Melaka and a Big Purple Toe

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Our next stop on our tour of Malaysia was a town called Melaka in South Malaysia on the West Coast. Throughout its years of existence it was taken over by the Portuguese, Dutch and the British. Because of its cultural legacy it achieved UNESCO World Heritage Status in July 2008.

We took a bus from KL and within a matter of hours we were there in Chinatown looking for somewhere to stay. We stumbled upon The Voyage Guesthouse and for 35RM we had our first room in Malaysia with not only one but TWO massive windows looking out onto a lovely old Chinese style street, the room was by far the best we had had for a long time, although it was still shared facilities we were very impressed. We immediately dumped our stuff and headed in search of food, we ended up in a Chinese restaurant famous for its chicken rice balls. Seeing they were apparently so famous (we had never heard of them) we naturally had to have them with some BBQ and roast pork, G liked them, they reminded her of Paxo stuffing but Tony wasn’t too impressed, however it was cheap at 4RM a portion and it filled us up nicely.

After a busy week of sightseeing and walking for our first day in Melaka we weren’t fussed on sightseeing so we spent the day wondering around having fruit juices by the river and enjoying the peaceful beauty of the place. For dinner we found a lovely place called Calanthe Art Café where we had some yummy curries before heading to bed for an early night.

Our first day of sightseeing pretty much consisted of seeing everything the town has to offer. We firstly headed to The Voyage Café for a fab breakfast of baked beans, scrambled eggs, fried toms, sausage (not pork), toast and fruit juice, oh and T’s coffee in a bag. This was followed by a walk over to the Dutch Square, the oldest surviving part of Melaka, from here we headed up to Bukit St Paul past the Dutch graveyard. Bukit St Paul is an old ruined church built in 1521 by the Portuguese where it was originally named “Our Lady of the Mount”. It was later took over by the Dutch in 1641 who renamed it St Paul’s Church. It was in use for 112 years until another church was built at the bottom of the hill (how lazy is that!!!). Once we arrived (the Brits) we found it more useful to store gunpowder, we also added a lighthouse at the entrance of the church. From the hill you can look out to the Straits of Melaka where until the nineteenth century this town was the major port in the country.

From here we walked to Porta de Santiago. This used to be a massive fort, however, what remains now is nothing to what the fort once was, to build it the Portuguese used 500 slaves. The fort stood for 296 years and would have survived if it wasn’t for the arrival of us, the British in 1795, with the decision to relocate to Penang in 1807 orders were issued to destroy the fort to prevent other forces using the it against the British, it wasn’t until orders came down the command to leave the remainder of the fort alone!

From here we walked along the road to St Francis Xavier’s Church a twined towered nineteenth century slightly wonky structure which wasn’t much to write home about. From here we walked through a very tiny little India, which probably consisted of about 3 restaurants and 5 sari shops before heading towards St Peter’s Church which to be honest was a slight disappointment as you could not go in to have a nose, so we headed back into town via a 7/11 for an ice cream and caught a bus to the Portuguese Settlement about 3km from the town centre. We think we can safely say we were on the bus longer than we were there for, it was RUBBISH, apart from having a walk about the little streets where the locals live, the front where the water is was not anything to write home about, so we headed back into Chinatown and back to Calanthe Art Café where they sell the most amazing cheese cakes EVER!!!! We spent the rest of the day pottering around china town marvelling at the old Chinese shophouses, old temples and mosques which are in the area. We ended back in the café for dinner enjoying more curry before heading down Jonkers Steeet which in the weekend is closed to traffic on the evening for the local shopkeepers to put stalls out for the Singaporean tourists with loads of money and the best cameras money can buy taking photos of literally anything they see!!!! We were also lucky to see the locals preparing for Chinese New Year, in the “community centres” we caught a glimpse of the Dragon Dance and other kind of fantastic things related to this important day. A few beers later tony went to the loo and fell over where he hurt his toe so we called it a night and we walked (Tony limped) home.

The next day we were going to head down to Singapore to complete our overland journey but with Tony’s toe twice the size and the colour of a beetroot we decided against it and spent the day relaxing, having more cheesecake, fruit juices and beers, once more enjoying the wonderful atmosphere of Chinatown with all its weekend tourists milling around.

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Comments

[James Carson]

Nice post, nice photos, I did a similar thing myself at jamescarson.co.uk/travel/?p=53