Melaka, Melaka State, Malaysia
March 13, 2014
Tuesday we packed up and left Singapore for Malaysia. The bus up to Melaka was really good, cheap and very comfortable, complete with massage chairs! The trip itself wasn’t too bad. We left at 7pm and rolled into Melaka at about 1am. The border crossing into Malaysia was nice and quick and smooth but we felt a bit lost when we got to Melaka. Apparently all the local ATM’s shut down on a night until 2am so there we were in Melaka Sentral bus station in the middle of the night wondering how we were going to make it to our guesthouse with no local currency. After chatting with a few taxi drivers we sorted out a ride into the main part of town first as they had a 24hr HSBC ATM and then on to where we were staying by the river in the old town near Jonker Street. Once in and sorted we crashed out and caught up on some badly needed sleep.
I had wanted to visit Melaka the first time I was in Malaysia before Christmas but ended up going straight to the animal shelter in Langkawi instead so I was keen to see what Melaka had to offer once we were up and sorted the next day. Melaka is another World Heritage site which these days seems to mean pretty much nothing. So off we wandered. Along the riverside and onto Jonker street to grab some chicken rice balls at a well-known local spot.
Jonker street looked pretty enough as does the Melaka riverside. It is very colonial looking. Melaka and indeed the rest of Malaysia has been occupied by the Dutch and the Portuguese along with our good-selves as it was under British Sovereignty up until 1946. All the buildings down Jonker Street have that old world feel about them. Shuttered windows and all brightly painted in blues, greens and terracotta reds with white highlights. It looked like it would be a nice town. So we wandered off further down the river crossed over and looped back up on ourselves.
We passed an old wooden Galleon that I’m not sure if it was original or not and I didn’t want to pay the entrance fee. It looked a little on the small side to be genuine but I may be wrong. We then passed some kind of amphibious vehicle that was doing tours somewhere around town and into some water somewhere. Once past the frogmobile we wandered through a park which had a random assortment of transportation in it.
A 1960’s looking fire engine…a train that inside was selling cheap bright tourist hats and t-shirts and an old 1930’s aircraft. Non of which had any kind of explanation as to what they were about or where they were from, or most importantly why they were there now. From there we headed up a hill to see an old church that was literally just a shell and painted white tower with some guys outside trying to sell us manga style key rings and postcards. Once down the other side of the hill we returned to the river and the small square which had a pretty little church on one side, some mocked up miniature wooden dutch windmill on the other and a big line of guys on brightly dressed up tricycles. All their trikes were different, anything from hello kitty to the smurfs, all with lights on and big sound systems attached to the back.
It was getting a bit later now so we headed a short way up the road and entered ‘Little India’ in search of some good Indian food, I say a bit later, it was only about 9pm but nearly everywhere was closed. Most of the places there were also Chinese as well so I’m not quite sure where the idea of ‘Little India’ comes from but I’m guessing it’s nothing to do with the people or food there. So we headed back to the riverside and grabbed some pretty decent food at a Dutch cafe whilst watching the endless stream of tourist boats hurtling up and down the river. We wandered back after that taking in the sights of those tricycles which were now lit up like Blackpool and were belting out some seriously loud hardcore rave.
I wasn’t really sure what to make of Melaka. It did have some character about it in small areas but then it also seemed like it was trying far to hard to attract tourists, it was a little like a very surreal Malaysian Disneyland. Some of the attractions and sights around the place felt as if they had dragged anything out they could find. ‘Oh bob down the road has an old lawnmower, let’s get it out and put it in a park on a big stone plinth, the tourists will love that’.
So, the next morning we packed up and got ready to go and catch a bus up to the Cameron Highlands, only to find out that the only bus from Melaka to there leaves at 8:30am on a morning. We didn’t really want to spend another day in Melaka but we made the most of it and went off wandering randomly. We stumbled upon a pretty cool Chinese Temple and a few other little tit bits here and there and had some good cheap food along with some good cheap Vodka so the day wasn’t a total loss. We booked tickets for the following morning to catch the bus up to the Cameron Highlands and we got a little more organized with what the next few days would look like.
I’m not quite sure where the World Heritage status has come from….the random statues and exhibitions of transportation that are dropped around town….or maybe the colourful tricycles….perhaps it’s the uniqueness of the non-Indian ‘Little India’ that can not be found anywhere else on Earth, I’m not sure.
Next stop is the countryside and the mountains of Pahang, I’m looking forward to it.
