We took a day trip to the historic city of Melaka on Friday. Even though Lonely Planet had cautioned us that on weekends, the bus to KL sells out, we somehow did not put two and two together. We ended up with heaps more time in Melaka than we had originally planned since we had aimed to be on a bus back to KL by six and we just got lucky landing tickets for the 10pm bus. Yay four hours at Melaka Sentral station!
Melaka itself was pretty cool. Over the past thousand years it has been under the control of the Malays, the Chinese, the Portuguese, the Dutch and the Brits which makes for a big cultural melange. It was a lively port throughout the ages and all the influences from other countries appears everywhere. For instance, from Portugal they have a love of desserts; there are sweet shops everywhere. And the Dutch put up a windmill, which is kind of a "Holland was here" tag on the city. There was also a sweet old school ship in the Maritime Museum and tragically we missed the sleepover on the ship by one lousy night! Chinatown had the most personality, being full of antique shops and laneways and delicious Baba Nonya cuisine (mix of Chinese and Malay heritage). Not a bad place to hang out for the day, even if it was even hotter than KL.
To escape the monstrous heat, we ducked into the People and Beauty Museum to check out how different people around the world have warped their bodies in aesthetic deformation practices.
These are the regional tuk-tuk equivalents. They are bedecked in flowers and pump loud Eurotechno as they stalk you down the sidewalk beckoning you to ride along.
P.S. We're now on our way to Brunei. No, it is not in the Middle East.
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