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Published: January 20th 2016
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Frozen ride madam?
Monday 17 January
Leaving our hotel we entered the fairly busy streets of the world heritage city of Melaka. We decided to leave exploration of the Chinese quarter until evening, so crossed the bridge into Dutch square (aka red square).Architecture is a mix of Dutch and English - it was hard to concentrate on the buildings due to the loud Disco music and overwhelming displays of the 3-wheeled cycles, whose riders ply their trade around the square. Paula's favourite being the 'Frozen' theme. For MYR 2, (30p). It's driver willingly posed for a photograph. We, however, declined to hire him, more suited to Paula's 3yr old granddaughter's we thought. The Dutch buildings are all well-maintained, painted in a garish salmon pink colour, which popular legend claims to have been chosen specifically to hide the staining historically caused by members of the Indian community who enjoyed spitting betel juice. We did note that the more later constructed British colonial-style buildings remained mostly white. As we had decided to join the free tourist office walking tour of the City the following day, we mostly browsed the more famous landmarks, anticipating learning more with the guide. There is a revolving tower which raises
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Leo getting sunburnt
110 Mtrs for a modest fee of Mr30 (£5 pp) to give a five minute, 360degree view of the whole of the city, however, you can walk up St Paul's hill for free and enjoy a similar view for as long as you like. Upon leaving the hill and taking a circuitous route, we strolled along the river where we found a charming little cafe-bar within one of the old Dutch houses c1500, took a table facing the river and watched the river cruise boats sail by, with our very first Tiger beer of the trip. Being a Muslim country, taxation on alcohol is steep, so we sipped slowly. At MYR 9, (£1.50) for a small bottle, we decided we would not be drinking much beer here. This was in fact the cheapest to be found in the area, and we did do quite a bit of research (or course)'before finding this out. On our way back to the hotel, we passed a large Hard Rock Cafe, Paula decided to make use of the facilities as there weren't any at the previous cafe bar. Leo made use of the time to indulge in pint of draught Carlesberg as it was
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Dutch square
happy hour which was rm49 (£8). We were never going back there outside of happy hour! We found it bizarre to be sitting in an iconic modern example of Western culture surrounded by Muslim, Chinese, Malays and Indian diners, being the only two Westerners. Maybe, in hindsight, given the city's links with Europe, it was not bizarre after all. Retired to hotel, feeling a bit jet-lagged we afforded ourselves two hours sleep and set the alarm. Having been told of the famous chicken rice balls served next door to our hotel, we later dined in this up-market street food restaurant, thoroughly enjoyed our dinner, which was accompanied by steamed vegetables with pak chong, special rice, steamed and roasted sliced chicken and char Sui pork. Delicious, served by happy people who ensured happy contented customers. Very good value for money. Feeling tired again, three strides later, back inside our hotel foyer, slept.
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