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Published: April 2nd 2011
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22nd - Rose late, I'm over the jet-lag but going to bed very late and getting up very late. My bag required a few running repairs so I had it fixed by a seamstress for a couple of quid, better than new. Caught the bus up to the botanical gardens. First stop was swan lake which had (you guessed it) swans and also terrapins and some large carp. O for a rod and a loaf of bread, I'd have cleaned up! Next stop was the National Orchid Garden, a bit gay maybe but there was plenty of eye candy about to keep me occupied. Picked up a nice card for mother's day and some bits and bobs for Hattie which went in the post. After that I went up to the Arab quarter, which I found to be a bit too hip for it's own good, full of westerners trying to be cool and smoking hookah pipes, with shops selling overpriced gear. Found a busy halal food place right across from the mosque without a white face in it and had a chicken murtabak, a kind of pancake with chicken curry in it. Once again, dee-lish! Then back to ET's to
sort out Melaka tomorrow.
23rd - Missed the bus! They all leave before 10.30am! Not like me at all, so I followed Elliot whilst he sorted out some business and we then went to the Golden Mile Complex to buy my ticket for tomorrow. On the way back to the station I had a Singapore sling, that's Gin, Cherry Brandy, Cointreau, Benny, Grenadine and pineapple juice with a dash of Angostura bitters. much cheaper than Raffles but still very nice. All in all a bit of a quiet day.
24th- Made the bus with seconds to spare, hah! Got through Malay immigration with no hassles and on to Melaka. The difference from Singapore was immediately apparent, with Oil Palm plantations stretching as far as the eye could see. Arrived at Melaka Sentral and caught a local bus into town, & found a private room with a double bed and A/C for less than a tenner a night. I was paying more than that for a 10 bed dorm in Singy! The guesthouse had a rooftop garden and was very nice for the price. The fact that Malaysia is a muslim country was immediately apparent, with most of the
women wearing headscarves and the mosques broadcasting the Adhan (muslim call to prayer). It's quite a haunting singing, I'll have to find out what they're saying cos I like it a lot. I had chicken with rice balls for tea which only cost 80p but at £3.50 a beer drinking is a tad expensive! That's one way of stopping the locals from falling into sin! Went fo a wander after tea and ended up on Bukit St. Paul, a small hill with a ruined Portugese-then-Dutch-then-British church on it. I also saw what was left of the ruins of A' Famosa, the original Portuguese fort. Being a cheapskate I gave the bars a miss and picked up a couple of beers to drink back at the ranch and ended up sharing them and playing guitar with a Spanish girl, from the basque country. Must have had a few cos I can't remember her name!
25th - Went and had a mooch round town in the morning, along Jonker St. which was full of touristy shops selling tat, and then on another temple run. I went down a street known as Harmony St. which had the Cheng Hoon Teng temple (Chinese
Buddhist), Kampung Kling Mosque (Islamic) and Sri Poyyatha Vinayagar Moorthi Temple (hindu, closed) almost next to each other, harmonic indeed! For lunch I had a popiah (spring roll) from a street vendor, it consisted of fried onion, beansprouts, scrambled egg, some unidentifiable crispy bits and chili sauce, at 60p it was fantastic! After that I saw the Stadthuys and Christ Church, and then went on a river cruise, where we saw a large monitor-type lizard basking in a tree. Then it was on to a recreation of Melaka's Malay Sultanate palace and then a replica dutch galleon. Whilst in the galleon I was accosted by a group of giggling schoolgirls who wanted to have their photo taken with me, Why? No idea. 'For memory' they said. It started with two but before I knew it there was a load of 'em! On the way back to the hostel I tried my hand at archery in the mall, as an englishman I couldn't really just walk past. They were setting up a street market as it was going dark and I was going to have something to eat but as I'm travelling tomorrow I took the safe option and stopped at
a Malay restaurant for duck soup & rice. Polished the day off with a half bottle of chinese wine which weighed in at 34%, sweet dreams!
26th - Up at 8 to catch a bus and once again accosted by a group of college kids who wanted to interview me to see if I'd heard about the local legend about a man with a magic knife which gave him the ability to fly and made him impervious to other weapons (I had). I ended up telling them about King Arthur and Merlin, Fairies and Brownies (that's why Brownside is called Brownside, home of the Brownies, don't ya know). Caught the bus up to Kuala Lumpur, there was more hills covered with the ubiquitous oil palms. I checked out a couple of hostels and settled on the Monkee Inn on Jalat Sultan, right in the middle of Chinatown. That evening I went up to Little India for the Saturday night market and had a chicken kebab, followed by a couple of popiahs from the street vendors. I still haven't had any western food, the nearest I've come is a Mos Burger in Singapore, which is Japanese, and maybe slightly radioactive
(sorry)! Went back to chinatown and checked out the Jalan Petaling night market, and found a specialist guitar shop that had some very nice Mahalo ukuleles, hmmm, maybe.
27th - Rose at midday and took my washing to a chinese laundry. I then caught a train half an hour out of town to Batu Caves, a large limestone cave formation that contains Hindu shrines. at the entrance of the largest is a huge statue of Lord Murugan, and 272 steps up to the shrine which is no mean feat in these temperatures. There were plenty of monkeys that seemed to survive on stolen peanuts, crisps and pop. In the evening I headed up to the KL tower, going up a lot more steps and through a treetop rope bridge walkway. The KL Tower is a communications tower with an observation deck which affords fabulous views of the city, and of the Petronas towers.Being a good boy scout I had my binoculars with me and could make out the statue of Lord Murugan lit up in the distance. I even managed to get some pics of me with a snake around my neck! By the time I left it had gone dark, but I had my headtorch with me (boy scout again) and headed back down the jungle walkway anyway, complete with rats n bats. When I got to the bottom I discovered they had locked the gate! No way I'm walking back up all them bloody steps! I ended up doing another spiderman act, this time to escape, barbed wire n'all! Arrived back at the hostel to find loads of 'roaches scurrying round the entrance way, I didn't know they squealed when you stepped on them!
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