'Melaka Melee'

Luxury Bus Seat with 5 massage settings
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17th Oct

Had to get up at 6am today; those you know me well will realise that this is ridiculously early even if i am jet-lagged. However, as the saying goes something like 'the early bird gets the worm'... by worm, i mean an air-conditioned bus with full reclining seats, full leg rests and no less than 5 massage settings available to aid my second sleep of the day :)

'Ground roots Malaysia with dusty air, buses and pictoresque colonial sites...'

Rusty Chinatown
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SO, the journey to Melaka in South Malaysia took bout 5 hrs, cost around a fiver, and in true asian fashion, pitted at some random yard with a dodgy-looking restaurant with even scarier toilets. The driver gets commission if any of us were brave enough to indulge in either facility...border crossing was easy and got a nice malaysian stamp!

Around 2pm, arrived at a rather dusty Melaka Sentral bus station, and with my heart set on staying at the 'Traveller's Lodge', with its roof-top garden and Japanese Lounge all for RM25 (Double with air con, attached bathroom), it was perhaps fate that i would meet one of the family touts who led us to a, at best, rickety taxi and for RM15, the nice driver promised safe passage to J Melaka Raya 1 where the rest of the family and importantly our guesthouse was. For no apparent reason, i decided at that moment to barter and got the ride for RM13 - 2 ringgit is like 30p, but at the end of our Malaysian adventure, i was lucky to have been so thrifty...

!!
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Had a nice spicy lunch at a roadside cafe, a 'roti ayam' or chicken rice which was only a few ringgit even though we had to fight with some starving cats for it. We then felt brave and hailed down a delapidated bus and for 1 ringgit (14p, beat that Livingstone), we went a long way out from where we wanted to go! lol, it turns out the main tourist areas were a literal stones throw from where we had lunch! so when i spotted on the map that we were leaving Melaka, as the bus stopped for fuel mid-journey!, i dragged myself and Olivia off and managed, luckily, to get our bearings and enter an old, as if untouched, traditional chinatown...it appears that Melaka has been left untouched for a long time. Still a principal port for Malaysia, it has been invaded and re-invaded many times and this is manifested in the Chinese, Indian, English and Portuguese Districts located in this small town. The main landmark is the Red town hall, which is a symbol of colonial pasts and the climb to the top of a steep Bukit-St Paul led to a hill-top church housing Dutch corpses. Another prize for scaling the relief was a rather charming chinese fortune teller as well as a talented artist from whom i bought my first souvenir...

Dont ask me why.
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Traditional Melaka is not completely in the darkages though, with its ATMs, 'Watsons', Fugi-film shops, and would you believe - a large TESCOs :o. The Black-eyed peas were sounding off at the Italian restaurant where we had dinner; the preservation is clearly not a complete one. Went to bed knowing a escapologist mozzy was flying around ready to bite...