Melaka - Not to my liking

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30th November 2010

After a couple of lazy mornings getting up early to make our bus was not pleasant. The alarm sounded at 6:30am and although I got up swiftly and got in the shower, I can’t say that I was particularly fond of that alarm! Lou did pretty well considering how bad she is in the morning, and as we had done the packing bar the minimum washing essential items the night before things moved swiftly.

We had planned a schedule to leave the hut by 7:00 and checking the watch as we walked away we were bang on target, a minor miracle it has to be said. The short walk in the early morning light to the bus stop was uneventful, and very peaceful - I for one was slightly sorry to be leaving this lovely little place so soon. Admittedley there was absolutely nothing going on here, but that was an innnate part of it’s charm.

As we got to the bus stop (on schedule at 7:10) we saw another travellor waiting there with his backpack - we took this for a good sign. Well until that is he asked us if we were here for the bus and what time we thought it was? He explained that he had been to the local village travel agent the day 2 days earlier and asked about the bus, and had been told that it arrived at 6:00 am. He told us that he had overslept yesterday so hadn’t bothered and was now trying to catch the bus, but had been at the bus stop since 6 and not a single bus had driven past in either direction.

I explained that as far as I was aware, the buses didn’t even start to run until 6:30 and that was at the end of the line, and hour from here in one direction, so there was no way a bus would be here before 6:30 and we had been told the first bus would be along at about 6:50, followed by every half hour. (hence we were going for the 7:20 bus) He seemed satisfied with this answer and having been up for a while longer than us, he then lay down on the bench in the bus stop and doozed leaving me to watch for the bus, whilst Lou had her head buried in a book.

7:20 cam and went, and so did 7:30 and I was starting to get concerned that we weren’t going to make our connection in Kuantan at 9am and would have to wait until 14:30 for the next coach. It was just then that the bus came around the corner an into sight. I flagged it down and we all got on, Lou and I having a pair of seats each because of the size of our rucksacks (normal buses aren’t meant for big bags).

It was an hours drive to the station in Kuantan, and I was tired so I put my head on my pack once I had paid the conductor and the next thing I knew Lou was waking me up to tell me the bus, that had been empty when I dozed off, was now full and we should move our bags to let others sit down. I said that if people wanted to sit they could ask and I didn’t have the room to manoeuvre the bag anyway so best let them stand in the aisle. Sure enough the cram was short lived as people got off at stops before ours and the bus was a little less packed. I was anxiously checking my watch by this point as the hour long journey seemed to be stretching into an hour and a quarter plus meaning we may well miss the coach.

I had resigned myself to hours of boredom in a coach station when the bus bulled into the coach station and we could get off, I ran to the ticket counter and for the first time in ages was glad that things run late, as the bus we needed to catch hadn’t even arrived yet let alone left on time.

So we booked tickets and waited for the coach - maybe today wasn’t going to be a bad day after all.

The coach duly arrived and we departed on an uneventful journey save for the driver sharing his donuts with us, as we were sat in the front seats. We pulled into Melaka Sentral station past a huge Tesco store and headed to the toilet followed by finding some food as apart from a bag of crisps we hadn’t eaten all day and it was now 14:50.

Fed and watered we got on a bus to town with the decision that we would head to a hostel that we had been passed a flyer for whilst we were disembarking from the coach. Finding this place was pretty straightforward but neither of us particularly liked it and as such we decided to head to a café and get a drink and then I’d head out to look for accommodation whilst Lou minded the bags.

The guidebook claims that Melaka, has so much accommodation that finding cheap digs is easy the problem is that to review them it is difficult as the number of tourists does not sustain the number of available beds so turnover is quick. Well it turns out that this is either a) a load of bollocks or b) true and they have ALL gone under! After walking about the city for nearly two hours in the rain, I had still not found anywhere that wasn’t a) a shithole or b) really expensive or c) closed, with no sign of life or anybody to ask. Indeed I even asked at one place and they said that people come just to look at the rooms not to stay so they don’t let anybody look at the rooms anymore! To that I walked off in disgust and read “our rooms are crap and nobody stays here if we let them see them!”

Running out of available light, time and the will to live I decided that the easiest thing to do was to pay over the odds for a decent room and get the hell out of this dump ASAP in the morning. So Just before I returned to Lou in the café I booked a room in a very nice place at twice the price we would normally pay.

I returned to Lou doing her nut that something had happened to me and she had been trying to remember what I had been wearing so she could describe me to the police if the need arose (for info she had it totally wrong and the fact that she had the rest of my very limited wardrobe right next to her also hadn’t crossed her mind) After I had a rant about the awfulness of the place, and she had a rant about me scaring her to death, we went back to the heritage building we were going to be staying in overnight.

A shower and a change of clothes and we headed out for dinner, and to get some cash. This turned into a bit of a palaver as we struggled to find a cash point for quite a while, and when we did,my bad mood meant I was being overly fussy about what we ate. We sat down eventually in a bar/café place and I had a pizza, whilst Lou had chicken satay, staples for both of us if we aren’t feeling great.

We returned home for the night shortly after and as we were both tired had an early night, after what seemed like a pretty disastrous day!

1st December 2010

We awoke after a pretty good nights sleep, and after the walk around town (the second time for me) in search of food Lou had decided she quite liked what she had seen of Melaka. This coupled with a check of the guidebook and there not really being anything of note between us and Singapore, and the knowledge that Singapore is really expensive meant that staying in Melaka was, unfortunately for me, the sensible option. So we had a very nice breakfast and then packed up, and left our bags with the hotel, whilst we ventured out to try and find other cheaper accommodation. The search reconfirmed what I had found yesterday that there is not a lot of good places to stay here in the budget category, but did eventually find a room above a café for almost half the price. Interestingly the requirement to have an external window had slid from Lou’s requirements (if I had made that call there would have been hell to pay!) We moved our bags and settled into our new abode for a while before heading back out into Chinatown.

We returned to the café that had been Lou’s waiting zone the day before and had a very nice lunch; a noodle and a rice version of the same curry dish that I can’t remember the name of. After this we headed back and the afternoon was spent relaxing in our café. I watched a couple of films from their extensive dvd collection whilst Lou did some admin. Not very exciting to read about but just what the doctor ordered for us at the time.

Soon enough it was time for dinner and we showered and changed and headed out to go and find a place from the guidebook that offers cooking classes. Having done a class in Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand we have been keen to complete our set, but have struggled to find anywhere. When we found the place we sat down and I certainly didn’t get a particularly good vibe from the place. We ordered our dinner, both opting for western, and decided that even if they do offer classes, which we could see nothing about, we wouldn’t bother as we didn’t like the place.

Dinner done we headed back to the main strip in Chinatown just around the corner from our digs and had a few more beers (or a Pina colada in Lou’s case) whilst we watched a large groupl of young Malay women drinking whiskey and coke, trying to pluck up the courage to sing karaoke. We eventually gave in and headed home to bed just as they actually started singing, very quietly to songs we didn’t know in Cantonese.

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Photos

Bus driver
Not easy to see in this pic but the speedo didn't work at all

Melaka Water Wheel
from our first room

Curry ramen
very good lunch