Maritime Museum

You cannot miss this one lah — that enormous wooden ship sitting right there on dry land is the Maritime Museum, and it is one of the most dramatic museum buildings you will ever see anywhere in the world. What you are looking at is a full-scale replica of the Flor de la Mar, a Portuguese galleon that met one of the most spectacular and tragic ends in maritime history. The original ship was the flagship of Alfonso de Albuquerque, the Portuguese commander who conquered Malacca in 1511. After looting the treasure of the Malaccan Sultanate — and we are talking about an absolutely staggering amount of gold, jewels, silks, and precious artifacts accumulated from centuries of trade — Albuquerque loaded everything onto the Flor de la Mar and set sail for Portugal. But the ship never made it, kan? It was caught in a violent storm in the Straits of Malacca and sank, taking the entire treasure of the Sultanate to the bottom of the sea. To this day, the wreck has never been found, making it one of the most sought-after shipwrecks in the world. Some treasure hunters estimate its cargo could be worth billions in today's money....