Advertisement
Published: April 18th 2007
Edit Blog Post
Melaka
Port in Melakka Back in diverse Malaysia Malaysia's island Penang had captured on our last journey over 2 months ago our senses, offering with little hassle beautiful landscapes, jungle, sandy beaches, a bustling city, diverse cultures and religions living peacefully together. As Malaysians come from a number of different ethnic groups: Malays, Chinese, Indians and the mixes in between such as Chinese with a Malay women are called Baba-Nonyas. This complex but most harmoneous cultural make-up I compare to a pot with a whole, with continuous water splashing in. On every street corner, in every town or city we experienced new adventures.
Melaka This old colonial town was a must to see, incorporating Dutch, English and Portuguese coloniasation. After Singapores clean and structured infrastructure, Melaka hit us with spicy, sweet, fishy and flowery smells, hectic streets (our taxi could not take us to our hostel as Chinatown was closed for the weekend market) and on first site weird hostel, called Sama Sama (You are Welcome in Malay). The owners were Malay and Swiss, both I guess stuck in Hippy Party mood but trying to survive in modern society by offering an accomodation of a different kind.
Well different
Tiger Beer
This is a major sight in Asia. Tiger Beer is posted, printed and shown wherever you go means, that the pretty much run down house was pimped up with Buddhas in small basins in the courtyard, exotic plants and junk all around. Somehow, the place grew to us though, very astounding as cold but running water, insect smell sticks and funny people around make a surreal mixture.
Having in our heads already booked the train following Melaka to Kuala Lumpur the next day, we decided to bang on with sightseeing. I think we have on our whole journey not seen as many diverse sights: starting from a Hindu Temple (Sri Poyatha Venayagar Moorthi Temple - I have to look them all up in my Lonely planet, no surprise with these conplicated names), followed just 20m by a mosque (Kampung Kling Mosque, oldest in Malaysia), than across the street a Buddhist Temple Cheng Hoon Teng.
On the same night, as we found out a festival (4th Anniversary Celebration of the city of historical Melaka and 10th Gendang Nusantara Gala Show) was about to take place just outside of Melaka with the Sultan and Malaysian Minister visiting. We set to find our own way by local busses, first leading us back outside to the Sentral bus station,
Malay Festival
Me in the crowd watching the dance festival. where - imagine that! we found a huge TESCO complex. We managed to get a bite and to have a short look around the many stalls. TESCO is over here not just a supermarket, but also a market place for all sorts of clothing, electronic equipment. After waiting 30min for our bus we almost lost hope as we felt lost - no one seemed to know from where the bus leaves and when. Ha! patience paid off and we headed towards a stage and hotel, accomodating in front of it a huge crowd of locals waiting for the show to begin.
Hm, what an experience, all visitors sat on the floor or on stairs peacefully without any alcohol... with their whole families, including small children, who kept very quiet captured by the celebration. We saw an amazing show of dance and music from Indonesia, Netherlands, Malaysia and other Asian countries, all trying to be more colourful, more heard, more dramatic in their performances. Huge drums and percussions support their efforts. Around 11pm we realised that it was time to go as the hostel would close soon. We reckon the show must have lasted into the early morning.
On
Melaka Trisha
They are most colourful decorated to catch tourists attention. the next day our bus to KL was to leave in the afternoon. Still a lot more to see we decided to get up early and visit a islamic museum and church ruins. On the way to the muslim quarter we tremled over Villa Sentosa. A private museum, which is still inhabited by a member of the family's grand sons showing visitors around, making them comfortable in his home. His charming and extrovert character made the visit even more so extraordinary allowing us to sit in his colourful decorated furniture and banging the gong for another year of luck (now we have triple luck - chinese from touching the python from head to toe and having prosperous year according to our chinese signs). The visit was completed with signing a visitor book and letting him tell our character traids and wish us all the best for the future. Overwhelmed by this depth of conversation we slowly walked back with wide open eyes and smiles inside our hearts.
Kuala Lumpur KL, Malaysias capital is in my eyes a bustling, partly modern but very traditional and muslim orientated city. It summarieses arts, religions, food, wealth and also poverty, that
Pagoda
The buddhist Pagoda shows one hundret small Buddhas on golden plates reminding people of its present in everything and everywhere. we have seen all over Malaysia. Everywhere you go you will find a shopping mall offering western, Malaysian brands and sometimes copies of it. I stopped counting after 10 malls, that you are willingly or unwillingly pass through when exploring the city.
As described KL is a muslim capital too, which was a good reason to follow the search muslim art, mosques and the biggest islamic museum with a delicious lebanese restaurant. You can see a few pictures from the variety of buildings such as train stations, Masjids and museums. We visited art galeries, night markets, central markets - all in all we were in a shopping spree, where fake watches along with islamic art were not save from our haggling. Ask me where you can get T-shirt, Scarfs, wooden art etc. from, I can tell you. I should consider becoming a personal shopping consultant.
Again besides visiting the energetic Indian quarter and Chinatown, the business district with its twin towers of 451.9m height (Petronas - oil company) was worthwile visiting. A commercial like movie about the company was shown, after which I was catapulted into a queue showing another movie about the risks of going onto the
Melaka Mosque
We were allowed to enter this mosque with this dress only but funnily enough I had not to cover my hair like in other mosques around Malaysia 170m high bridge connecting the towers (remember I am afraid of heights). A super fast lift (rising 5m a second) shot us up and there we were, high above the city (for free, that was a change) showing KL neverending size and beautiful sunset. Unfortunately -out of safety reasons, only 6min were allowed on the tower, which to be honest was fine with me, I was shot down again with a super speed, making my ears clog up.
Not to forget, after a long days walk (shopping), were our evening foot reflexology massages. Those chinese massages are an experience for itself. Different to Europe they are a lot more affordable and are offered on mass in our district we staid in. You have to be careful, who you trust to lay hands on your feet 😊. I am saying that because Ali's first masseuse was a feisty, very strong women, who took pleasure in causing rather pain than pain relief. Her inthusiasm in putting more effort into strenght of massaging was kindled by Ali making faces because of pain and asking her to soften her touch. I felt for him. My young girl was fantastic and relaxed me completely,
Feet Binding
This picture shows a shoe that Chinese women wore up to the 1930 with bandaged feed. with some pain too but which I could take. The second type of massage we tried was cupping, where cups were placed on your back, withdrawing the air from them sucking the blood to ghe top and relaxing the mussle tissue based on increased blood circulation, leaving space like looking circles on the back. It didn't hurt and was definetely relaxing, especially when my Malay girl started walking on my back! that must have been a funny sight.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.152s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 17; qc: 58; dbt: 0.0585s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb