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Published: February 5th 2010
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Melaka is a nice little town, very historic and a little cheaper than KL. We ended up spending 3 nights in the ‘Venice of the East’, however we feel 2 nights is more than enough, perhaps we just got lazy, as 3 nights is probably too much. Of course we faced some sort of drama during this time and it had to be in the first half hour of arriving. The hostel we had booked was completly padlocked and shut up when we arrived (Little Nyonya Guesthouse - don’t bother). Luckily the ‘teksi’ knew another one nearby and we were soon welcomed in by the nice owner of ‘Kancil Guest House’, who owned and ran Melaka’s oldest guest house. It was a beautiful place, he’d done it up really nicely with a rather patriotic, antique feel. We were kind of disappointed to find that we had to pay extra for internet usage, which wasn’t wi-fi, along with a few other ‘house rules’.
We headed out for some dinner and a bit of exploring, we found a great restaurant by the canal which is really beautiful and Brent said it is kind of like a mini Venice. It’s nice at night
with lit up bridges and river cruise boats going past. The food and beer was cheap there too. After dinner we pulled up a rickshaw driver and we were lucky enough to get a local Portugese guy who knew so much about his city. The rickshaws are all pimped up with fairy lights and fake flowers galore, some even have a boombox tied on, our friendly driver ‘Malvin’ was playing Reggae so that was cool. He even pulled up to fetch a beer for us when we said we fancied a lager. It cost 40 MYR for one hour which is about $13, not bad as he drove us to pretty much every sight the city has, so we saw it all on the first night!
The next morning Brent was dead keen to check out the torture exhibit being held at one of the sixty-four museums in Melaka. That was certainly an eye-opener. Lots of old torture devices with descriptive info for each antique piece. Next to the museum is the independence memorial, a big white colonial building to mark the independence of Malaysia against the English in 1957. Interestingly and more famously, Melaka was also led by
the Portugese, then the Dutch, going back 500 years ago. We then walked through town square past the big old red clocktower at Christ Church (built 1753) and then onto China Town’s famous ‘Jonker Walk’. China Town is really great in Melaka. They are renowned for their Peranakan food which is derived from the Chinese-Malay culture, the result of Chinese merchants marrying the local women over the last 200 years. The children of the Peranakan are called Little Nyonya (girl) and Baba (boy). There are Little Nyonya stalls everwhere in China Town and they sell these tiny delicious pineapple tarts, which are like shortbread with a fruity centre. Yum! The chinese are also famous for their chicken rice balls and they are very nice and cheap too. We then walked for about 20 minutes towards the ‘Eye on Malaysia’ and soon realised it was not moving, a local told us they had gone bust and it was no longer running. We opted instead for a visit to the Maritime Museum and a river boat cruise, that was pretty average to be honest, you get a better experience walking the streets or by rickshaw.
We decided to stay another night
in Melaka as we felt bad only seeing a few of the old sights and museums. Our final night was spent at a new hostel ‘Discovery Cafe and Guest House’. We were fed up at Kancil, being told when to go to bed is not cool, even if he was an old man, we are still paying guests!
On our last full day in Melaka we visited the Portugese church on the hill which was built in the 1500’s, it is merely a skeleton but it’s beautiful and historic. Below the church is the portugese fortress which is 'S' shaped to protect it from canons, it was built in the 16th century and both sights are a must when visiting Melaka. There were quite a few tourists at these sights though, I was even asked by a Japanese women if I could be in her photo, it was embarrassing. After a nice meal at our favourite restaurant in Melaka, Geography Cafe, we called it a night and headed back to Discovery to pack our bags and say goodnight. In the morning we caught the train to what was supposed to be to Ipoh, but we’ll leave you guessing where
we ended up...
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