Melaka

The very colorful tuk tuks who would take you around the city

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Melaka was a quiet, small scale city where I was pleasantly surprised to find a vibrant art scene. Did I mention it was quiet? Yeah, I don't think this place starts hopping till the weekend when people from Singapore and Kuala Lumpur come into town for a weekend getaway. Anyhow, I enjoyed the silence along with some good food and company. I met Delphine on the bus from Singapore and we decided to share a room at a small place in Chinatown, we had fun roaming about the historic areas of the city for the day.

The heat was a bit oppressive so moving around was really SLOW. I felt as if I were swimming through the humidity. Gotta love this weather! This city has such a history of different cultures coming through and ousting the last victor. Portuguese, Dutch, English, and Chinese have all claimed some sort of victory over this city and left their mark in the process.

The palace replica

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I really liked Chinatown, it was vibrant and filled with great places to shop and eat, although it was a bit too touristy for me. Dutch square had all of the historic buildings, most of which have been converted into museums - too many to count but some of them were quite strange! We visited the Museum of Eternal Beauty which displayed different cultures of the world and their ideals of beauty. This included anything from facial and body scaring from Africa to europeans corset obsessions and the woman with the 13 inch waist! The ones that really stuck with me were the graphic photos of Chinese foot binding and the skull elongations from a small tribe in Africa. The museum was on the third floor of a building that also housed a kite museum (?) and I think that the bottom floor was the people's museum, but it mainly displayed models of the city. The climb to the top of the hill from Dutch square was worth it for the views as well as checking out the ruins of St. Paul's church.

The very red Dutch Square

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There was a really well done replica of a Malaysian Palace and forbidden garden that had some really great displays of the local clothing, as well as detailing the palace life. The entire building was constructed out of wood and it didn't use nails so it was quite a piece of craftsmanship.

We made a quick stop at the newly constructed mall, highly air conditioned. We tried to eat at the local food market but most of the places were closed and to be honest, when it's this hot, I have a hard time wanting to eat. I just drink litres of water instead to replace the liters of sweat I am producing. That being said we had a bit of an interesting experience at the local Indian restaurant that the owner of the hotel we were staying at recommended. I was trying to order something that did not have dairy products in it, but the waiter didn't speak that great of english so insted of getting the one dish I ordered, I got 3 dishes, 2 of them I could not eat. Delphine was really great about it and she ended up eating some of the other dishes, but it really was too much food! The last night we ate at the "tim sum" restaurant. I'm used to this being spelled "dim sum" but I understood the meaning. This time I was successful because they bring all of the options to the table and you choose exactly what you want. I had some really great food and finished things off with a red bean bun, which is quickly becoming my staple snack here in S.E. Asia.