Once at the heart of the global spice trade, Malacca is pumping nearly $3 billion into an ambitious plan to put itself in demand in a different hot commodity - oil.
The Malaysian state is reclaiming land along the Straits of Malacca to build a port that can handle the biggest tankers on the planet. The target: a slice of traffic sailing on to nearby Singapore, the top but congested trading hub in a region with $600 billion in annual oil trade - a third of global oil demand.