the second room was fine. And without foreign visitors, the room is actually really nice.

I liked that they had folding panel windows for the bathtub because not every 2 pax that travelled there were a couple. So you have some privacy.

There was also a small balcony, though we barely ventured outside as my mother and I were terrified of lizards!

Because I bought accommodation with breakfast, we had breakfast at the buffet daily. I really liked how they gave us gloves immediately when we entered to open the common buffet trays. It shocked me that some guests blatantly touched the trays without gloves, which proves the stereotype that money can’t buy class. The hotel has a good variety of local food (Nasi Lemak, prata, noodles, porridge) and Western options (cheese platter, French pastries, and cakes). My only gripe was that the food was mostly cold, and after the second or third day, it felt like it had lost flavour.

The next thing I checked out at the hotel on the second day was its pool. The infinity pool lets you have a panoramic view of the Melaka River, though I’m not sure there is much to see. More importantly, it was too hot to swim at 10am because there was no rooftop shelter. This is something I really should have thought about before I booked!

Overall, here’s how I feel about the hotel. It’s a great experience if you’re honeymooning or just want a place near Jonker Street. But I wouldn’t recommend staying at it too long. The service was reasonably decent, as expected of a 5-star hotel. No sulky faces, and everyone we met was ready to help us. So why wouldn’t I recommend a long stay? First, if you like to swim and exercise at the gym, they don’t really have adequate facilities to do it. The gym is small and fits 2-3 pax at most. Next, unless you enjoy walking around Jonker Street, there isn’t much to see or eat. We spent much time avoiding the hot sun by going to the malls. The last reason would be that while it’s nice, the hotel is right beside the river, it does look quite outdated (unlike the pictures), and they might have lapsed in maintaining it over the pandemic years. That’s all, I hope you enjoyed the review!