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Published: January 26th 2008
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Night View of Melaka
This is the view of Melaka at night from the balcony of the Discovery Cafe Guesthouse where we stayed. Thursday we hopped on a bus to Melaka in Malaysia. The border crossing was ridiculously easy and lax. It was about a 4 hour bus ride, with a stop for lunch. Melaka is a good size city but not huge. It's interesting because there is influence from lots of cultures here...dutch, portugese, indonesian, chinese, etc. Thanks to a nice lady we met on the bus ride into town (from the bus station), we ended up at a guesthouse (Discovery Cafe) that is relatively new (new in the business, but the building is about 100 years old) and is still figuring things out, but the location is right in the center of the interesting part of town, so that has been really nice. On the down side, our bed was falling apart, the one western style toilet was two stories down (we had a squat style one on our level), and there were dogs outside that were barking all night. We don't recommend this place to others, but it may improve over time as the owner did seem interested in making it better. Oh, one actual bonus of the Discovery Cafe is that the owner is very friendly and really eager to
make a good impression and offered us a free drink (each) for each night we stayed...the value of our drinks basically cut our room bill in half!
It took us a little time to get oriented and figure out what to see but the Malay people are extremely friendly...lots of people smiling and saying hello as we walk down the street. Last night there were lots of festivities going on in Chinatown (I think every town in Asia has a Chinatown) which was pretty fun to see. We also took a "tri-shaw ride" which is like a pedicab but has some unique features, including the choices of music the drivers have and their ornate floral decor. Many people here have tried to convince us to stay in Melaka longer, but there's not much left to see and we'd like to head north a bit. One thing that is for sure, it is much hotter here than in Singapore....it's somewhat exhausting actually. HOpefully we'll get used to being covered in sweat and remember to keep drinking lots of water. The mosquitoes are annoying but for some reason they like me and tend to leave Trevor alone. Another thing of note is
the restaurant where we ate dinner last night...called Taro. Who knew that at a place where the most expensive meal cost more than our room would be playing Motley Crew ("Home Sweet Home") and have bad karaoke as the background music! Despite the music, the food was excellent and service was great too.
We are off today to catch a bus to Kuala Lumpur, where we probably won't stay too long, then will continue on up the coast and maybe hit somewhere with a beach! (Amazingly, despite the fact that Melaka is right on the ocean, there's not much in the way of beach very close to here.)
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Con
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Malay-Dutch culture
Hey Cara, I'm loving the travel blog and look forward to following you guys the coming 3-4 months - keep it up! Interesting you had to travel all the way to Malaysia to get some exposure to (old) Dutch cultural influences, after being an office neighbor to a Dutchman for all those years at Hawaiian Vacations! Enjoy it all - I'm jealous! Cheerio/Con