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Welcome to MelakaWe are currently at the Singapore airport, seating in front of the gate 8 on the budget terminal (it’s actually called the budget terminal, maybe to scare the posh people away), waiting for our flight to Kuching, Borneo Malaysia.
We have left Peninsular Malaysia a couple of days before. Prior to that we spent two nights, one day in Melaka. As Polona already mentioned we spent a whole day travelling from Taman Negara to Melaka, using 3 different local buses and a taxi, to take us to the correct bus station at one of the stops. We arrived at Melaka Sentral, a massive shopping mall, bus station, and a huge round-about all in one. As it was pouring down rain we took a cab for the last 10km or so to the Chinatown where we booked a hostel. On the way there we ran across an old Chinese woman, who blocked the whole street as she decided to light a fire in the middle of the street. Even when we were already waiting she was still adding paper to the fire and signalling to us to just drive over it. Driver decided to wait and luckily the rain killed the fire
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Welcome to Sama Sama hostel shortly.
We checked in to our hostel, went out for a quick dinner and fell into our bed.
Melaka is another UNESCO protected port city, same as
George Town, but much, much nicer. Through its history it was ruled by local sultans, Portuguese (how did this tiny nation control such a big part of the world?), Dutch and, of course, the British. Through the cities you can see loads of landmarks left there by all these different nations.
Without realizing we struck gold here: the day we spent in Melaka was also an International museum day, meaning that admission to all museums in the city was free of charge. 😊
We realized this when visiting the Sultanate Palace, a wooden replica of a 15th century palace, built entirely without nails. The palace, hosting a museum and the “secret” gardens outside are well worth visiting, if not for the artefacts, for all the stories of the palace, sultans, visitors etc.
The flight is boarding now, so I will continue from the plane.
OK, as I (Polona) was initially responsible for writing about Melaka I will take over from Jan. So as Jan said, we were lucky to be in Melaka on a
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Sultans Palace from a different angle Friday, when it was world museum day, so all the admissions were free of charge, giving us the opportunity to hop from one museum to another. We visited a museum of local culture (Cheng Ho Cultural Museum) and then went to see the “pirate” ship: Maritime and Naval Museum, which is held on a ship, a replica of a Portuguese ship. We were told to take our shoes off, so as soon as we boarded the ship that is what we did, but the problem was the floor was scorching hot and we burnt our feet a bit, only to see people take their shoes off when entering the actual museum. Ah well...we are foreign so we don’t know, right? The museum was quite cool.
Afterwards it was food time – so we went to a local Chinese restaurant, not like one you would have in Europe, but a proper one, and we ordered, what I thought would be a lot of food, but we finished it all. Then it was time for a brief siesta and coffee and time to get out of the sun for a while.
Oh, I forgot to mention – Melaka was the place where
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Sultans Palace I got my new flip flops – my old ones had holes in them and Jan was adamant I get a new pair...so introducing Re and Tard as Jan named them (see the pic). Jan: as one is white and one is black Polona was worried people will think she is a retard, not knowing how to put on a pair of shoes, so hence the name Re-Tard.
In the afternoon we decided to be a bit touristy and so we went to take a cruise boat around Melaka and it was actually quite a sight – the buildings all had murals on the facade, we even saw a couple of Monitor Lizards swimming in the water. On our return we decided to walk along the river again and see it all on foot. As we both read that visiting Jonker street after night fall was a must we planned to do that, only to find Jonker street to be empty and quiet (we later found out that the time to visit is during the weekend). We were both tired and starving and we were trying to find a way back to our hostel and get some food on the
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Portuguese church way. We realised we strayed far away from the hostel, and were back at the river bank. Ah well, we sat down at a local restaurant, ate, and almost crawled back to Sama Sama. And that was that – end of Melaka for us. The next day we took a local bus to the main bus station, where we bought tickets for Singapore. As we had 20 minutes till departure time, we scowled the station to get some food. From afar we saw a sign French Patisserie and I was like “YUMMY” but when we got there you could read: croissant with tuna/chicken, tuna bunds...we did manage to find some normal, breakfast stuff, and hurried back to the bus and were on our way to Singapore.
Peninsular Malaysia review As we left Peninsular Malaysia I (Jan, again) thought it would be a good time to add something about the local food, people, cost etc.
Food We mentioned food shortly in our first blog entry from
KL where I wrote about desserts, if you can call them desserts and the smelly, smelly fruit of durian.
In general food in Malaysia can be split in to three categories: Malay,
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Melaka is full of art cafe's and art stores. Chinese and Indian (South and North; vegetarian and non-vegeterian Indian food). Things they all have in common are rice and they are all very, very spicy.
I am not really into Chinese food but I am getting a hang of it. Oyster vegetables, dim sums and different duck dishes can be very nice. Fried rice dishes and dumpling soup are ok as well.
After the first few days in KL and an over-dose of Chinese we ate loads of Indian vegetarian food (don’t be too shocked) and I have to say that Indians know how to make veggies taste amazing (not like Europeans who think oil, vinegar and salt is all you can add). Aloo Gobi (cauliflower dish) and Dahl (lentil dish) are amazing. You can get a mixed vegetable dish served on a banana leaf with different sauces which is so tasteful.
Malay food is, in a way, similar to Chinese: noodles, rice and a lot of spices. Tom yam (spicy soup) is our favorite so far. Just be aware that ordering it in a hostel or at a local stall is very different. The level of hotness goes up at least 5 times. Nando’s extremely spicy peri
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Re and Tard peri sauce is nothing compared to this.
The only problem is getting a normal breakfast as locals will eat the same things for breakfast as they do for lunch or dinner. I don't really fancy rice and meat for breakfast but luckily some places do sell eggs and toast or you can get a different types of pancakes or a Roti (sort of a pancake as well) at all Indians places.
In most hostels and touristy restaurants you can also order “western food” and you can see loads of tourist eating it. It’s double the price and not that nice. So far I had it once. Tried a hamburger (prepared by an Irish hostel owner) which was nice, but I will try and stick with the local dishes.
For the picky bunch there are loads of McDonalds, Burger Kings, Starbucks. In KL we even saw a Nando’s, Dunking Doonats and so on and so on.
People People in Malaysia are very friendly. They will rarely approach you by themselves but they will always be prepared to help if they can. On a few occasions when people selling food didn’t understand English other locals jumped in and translated for
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Ship museum us.
As the standard in Malaysia is much better than in rest of SE Asia nobody has been trying to hassle us out of our money (except the taxi drivers, but they are “special people” everywhere in the world).
We met a lot of Malaysian tourist travelling around the country as well and talked to a few of them. All were very friendly and while walking on the national park a group of locals shared some Malaysian snacks with us.
And not to forget. The way that Yean Yean took care of us for the first few days in KL tells it all.
Cost Prices have increased dramatically over the last 5 or so year. In our guide book (from 2005) the daily backpacker budget is defined at 13$ US. This is definitely not the case any more. A newer version (from 2009) already puts it at 25$ - 30$ US which is much closer to the truth. On average we got away with about 20£ per day (30$ US, I think) but we didn’t spend anything for accommodation in KL, which helped. We also didn’t party or drink much. Alcohol adds a lot to the cost. For
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Oran Gutan shop a double room we were paying up to 50RM per night, per a meal up to 12RM (you can get a dish for as little as 4RM – 80p £) but a can of beer will cost you at least 9RM. And who drinks only
a can? The biggest expense is the transport. It helps using the local buses instead of tourist mini-vans.
Borneo is supposed to be even a bit more expensive. So far we are slightly over our budget (just a bit), but other backpackers we met told us that the rest of SE Asia (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia) are much cheaper. So we should be fine and are still aiming to travel for a full year.
Till next time and our Singapore adventure.
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