Melaka

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After two days in the city I decided I needed to escape and see some more of the country so took myself off on a little day trip to Melaka. I got up early and still rather bleary eyed at 7am I faced my first challenge of the morning - the sweat pit that is Puduraya Bus Station in KL. My first impression was the strong smell of food.... deep fried i don't know what, but as it didn't look suitable for us vegetarians I didn't hang around to find out! Buying a bus ticket here is an interesting experience - you walk along a narrow corridor with ticket booths on both sides from which sellers shout destinations at you. When you hear the one you want you just have to find the right seller that shouted it... and then find the right bus by searching the platforms for your bus company rather than destination which usefully doesn't get displayed...

Melaka is on the west coast of peninsular Malaysia, about half way along the Straits of Melaka and about two and a half hours from KL by bus. Once there I almost immediately got cornered by a rickshaw driver. Deciding this might be a nice way to see some of the sights we agreed a price and off we went... quite happily until we got to the end of the trip when we got caught up in the old argument of exactly what price we had agreed at the start - needless to say his was substantially more than mine!

Melaka is very much quieter than KL which made a nice change and I saw few other tourists there. The town has an interesting history of being ruled at various points by the Dutch, Portugese and British and of at times being a key trade port in this area of SE Asia. It's got a Chinese district and a street dedicated to 'antiques', although I wasn't sure how old some of these 'antiques' were! One of the highlights for me was the Chinese Temple which dates back to the 17th Century, when both building materials and artists where bought from China to complete it. A shop selling shoes for women with bound feet (now for tourist momento's only) was slightly stomach turning - from heel to toe the shoes were only a few inches long. The picures of women's unbound feet were worse and I can only imagine the pain that they went through for their feet to end up that size.

At the end of a rather long day I caught the bus back to KL to pack for my flight to meet Jo and Sam in NZ tomorrow!

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