Blogs from Melaka City, Melaka, Malaysia, Asia - page 18

After 2 days of hectic Eid celebrations (13 hours of feasting on the 1st day!) we finally loaded up the car, escaped Kampung KL and drove the 1.5 hours down to my birthplace - the historic and newly-anointed World Heritage City of Melaka. It's been years and years since either of us has visited Melaka and sans Sprog we were on our usual Mission To Eat! We checked into the lovely and recently-restored Majestic Hotel on Jalan Bunga Raya Pantai - just across the road from the Melaka River with colourful picturesque Malay kampung houses lining the banks on the far side. The Majestic is all creams and cool greens, original tiled floors with polished wooden stairs, shuttered windows and exceedingly polite service. I love how there are jars of traditional sweets and cookies (my fav ... read more

hi everybody. we're in the melaka at the moment, a really pretty town with probably the best food we've had so far, a mix of malaysian, chinese, indian and indonesian cuisine. we left kuala lumpur on thursday after watching most of the ireland match on wednesday night. the match started at 1 in the morning but the pub closed up at 2.45 with about 5 mins left. we were quite upset and no matter how much pleading we did the people working there wanted to go home, oh well at least we didn't miss any goals. melaka is a really cool place, very laid back atmosphere with friendly people. on our first night here we met an english guy called michael from york out drinking with his malaysian friend sam. the next day was sam's birthday ... read more

Day 43: Port Dickson to Melaka Thanks to our windowless room we pressed snooze on our alarm for an hour and a half, until 9:15. We'd noticed that we'd been needing more and more sleep. Stopping by an internet café, we discovered that we’d already received approval of our Australian work-holiday visas! (The visa is called that because the Australian government hopes that travellers will come work, and then holiday in Australia, thus spending the money they have made in the country, before departing.) The response and acceptance came within ten hours! I guess Australia really is desperate for workers, particularly English speaking ones. And we were prepared to wait weeks! We were going to Australia and we were very, very excited! All of a sudden! What a change in plans! A whole new adventure! Perhaps ... read more

So, on Wednesday we journeyed to Malaysia. It was a very nice coach - comfortable air-con journey! As soon as we crossed the boarder there were cows and goats just rocking about at the side of the road! When we arrived in Melaka the heat was intense! Less humid than Singapore but it felt hotter. We got on a local bus to take us into town. It was a total rattletrap and was packed full - we had backpacks on knees. Made for one sweaty journey! Arriving in the town square we realised Malaysia was going to be totally different to Singapore! Now we really felt like we were abroad! There were taxi/trishaw drivers everywhere shouting at us trying to get our business and monks too! Although they didn't shout. Melaka was a real preserved historical ... read more

My time in Malacca picked up a bit-was a bit dreary after having seen so many museums. Next day I walked around Chinatown and wandered into a temple with Taoist, Confucionist and Buddhist shrines. I started chatting with the man at the desk about religion and he quizzed me on my Buddhism and since I scored 80-90% correct I walked away with not one but two books on Buddhism! He said one of them is really hard to get outside of Asia. I wandered back to the hostel not knowing what a colorful crowd we'd have there that night: the owners and 2 British brothers who've been there awhile, 2 trishaw drivers one of whom has the most beautiful trishaw in all of Melacca, a street vendor who sells atop the hill without a license, and ... read more