Melaka

our beautiful trishaw!
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After a reasonably early start and hearty hotel breakfast I met up with the others from my new tour group and we got a couple of taxis to take us to the bus stop we're we were getting a coach bound for Melaka.The journey was about 4 or 5 hours and had a stop or two along. Once we'd crossed the border and passed through the two sets of immigration we stopped at a service station where I went to buy something forgetting I didn't have any Malaysian currency yet...so didn't get very far! Over the course of the journey I had the chance to start getting to know the others in the group and although I had expected it to be a bigger group in the end I was quite glad there were only a few of us-made getting to know everyone much easier and generally made things more relaxed! There was one other girl on the tour Sarita, 3 guys Brendan, Sanjay and Kevin as well as our tour leader Aaron.

St Paul's Church, Melaka
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Once we got to Melaka we first took our stuff to the hotel  Baba House and had a while there just to chill for a bit before heading out to see some of the city. We were to be travelling in some style Aaron the tour leader had arranged Trishaw tours for us!! I hadn't realised what they were but I soon found out as there were literally hundreds of them around the city. Added to that they are pretty hard to miss as are very colourfully decorated and are normally playing pop music at full blast!! The tour was actually pretty fun and a good way of getting around to all the main sights, including a very grand chinese temple caled 'Cheng Hoon Teng' and St Paul's church which had been built by the Portuguese in 1521. Another place we visited was the Independence Memorial Hall which is a small free museum dedicated to the history of Melaka (and Malaysia) right up to their gaining independence from the British Empire. I hadn't known very much at all about Malaysian history so it was interesting to find out about it.  In the evening we went to a nice hotel nearby for some cocktails before going out for a meal. After eating we went on for a few more drinks in the centre but we were somewhat limited in choice of drinking establishments as while there are fair few travellers, not the type of place to be heaving on a monday night!  Still had a fun evening and managed to find a few beers!