Melaka has its way with us

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Two days in the life of the traveller can a) be a very long time indeed and b) bring about remarkable change.


2 Dec 2010

We have now both settled in to Melaka. It is fair to say that I am somewhat more taken with it than Gregg which is in no small part due to the homeliness of Café 1511’s guest accommodation. It is just unbelievably peaceful here. There is a water feature in the middle of the building and the staff always stop to say hello and give us a smile. The room that we are staying in is small but spotless and well furnished and the shared bathrooms, although a walk down the corridor away, are also beautiful and immaculate.

We had planned to have a bit of a lie in this morning however the floor boards had other plans. It is an old building and, since we live in one of those ourselves, it really should have crossed our minds that bare floor boards were likely to be somewhat musical. What we hadn’t bargained on however was the unbelievably heavy footed nature of our fellow guests. Being of the clompy variety myself, I feel perfectly qualified to comment - guys, if I can creep then you can too. For the avoidance of any kind of doubt, I am grumpy with the other guests only and not that of our hosts.

Unfortunately, we haven’t had the best of nights’ sleep. Let's leave it at that.

Today, we decided that we were going to ‘do’ museums. Please do not die of shock having read that sentence. There are a veritable multitude of museums in Melaka and it seemed somewhat remiss to avoid them completely. Our first task, however, was to post a postcard to our Niece so we located the post office, bought a stamp (this is the first time we have actually laid hands on the stamp whilst on our travels!) and completed said task in under two minutes. A South-East Asian record.

Just next to the post office was our first museum. Unfortunately, we picked the Melaka Youth Museum which was entirely dull. Fine if your idea of visiting a museum is to read a guidebook’s worth of information on your way around but not to our taste. Above the museum was a slightly more interesting art gallery. In truth, the most exciting element of this visit was the view that it allowed us over the market square below.

Having got off to a leisurely start this morning, next stop was lunch. So, we headed for the “Megamall” (in fact the first of four malls all interlinked) where we had seen a variety of eateries the night we arrived. The mall, like those in Kuala Lumpur, was decked out for Christmas and was home to a Starbucks and several miniature McDonalds. Whether these stores are common elsewhere in the world, I do no know, but across Malaysia we have seen lots of little McDonalds kiosks selling only ice cream.

For lunch, we opted for a place specialising in Hong Kong dishes and settled in for a tasty meal and a game of chess - we bought a small magnetic board yesterday and Gregg is currently the undisputed champion, alas. I will have my revenge eventually…

One mall lead into the next, which lead into the next and so on until eventually we had lost a good couple of hours in window shopping. I’ll let you into a secret - there are two reasons that we have taken to window shopping, the first is that it is mildly therapeutic and the second…well it might just have something to do with air conditioning.

All malled out, we decided that we would take a trip up Melaka Tower - for an opportunity to get a 360 degree birds eye view of Melaka. This thing is some 110 metres high and I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t a bit scared by the time that we reached the top. Great views though and neither of us had realised quite how close to the sea we were.

Hot and sticky, we headed back to the sanctuary of 1511 Guesthouse and luxuriated in reading books, watching films and generally chilling out. I even found time for a Skype chat with Kat who was snowed in in London and unable to get to work. Unfortunate for her patients, but most convenient for us.

I think our hosts were rather bemused by us, I was even asked during my film "...you haven't been out today?". Of course, I explained that we had but, obviously, being in during the afternoon is not the norm at 1511.

3 December 2010

Undeterred, today was earmarked as another day for museums. First stop an old Dutch Galleon that is in dry dock and has been turned into a museum. Guess what?!?! It was airconditioned too - very in keeping. We have become accustomed to removing our shoes prior to entering temples and at many of the guesthouses that we have stayed at but were both rather surprised when handed orange plastic bags to place our shoes in prior to entering the vessel. Again, there was a lot of reading to be done but we both found slightly more of interest here than at the youth museum. Our ticket also bought us entry to the maritime museum next door which was, again, mildly interesting. One exhibit in particular caught our interest - two plastic models dressed as divers which had to be photographed (see below) since their wigs are nothing short of legendary. Each of the divers was dressed, as you will see, in an aged wetsuit which prompted Gregg to declare “…if I didn’t know better, I would think that is my first wetsuit and the other one is Ross’…”. Only Gregg, bless his heart!

Gregg has been taking antihistamine tablets as he his been bitten a lot recently and following the excitement of the wetsuits, drowsiness set in and he just wanted to go home and lie down - personally, I think he was just yearning to find out what happens next in “The Girl who played with fire” (…I have read it and can therefore attest to the addictive nature of this book) but, whatever the reason, we returned to our little oasis and practised chilling out yet further. Conveniently, this little break allowed me the time to finish my most recent read - “Eat, Pray, Love” - which is so much better than the film.

Later, with no book to read and a husband deep in communication with his own, I decided to take myself out for a little walk. Needless to say, there was a little shopping involved and I was really enjoying myself and then, for the fourth (or possibly fifth) time in Malaysia, I banged my head. Describing exactly what I hit my head on is somewhat tricky. I was coming out of a little shop that was facing towards the afternoon sun. In order to keep the interior cool, a shade was erected outside. Unlike the purpose made canopies that you might find in the UK this was consisted of a vertical sheet of heavy plastic weighted down by a pole of what felt like steel concealed in a pocket at the bottom of the shade. Inconveniently, the bottom of the shade found itself to be exactly level with the gap between my eyes and the top of my head - so I didn’t even see it. To add insult to injury, I did exactly the same thing when we visited this shop yesterday.

I am sorry to say that we were really rather wasting time in Melaka so, I returned to our 1511 Guesthouse and relaxed a bit more.

There was, however, some excitement to be had during the evening since Fridays bring a street market to Chinatown which converts a number of the streets around our accommodation into walking streets. No sooner had we stepped out on to the street, than we regretted our decision to eat in tonight. The smells originating from the various stalls were amazing. This street market was packed with locals and tourists alike prospecting for food, souvenirs, watches, jewellery and all manner of other trinkets.

Gregg had read in the guidebook that, at one end of the street we should be able to find a very special spectacle - Dr Ho Eng Hui and his coconut Kung Fu. In truth, this was in large part an elaborate sales pitch but Dr Ho Eng Hui does hold the Guiness World Record for having the fastest finger (used for the purpose of forcing it into a coconut) in the world. Apparently, he can force his finger into 4 coconuts in around 2 minutes. Sounds like some kind of illusion? Yes, but he has an incredibly bent finger and, call me gullible, but I am willing to believe that he really does it.

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Photos

Fountain
in the town square

Some of Melaka's legendary trishaws
these contraptions are laden with silk flowers and fairy lights and they are musical too - anything from Handel to hard core Trance. There is no way anybody could miss these things coming.

Looking up from below the skytower
This thing wasn't fast like a fairground ride but it was sure high!

Cendol
This is a weird local sugary concoction. Gregg rather enjoyed it but it was just too sweet for me.

An exhibit in the Galleon
All of the characters seemed to be fashioned in bronze

The divers, or could it be Gregg & Ross
Check out those awesome wigs!

Pineapple tarts - a local treat
Other than the couple that Gregg had...I accidentally ate them all in one sitting...

The finger comes out
and is immediately doused in the amazing restorative balm that has been sold to the crowd prior to the act. In two minutes his finger had actually gone from very red to normal (but bent) looking but we weren't buying.