Lots of Red Buildings

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I arrived to Malacca yesterday at 5am after leaving the Perhentians at noon the day before. I had breakfast at a Chinese market since they were the only ones awake and hung out til 730ish. I made my way to the hostel I hoped to get and a couple was leaving as I arrived. They said to go on in and knock on the door where the owners were sleeping. I knocked. No answer. Knocked again louder this time and a European woman in her 50s came blustering out and was clearly irritated to be awaken. She yelled at me that they had no rooms and how dare I knock on her door and why couldn't I wait outside like normal people. I apologized, said I'd had a long trip and went outside with teary eyes. I was so exhausted that I just needed a moment to sit down. My nose was mostly running because I'd been fighting a nasty cold for the past few days and the AC had been cranked up on the night bus to a ridiculously cold temperature. The woman came outside and apologized for yelling at me and said she didn't like to be woken up early-I can totally relate to that. She thought about it a moment and miraculously remembered that a room was opening up at 9:15 that morning. I said I'd take it. She's a bit of a loony but actually really nice as long as you don't wake her up in the morning. The location of the guesthouse is prime. It's in the heart of Chinatown right along a suggested walking tour of Melacca and a few minutes from all of the major sites. Melacca is an ancient trading mecca and has major Portuguese, Dutch, Chinese influences as well as a small India town. The historical section with all of the old Portuguese and Dutch buildings is painted a burnt red color and there are hordes of colorful flower-covered tri-shaws (3 wheeled rickshaws) blasting techno music wheeling around the streets.

Yesterday I went through an old Dutch church that was Portuguese before that from 1521. It had several gigantic headstones from the 1600s leaning against the walls and a nice view of the town below since the church is on a hill. I went to a couple of museums-The Sultanate Palace which is a replica of a 15th c palace of wood and built without nails. I stepped into the Museum of Education since it had really nice AC. It was pretty boring except for a display on education in the early 1800s where they went into detail about a submission ritual that parents would go through when their children first enter school. First the parents present gifts to the school and they ask 2 things: that the school leave the eyes and limbs of their child unharmed but the rest of the body is for the teacher to do as they see fit. The schools then had the permission of the parents to use capital punishment and it was given out in the forms of iron chains, coconut husk smoke, Chinese chili, the cane, and "ketuk ketampi" where the student stood and squatted with hands on opposite ears. So many ideas to implement into my classroom 😊 To be fair, the exhibit also stated that Melacca schools were far ahead of their times since teachers had open curriculum and taught life skills-not just religion like most schools of that era.

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