Melaka, Malaysia

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Once we arrived at the bus station outside Melaka, we took a city bus into the city proper and found our hotel, Traveller's Lodge where we paid 35RM for a fan room with a balcony and a great kitchen/common room. We grab some dinner at a nearby mall food court where we get delicious spicy beef soup.



The following morning, after a late sleep-in, we wander around the city and see more colonial buildings. This place was invaded by the Dutch and so most of the buildings were in that style and painted red. The souvenirs lining the street were more-or-less crappy and we are starting to get tired of the same colonial type buildings in every city here. We continue on to Chinatown to check out more old buildings, a mosque, and great Chinese temple, where Mike makes friends with the guard at the door, and a few nice handicraft shops.



On the famous Jonker St, we stop at a famous restaurant to get some rice balls and chicken, a local speciality, which is pretty good. The rest of our day is lazy as the heat got to us in the morning. We walk around the mall to be in the AC and to try and find perfect US dollar bills to take with us to Myanmar - they won't accept bills with any creases!



The next day, we visit St Paul's church, which is on a hill. Inside, there is an interpretive dance crew putting on a performance so it's hard to see the church, but the dance is interesting. We also visit the People's Museum where they have an intriguing Enduring Beauty exhibit featuring different things considered beautiful all over the world, including lip disks, scarification, tatoos, foot binding, long neck women and corsets. The rest of the museum is nothing special, besides thes AC in it! Man, Melaka is HOT!



We head back to Chinatown for a little last minute shopping and then have dinner at Cafe 88 with amaaaazing local food. We have spicy coconut curry soup and coconut rice in coconut curry sauce. As the evening approaches, so does a storm, so we watch it roll in with beers in hand on our hotel balcony and then prepare to leave for Myanmar. We didn't make the most of our time in Melaka, but we saw the main sights and we able to rest up a bit before the last leg of our journey. Tomorrow we would board a plane to Yangon, Myanmar, which was the last country on our trip, sadly.

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