Pretty lady, miss, you want to buy?

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Geo: 2.19714, 102.249

So the weather did hold out and I did indeed rent a bike (light blue with a nice basket for those of you who are interested. I named her Bertie) and I spent a rather nice 6 hours biking a giant circle around the town. First stop was a little island with a mosque and wildlife park- or so the map led me to believe. What I actually found was a lot of partially constructed buildings, construction workers who thought I was crazy for being there, partially constructed roads, a poor excuse for a wildlife park and a beautiful mosque which my shorts/shirt outfit prevented me from visiting (I knew this would happen but it was too hot to wear trousers!). There was however a beautiful view of the ocean and the promise of this developing into a rather high-end housing estate.

Second stop was the Portuguese town and an old fort. At this point I started to realize 3 things. 1. The map was not to scale. 2. Many of the streets were actually 4 lane one way streets and cycling the wrong way down them was really not fun (especially as I had a hard time remembering which side of the road I was supposed to be on!) 4 years cycling around Hangzhou had not prepared me for these streets- my nerves took a battering! 3. A lot of artistic license had been used when conjuring up descriptions of these places! So Portuguese town was not the nice European area full of cafés and restaurants that I had been expecting. It was, in fact, a small collection of houses with a working men's club. Ok, move on. The old fort also took some finding. The one way system and an unwillingness on my part to take my bike around a roundabout dodging motorbikes, trucks and everything else meant that I had a rather long detour just to find a fairly 'safe' place to cross the road and head back to the fort. By this point I realized that the bike was made for the heritage area and in fact nobody rides bikes around the greater city - oops! The fort was built by the Dutch and was basically a large round structure on the top of a hill with 5 canons. Apparently it was pretty effective method of destroying approaching armies.

Next stop was Bukit Cina or China town. There was a nice temple (with associated tour groups!), traditional lanes with Chinese houses, delicious food and then the actual Bukit Cina - a hill covered in tomb stones and graves of whole families. From the top there was 360o view of the city which was nice. After this came a nice random cycle (trying to avoid the one way streets!) where I found an abandoned theme park, a local pavement cafe where everything was written in Malay so I just pointed and hoped; it turned out well, a nice rice, prawn and egg dish materialized. There was also a monorail which opened in 2010 but closed a short while later due to safety fears so now it only runs once in a blue moon, I.e. when the government allows it to. Then I stumbled upon some traditional Malay houses- beautiful wooden structures, some on stilts, some with pointed roofs and all very colorful. Finally, I headed back downtown and cycled by the river and next to a colorful row of houses with great graffiti.

Last night we went to the night market and saw an hour long show by a guy who can crack a coconut using his finger or his elbow. The show was so long because he did 58minutes of marketing his medicine and then 2 minutes of actually cracking the coconuts - it was still interesting though. There was also a stall selling geckos, lizards, chameleons, tarantulas and hamsters! There was also lots of food! Durians, Taiwanese, Japanese, sushi, Korean, Thai, Chinese etc etc.

Today was a bit of a lazy day. I did some laundry and wandered around the town where I accidentally walked into a wedding ceremony - oops! Tomorrow I'm heading back to KL with another British girl I met here. I collect my passport Monday morning (hopefully with that magic visa inside) and then we head north to Penang for a few days.

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Photos

Pretty Mosque
If you look closely there's some sort of ceremony going on inside

Notice the monorail
And the tourist boats

More tuk tuks
The entrance to the heritage area and the night market

Who buys these?!
I think a 'sugar glider' is actually a hamster

Geographer cafe!
Aka really good food - the source of the peanut picture