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Published: November 2nd 2006
Yesterday was a relatively uneventful day as we just stayed in for most of the day to save a bit of cash. We did venture as far as the supermarket but got utterly drenched on the way back. It was light and dry when we arrived but by the time we left, it had been raining for a while and all the streets were waterlogged. Despite having umbrellas with us (God bless my Hello Kitty brolly!), we couldn't see the puddles in the road and our feet were soaking wet by the time we made it back to the hostel. We both felt a bit miserable after that, I can tell you!
Today, we made up for not having been out much yesterday and boy did we walk a long, long way. We had spotted an area on the map that had 3 shopping malls close together and thought it might be worth a bit of a trek to see a part of Melaka away from all the tourists. We wandered first up to the pink town square again where it seemed strangely quiet. Eventually we twigged that it was because the holiday season was over. All the kitschly bedecked
Pimp My Trishaw
Trishaws in the square - all dressed up with nowhere to go!trishaws were parked up with their drivers dozing peacefully in the shade. Further along our route we passed through Little India, a couple of streets dotted with Bollywood DVD shops, restaurants and sari boutiques.
It probably took us a good 1.5 hours to reach the first mall and inside it was buzzing with locals. The mall was spread over 4 floors although the entire 4th floor was completely abandoned and pretty much every other store on the first 3 floors had the shutters down. It was a bit dark and dingy inside and we were greeted by many curious stares but we still enjoyed ourselves just window shopping in the quirky little shops that were open. It was an interesting experience but not exactly exciting so we headed off to find the next mall, which turned out to be little better than the first. It was a bit brighter and more modern inside but really only sold household goods which not even professional window-shoppers like ourselves could work up any enthusiasm for. No problem then, straight off to mall no.3, which proved a little bit tricky to find. The map said to follow a particular road which turned out
Police Restaurant
Crime must be low here in Melaka if the police station doubles up as a bistro in the evening ;) to lead right through a residential disctrict and again, we got lot of curious glances from the residents as we ambled past. We must have walked for a good 20 - 30 minutes by the time we found the final mall on our journey, only to find we had wasted our time - the mall looked as if it had been shut for at least a couple of years!
Back we walked to the hostel's end of Melaka and we greatly cheered up when we spotted our old friend the monitor lizard posing for photographs by the river for a couple of elderly Danish tourists. When one of them mentioned something about a crocodile, Glynn said I came over all indignant and corrected him in a thoroughly annoyed schoolteacher's voice! The Danish people seemed to leave quite quickly after that (can't think why) and Glynn and I sat on the banks of the river, resting our tired feet and watching the mudskippers playing in the silty dregs of the shore. When we made it back to the hostel we worked out that we had been walking for well over 5 hours and had covered roughly 8 miles - no
Dude, Where's My GPS?
We're using state of the art GPS navigation equipment on this trip: Glynn Positioning Satellite! wonder we were knackered.
In the evening we went for dinner with a German couple, Susi and Stefan, who I met when cooking last night. They are a lovely, bubbly couple and we had lots of fun introducing them to fake meat in the vegetarian restaurant we were in the other day. We chatted merrily for ages before returning to the hostel and meeting up with Andy, a South Korean chap whom Glynn had befriended the night before too. All 5 of us sat on the balcony, ate ice cream and laughed until late into the night.
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Linda
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Liking the new look blog
Exciting news from Swindon - We now have curtains in our new bedroom. Things slowing getting to a more normal state. Not got our e-mail sorted out at home yet - but we'll have some pictures when we do. Good to read you're having fun as usual!