Tahoe Johnson’s Journey to Southeast Asia

Note: always go back to previous blogs – we can not always upload pictures the day of writing, therefore, more pictures may be added to that area of travel. 

Picutres:  Night streets lit up with red lanterns in Malaka,Mosque – Sumatran Architecture style,walking with bags, Trishaw- another mode of travel, Josh with Coconut soup, Geography cafe – china town – a hot spot, Dutch fort gate – only thing left after the british tore down the fort, Sultan Palace Remake, St Pauls Church -(St Francis Xavier calledc the missionaryof the east – entombed here then moved to Goa India), Dutch Influence church, daily laundry, backpacker style room – only fan, backpacker type guest house.

We can’t believe we’re only on Day 3 – we’ve done so much so far. After 5 buses and 2 taxis, we are in Melaka, Malaysia, sitting at an outside cafe, watching Malaysians and Singaporeans on vacation in their own holiday destination. (We haven’t seen many westerners, but lots of Asian people with long lense cameras!) The streets are all done up in preparation of Chinese New Year, full of red lanterns and streamers. There are stalls selling things we can’t identify, along with lots of cheap battery-operated toys. Getting here by bus, we drove through miles of palm oil plantations, which meant palm trees as far as the eye could see. The kids have done great adjusting to the heat and humidity, the constant map reading, and the food challenges. Josh was the brave one tonight and ordered coconut soup. It came in a giant green coconut with the top cut off and filled with a spicy soup! It’s not always easy travel, but so far, we are having the time of our lives. It’s hard to translate sitting here in this restaurant, with an overhead fan cooling off the hot, humid tropical heat, and a guy downstairs crooning love songs and Elvis in Chinese…We’ll send some pictures later. It’s been hard downloading them through the guest house servers. Hi to all…

Why Melaka? I was asked while waiting around for a bus at customs.  I was not sure what he was getting at so I diplomatically said for the colonial aspect of the city.  Few – I was right.  Melaka city (founded in 1400’s  by a Sultan) was the key (Jewel of the east) for trade.  Over 2000 ships would be in the harbor for trading from Siam, China, Arabia, European countries – over 84 languages were spoken, the form of governance and administration was incredible until, because of the riches the Portuguese, then the Dutch, then the British fought battles to control it.  After the British, most the trade went south to Singapore.  It also was where Malaysian independance movement began and signed in 1957 at the center square.  The city where Malaysia began and ended in independance – that is why we are here. 

It is hard to get internet time to keep up on blogging non the less uploading the pictures, so Josh and I are sitting at a cafe at 11:30pm on our computers listening to Chinese musician singing to “jailhouse rock”.

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 3rd, 2009 at 9:22 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.