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Published: December 13th 2005
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Dutch Sq. Christ Church
Built by the Portugese, but crucially painted pink by the Dutch Lindsay - I have no idea what that means. It is the Melaka Tourist Board slogan! If you have any idea then let me know. It would seem to suggest to me that Melaka is a boring place, which is totally untrue. I think someone needs to have words with the marketing people.
On the morning of the 6th we headed off with all our bags (rapidly collecting more) to the nearby bus station and caught a Transnational coach to Melaka, the next city on our itinerary. Melaka is about 200 KM (that's 125 miles) to the south of KL, and the "historic heart of Malaysia". The coach set off at 10am for the estimated two hour journey (Russ - Ha! I'm used to these supposed SE Asian estimates by now) so we settled down with our books to get in a good 4 hours reading. So you can imagine Russ's annoyance when at 12:10 we rocked up at the out of town Melaka Sentral Station. Unfortunately our guide book made no mention of this station - so in the past year Malaysia has spawned a mono-rail and major bus station which are not mentioned in our up-to-date guidebook! This
Signpost
Only that far to London? We're pretty sure it's not in that direction though. led to an exciting time working out where the hell we were.
Russell - So next was getting into town on the local bus service. We knew we needed bus 17 (hopefully) but where was it? At times when you are unsure of which way to go there are a couple of good rules to go by. 1) The way forward is always the one that goes away from the Crazy Frog theme tune and 2) Always follow the other backpackers who look like they know where they are going. Even if they don't you can share a cab back to where you were supposed to be going anyway. In the absence of the Crazy Frog the backpackers led us to the right bus. As usual the bus was twice as expensive as the guide book suggested but when you are talking about a 13p bus fare not even I am going to argue.
We found a suitable hotel and got straight on to dealing with the pressing problem of laundry. Every backpacker district always has plenty, so no problem. Well, we searched for an hour and found nothing. In the end we sloped back to the hotel
Melaka Trishaw
You don't get the full effect without the offensive music to see if they could help. "Ah I have a map" said our helpful host. "I drew it myself but you can have a copy. It's not to scale" he added, rather unnecessarily. He marked roughly where the laundry was and sent us on his way. Not to scale was a bit of an understatement and I have to say quite a lot was left out, though he had included two police stations and the local jail! Eventually we found the dobi, and a nice little Italian bakery where we stopped as a reward for doing so well.
Lindsay - It was here in the 15th century that the Sultan of Melaka set up his Kingdom after being thrown out of his previous kingdom of Singapore. All the other Malay Sutan's trace their lineage back to the Melaka Sultanate. The Melaka Sultanate lasted until the 16th century, when the town was taken over by the Portugese. The Dutch then invaded, then the Dutch did a swapsie with Melaka with the British. Unfortuately Melaka was kind of neglected by the British, who were much more interested in their other bases at Penang and Singapore, and the town quietly decayed as
Lins Ship
Lindsay by the replica ship museum. Not a museum of replica ships by the way. a port and trading centre. However the architecture in the historic parts of Melaka is quite beautiful, and a massive restoration programme is underway by the river. Optimistically this is due to be finished by 2008 but only about a fifth of it seems to have been started. The restored buildings though are brightly coloured and pretty, and apparantly are destined for life as boutique hotels and trendy wine bars.
Our first stop - quite sensibly, which is a first for us - was the tourist information office. We came out laden with leaflets, but unfortunately none of them on Melaka! We went back in for another forage just to check, and after speaking to the lady behind the counter she produced a secret leaflet on the sights of Melaka. We were very excited to see the Melaka water park, but after checking on the map found out that it was practically back in KL! However Melaka has lots of other interesting sights, and a pleasant laid back pace after KL (not enough to send me to sleep though). Around the clock tower in Dutch Square the tri-shaw drivers cluster. The Melaka tri-shaws are decked out with silk flowers
Russ Ship
Russell on board the museum that is inside a replica ship and fairy lights and are quite magnificent to look at, although the drivers have an unhealthy facination with playing the awful Crazy Frog, chasing tourists and supporting Arsenal football club (see picture).
We also went to visit the recreation of the palace of the Melaka Sultan, which is where we learned all about that! And also to a replica of a Portugese vessel, where we learned some more about the history of Melaka. My personal favourite though was a boat trip around old Melaka, looking at the regeneration, the Malaysian Kampung and ghost bridge, which was hosted by the most crazy tour guide we have had yet. Example - he came around to show us all a technique to check if your trousers fit (?!) by pinning them around your neck. I'm sorry but one look at me and Russell and you will see that that is absolute nonsense. Perhaps that is what they are
supposed to be.
Russell - He pointed out a chain that was used to haul cargo from the ships in the 19th century and explained with much glee that it was from Birmingham and called Gladys(?). The river itself teems with Kamodo Dragons
and the guide spent a good 10 minutes telling us all their names. There was Madonna, Sonny and Cher, Govenor Schwatzenegger, David and Victoria Beckham and Elton John who is apprently waiting for his husband (?). He finished off his excellent presentation by saying goodbye in every language he knew, which turned out to be quite a lot including Texan (Yawl have a nice day yawl), Brummy (Ta Ra), Cockney (See ya later Aligator) and Welsh (though he said Iechyd Da which isn't quite right but lets face it who cares!).
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