Blogs from Melaka City, Melaka, Malaysia, Asia - page 3

I took the free walking tour offered by the tourism bureau and it was well worth getting up early on a Saturday for! It's offered three times a week and starts promptly at 930. (They highly suggest you sign in before 915, though.) The good news is that you can spend the extra time chatting with fellow travelers and enjoying air conditioning. I had a lovely tour guide who made the experience educational and memorable. We started along the river, standing in the shade while she pointed out various things along the river and talked about the history of the city. We progressed to Dutch Square (aka The Red Buildings), the church on the hill, and then back down to the fort, a former palace, and Independence Hall. While we didn't go in any of the ... read more

Every weekend evening, Friday--Sunday, Jonker Street turns itself from a quaint, historic area into an area teeming with life. Every inch of space is used by hawkers, vendors, and shoppers. I tend to like night markets to I decided to check it out. This night market is unlike others I've been to. It's probably the only one I've been to that isn't selling the same scarves (that I bought in Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam--because they're "unique!"), jewelry, or decorative paper lamps. It does, however, have a wide variety of clothing, toys, and my favorite, FOOD. (Okay, food at a night market isn't unusual.) I wasn't looking to buy anything except dinner, so my friend and I went from table to table seeing what was available. Some of it I'd seen before, but most of it was ... read more

We took a taxi to the southern bus station in Kuala Lumpur where we were to catch a bus for the two hour trip to Melaka (or Malacca - both versions seem to be in use). We had visited the city over ten years previously and were expecting to see many changes. Certainly the bus station in KL was very different - a massive gleaming building which was a complete contrast to the old run down central station. It was a boring trip as the scenery was unspectacular and we were pleased to arrive in Melaka which had certainly grown though the old town appeared to have retained much of it's charm. The bus terminal was certainly very different - last time we were there the bus depot was a shack on a muddy block of ... read more

Hey everyone For the last part of our journey we left the sleepy island of Tioman and headed over to Melaka, took us ages to get there on the bus but it was well worth the journey, its a lovely place full of different cultures and lovely things to see. We stayed in a lovely hotel right on the river and got to know our neighbour quite well, he was the biggest monitor lizard that we have ever seen and liked to sunbathe in the private garden a couple of doors down. Melaka was definitely the place to do some final shopping and boy did we we shop! Treated ourselves to some lovely things. In between shopping, eating lovely Nonya food and having a beer or two by the river we had a river cruise at ... read more

MALACCA, it has always sounded very exotic & a bit weird to me. And so it is a little bit. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site with an extraordinary history of ancient power & wealth mixed in with European history & empires. Malacca is a famous seaport situated on the Malaysian side of the Straits of Malacca. It was sort of the old capital of Malaysia before Malaysia really existed. For many many centuries the Straits of Malacca offered safe passage between the major trading partners, China & India. The city of Malacca was a strategic & politically important post. And marriages were arranged with the children of the Sultan of Malacca, to ensure security & safe passage through the strait formed between Sumatra & Malaysia. Islam was brought down to Malaysia & lndonesia from ... read more