Advertisement
Published: February 20th 2008
Melaka @ Night
Postcard perfect shotI arrived in Melaka at 6:43pm, fresh from the 4 hour bus ride from Singapore, my mind boggling with excitement at what might lay ahead in this small Malaysian city. Little did I know what deranged madness I was soon to encounter...
...well im exagerating slightly but it was one heck of a strange evening. I would firstly like to state that out of all the chinatown's i've visited (inc nyc/boston) - they probably were going over the top in light of the new year, but the lanterns, the food, the dancing(!) were great. So they had this stage setup and people of all ages would come up start dancing to hilarious music, so i pulled up a chair with the other punters got a beer and some char grilled satay sticks (amazing). Eventually this women starts talking to me and shes friendly enough, until she starts talking about Jesus, i tell her im roman catholic and know quite a bit about the chap. Then she tells me how Jehovah's witnesses know him better, i tell her i disagree with people trying to claim their one religion is better than others, she said there wouldn't be a problem if everyone
Melaka During Day
Also a great shot, well done kev. was a Jehovah's witness. I then proceed to drink my beer quickly just as the large crowd of spectators watching the dancers breaks into spontaneous group line dancing. Despite this being quite funny in itself I escaped the mental religious women, retreating to a near by bar for some normality. The barstaff were very friendly to me, poured my drink for me brought me crisps and they all shook my hand. I realized that i was the only non-local/westerner in there. The second thing i came to realize was it was a karaoke bar, from what i can see Asians take it quite seriously but again I was entertained by it all. The women came up to me with the song list, saying "you sing song", i pretended to flick through it then told her i didn't know any songs. She then looked disappointed and asked me "you know song, my way?" I stupidly said, yes. Before i knew it I was on the stage belting out Frank to a packed bar full of locals. I couldn't really comprehend what just happened, so i drank a second beer quickly, trying to get my head round the situation. But before i
could the waitress struck again, "you know number 11?" Number 11 was Unchained Melody, and within seconds I was being called to the stage. By this time however the beer was taking effect and I decided to have a little fun with the audience; "Is anyone else in the house from Scotland?".... Silence.... Without heisatation I hit the high notes in my best robson or jerome impression. But I must of done something right as an old guy was chuffed to bits, shaking my hand and telling me how good I was. What a night.
To prove I'm not a total waster I would now like to enlight you on the interesting culture found in Melaka. The first thing you will notice from the pictures is the red buildings, these are due to the Dutch who ruled for over 100 years, the city seems to like this fact as they recently erected a mini-windmill. But more interesting is when Meleka was first opened as Malaysia's number one shipping port, many chinese men came over to settle (chinese women were not allowed to leave the country till mid 19th century) so the lads married Malaysian women. Which then resulted in
The Stage
Where I strutted my stuff a mix of both country's culture, they called this 'Baba-nonya'. I went to the musuem, thats how I know this stuff, but overall it proved to be an interesting wee city!
I am updating the second part of this entry from Kula Lumper, its a cool city, I've only been here a day doing the usual tourist circuit of the city. City. CIty. CITY! That's all i've been visiting lately, CITIES!I'm sick and tired off getting lost on overly complicated monorail systems. But thats all gonna change, my next few days are gonna be what me and my pal 'Lonely Planet' call "off the beaton track". It's gonna get wild.
Your pal, Kev/Crawfy/Kelvinator.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.067s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 10; qc: 45; dbt: 0.0421s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
faithur
non-member comment
bloody fantastic-the blog-not your singing!!!