Hanging Around Melaka

Melaka Town Square
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With so many women walking around with covered heads, everyone modestly dressed, and alcohol fairly scare and expensive I initially summed up Malaysians as pretty conservative.  Then, escaping the heat outside I popped into an air-conditioned mall, one of many in Melaka.  As I'm perusing through a bookstore, similar to Waldens, I discover "Adult Origami" in the Arts + Crafts section near the front of the store.  In my naivety I was thinking to see home decorations adults can make from paper?  No ... how to make condoms, sperm, boobs + penis, etc out of paper!  Oh Malaysia, you are so full of surprises.

New Friends
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I've been having a good time bumming around the sea side town of Melaka for the past few days.  Originally settled by the Portuguese, taken over by the Dutch, and lastly by the British, the city has an interesting historic district that shows how each European country influenced the growth of the city.  Melaka also has a large china town with a weekend market selling some excellent food, especially the dim-sum.  While visiting the market on Friday night I also beheld the largest pineapple tart ever baked, which has made it into the Malaysia world record book, and a man that can poke a hole in a coconut using just his Index finger (this also made the record book).  I love it, while in the U.S. after such a "street feat" with the coconut the person usually goes around collecting donations, but not here - instead his display is used to sell bottles of his miracle tonic - which people were eagerly buying.

Coconut Man
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On Saturday night I decided to visit Capital Satay restaurant - I've discovered Melaka has surprisingly good food.  This 3rd generation restaurant has a huge selection of "meat on a stick" - pork balls, shrimp, dumplings (on a stick), mini hot dog looking things, etc.  Then you sit down at a big table and cook the food in a vat of what looks like boiling curry in the center of the table.  Since I went solo to the restaurant they placed me with a group of 5 Malaysian HS kids.  It was actually a fun evening, them showing me how to cook the food, plus practicing their English.  And to my surprise at the end of the meal they ended up treating me, they just asked for a picture - of course.  So that's how I spent Saturday night - hanging out with a bunch of HS kids in Melaka, and visiting the Chinese night market again :)