Melakka

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Our bus left mid-morning for Melakka (i must just add, there are about 3 different spellings of the town floating around so forgive me if i spell it in different ways) which only took a couple of hours, we arrived at the sentral station and had a little trouble finding our local bus to the hostel but we got there eventually! We got off at the stop indicated and were a bit concerned that we couldn't see the hostel or the road it was on but we just walked around in circles for a bit until eagle-eye matt spotted it and we went up.
Initially Howard the manager wasn't there so 2 English girls just told us to wait. He eventually appeared, he reminds me of Where's Wally but Chinese/Malay and really reall enthusiastic and happy ALL the time. He checked us in and gave us a tour of the roof and the rooms and introduced us to everyone else staying there.It is by far the best hostel we have stayed in yet, reallyfriendly, Howard can't do enough for you, free tea&coffee and water, washing powder, cheap drinks, free wi-fi guitars for anyone to play and loads of communal space which really gets people chatting rather than just sitting in their rooms!

We chilled out and chatted to some of the others for a while and then later in the evening howard took us all out to a nearby satay restaurant for dinner.
The restaurant is really cool, you sit around a big table with a satay pot in the middle which is kept hot by gas, you take a tray up to the buffet cupboard and pick out whatever meats,fish or veg on a stick you want and then cook it in the satay sauce at your table, at the end of the meal they count your sticks and you pay 0.70 cen per stick! it was great trying loads of different things and was a really cheap meal!
After that Howard took us around the town pointing our various interesting buildings etc and telling us a bit about the history etc, and then one of the English girls Cat took us to buy AMAZING donuts nearby and we sat chatting with the rest of the guests at the hostel for most of the night.

The following day we decided to be a little cultural and went to see the Dutch square and the museum with all Melakka's history in it which was actually pretty impressive-lots of information and loads to see! Some really beautiful buildings around in amongst lots of modern shops and malls. We accompanied a few of the new arrivals back to th satay restuarant to eat and watched cat attempt to break to record..to eat more than 76 satay sticks (if she did it she ate for free and got free drinks etc all night-she did 81!!! legend!)
But had to leave to catch the local bus to Tampin about 45mins away to get our night train.
The bus was relatively easy to negotiate but blimey it was BUMPY!!

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Photos

Melakka Tree
the town's name-sake