It's good to be a friend and not a foreigner

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We used Singapore as a transit point into Malaysia. This time we would do an overland crossing to Melaka.

Because of our good experience with our last visit to Malaysia, we decided to see a little more of what the country could offer the backpacker. We used Melaka as a half way stop to the beach island of Pangkor.

Melaka has a lot of colonial history relevant to our English heritage; most of which is centred around Jalan Hang Jebat (Jonkers Walk) and the port area of the city. This area was great for good value accommodation, we got a small but clean room with air con, tv and bathroom with a hot shower for MYR45 (£6.50). However, because it was Islamic New Year at the time we visited many of the tourist shops/bars/restaurants were not open for very long, so to find something to eat was a challenge, we resorted to the nearby Carrefour and modern shopping centre to make sure we didn't starve! We did find an eatery selling the city's legendary 'chicken rice balls' but we weren't so impressed with the 'delicacy'. It was basically just some chicken (Neil's was mostly bones!) and the rice was very, very strange. It was rice which had been compressed into balls so much that they tasted like a cross between potato and semolina. Not nice in our opinion! We expected (and were really looking forward to) lots of Indian food - but we didn't find any in Melaka much to our dismay.

There is no doubt about it, Melaka is an enchanting, historical city which is more European than Asian in appearance due to it's English, Portuguese and Dutch colonisations over the years with some Chinese aspects thrown in. Some of the history included St Pauls church and hill, a Dutch galleon ship, the Dutch style Town Hall and some interesting streets you could explore which were particularly colourful at night lit up by red Chinese lanterns. This looked very pretty but we think it made the area around Jonkers Walk look a little like the Amsterdam red light district...not that this is a bad thing, it made us more aware of the city's colonial past.

We can say though that the people of Melaka were very welcoming and friendly to us. We had noticed before on our previous visit to Malaysia, that this is one of the few places in Asia where we were made to feel like a friend instead of a foreigner. It is for this reason that we think we could quite happily live and work in Malaysia.

Melaka was a nice taste of old Malaysia and we reluctantly moved onto Pulau Pangkor (north west of Kuala Lumpur) a supposedly 6 hour bus journey and 1 hour ferry ride away from Melaka.

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Photos

an old car parked on display next to the monument for independence
it used to be used to ferry dignitaries around!

Comments

[Shahril]

Malaysian hospitality
DEAR DONNA AND NEIL, I AM VERY GLAD TO READ YOUR TRAVEL NOTES FROM MELAKA.. THE HISTORICAL CITY .. AS MALAYSIAN WE ALWAYS PRACTICE AT ALL TIMES FRIENDLT AND SMILE ATTITUDE TO EVERYBODY.. THE MALAY WORD CALL MESRA. THANK YOU FOR YOUR GREAT COMMENTS ABOUT MELAKA AND MALAYSIANS REGARDS SHAHRIL