Trip to Melaka
Hello Everyone,
Hope I’m not boring you but here’s another chapter of my travels. Remember, the delete button is an option and I will never know. So feel free.
Two weeks ago, our hearty band, six of us this time went to Malaka, a seaport about four hours south of Kuala Lumpur (KL). I won’t burden you with our travails in the the KL bus terminal but we waited in the heat and crowds and fumes for over an hour past our departure time for the bus. But we were finally on our way. The discouraging part was that about thirty minutes into the trip, we passed the spot we had left about four hours before in order to get to KL. But the bus didn’t stop there or I would have been upset that we had not caught the bus there.
We got to Melaka, which is larger than I had anticipated, and a teacher who stays there on weekends, came to pick us up. After some stops and starts, we finally hooked up and she took us to our hotel, an old Chinese house. The price was right, as it should have been. The house was somewhat rundown, the shower and toilet were down the hall and shared by several others and there were no towels and no hot water. There was a single sheet on the bed, no top sheet, and no air conditioning, just a fan. Not the nicest of accommodations and I was unprepared. I hadn’t brought a towel, soap or a sheet. But we were in the old district of town which is where we wanted to be. We headed to the night market which was still bustling. Stalls had been set up in the street after dark and sold almost everything, food, trinkets, belts, and all manner of junk.
We settled into a bar on a busy corner that had musical entertainment, a one man band playing a guitar and accompanied by all the electrical equipment at his fingertips. He was good and played all types of music and sang in English. The were several people who were locals and obviously regulars in the bar. They all knew each other and occasionally one would come to the mike and join in the orchestra in a karaoke rendition of whatever song they chose. (Have I mentioned that karaoke is big, no HUGE, in southeast Asia? Well, it is. It’s everywhere). Surprisingly, to me at least, he played a lot of Latin rhythms, samba, mambo, tango, and several of the group got up to dance. I got the impression that this was the main appeal of the bar and the main interest of the locals. They knew all the ballroom dances. (Something I had also seen in Hanoi). They even did some line dancing. There was one gentleman in his late sixties maybe who really excelled and he reveled in it. He knew all the dances and spent the evening squiring different ladies around the dance floor. He had rhythm and he had attitude.
The next day we walked around the town. Had breakfast at a little Indian cafe where little English was spoken. We wanted fried eggs but didn’t see that pictured on the wall (there was no menu). When an elderly gentleman wearing a sarong and talking between the spaces in his teeth came to our table, we ordered roti, a flat, round, pancake sized piece of bread similar to a tortilla only a little thicker. And we ordered coffee. Raising his voice only slightly , he shouted back to the kitchen, never looking to see if they heard him nor writing anything down. They brought us roti with little dishes of curried potatoes and minced vegetable, most of which were too hot for me. They didn’t have butter which was a mystery to me so I ate my roti plain and think I ordered another. There was rice wrapped in banana leaves on the table when we arrived but I didn’t know what it was until later. Also a dish of hard boiled eggs but I didn’t try them. (I was really sure they were hardboiled and was afraid to break one open.) The man in the kitchen made latte or some fancy coffee by pouring it back and forth between pot and cup with his hands about three feet apart giving it the froth necessary. He put on quite a show back in the kitchen.
The group began looking around while I searched for a little nicer accommodation. When I caught back up, they were touring a mosque. The girls were wearing long black robes provided by the mosques for infidels. Of course, we had to take our shoes off. The Muslims always have an area where you can wash yourself before going in to pray. This was a simple mosque, not very ornate, but peaceful and quiet. Just down the street, we went into a Buddhist temple, very ornate and very busy. Lots of people going in and out, buying incense and flowers, playing, and placing the flowers on the alters. In a Buddhist Temple there are many, many statues of Buddha, each a little bit different and many which don’t look like the Buddha as we know him. Each receives it’s homage of flowers and incense. People go around to various Buddhas, place three or four sticks on incense between there hands, hold there hands up to their foreheads in the fashion of prayer, bow three times. Say a silent prayer, and present the incense to the Buddhas. Then they repeat the process at another Buddha. Like in the Catholic church where you have many saints to pray to, they seem to pray to Buddha but in many different forms. I’ll try to do some research on the religion and let you know more when I do. All the Buddhist temples are decorated to the nth degree and mostly in red and gold. They make a baroque church look like a Cistercian Abbey.
It began to rain and we dashed into a Chinese street side cafe for tea and coffee then continued down the street going into shops along the way. We had lunch in a little cafe where we ordered by pointing at pictures on the menu. We tried to find out what was hot and what was not and ordered according to our tastes. For desert we shared a concoction which seemed to be an ice slushy with different fruits blends in. It wasn’t good but it wasn’t bad either.
The heart of town features an area that was the official residence of the Dutch governors, built in 1650. There is a hill topped by another church and surrounded by a wall. Within the wall is the residential area of the governors and just outside is another church. In the square in front of the entrance, there is a beautiful fountain. The square is decorated with flowers and is the hub for all the cyclo drivers. A cyclo is a bicycle with a bench in the front wide enough for two people and a wheel on each side. The are very gaudily decorated with flowers or streamers or anything else colorful they can find and they are usually equipped with a radio or CD playing loud music, often music that is painful to the ears. The cyclo drivers are relentless hawking their wares. They offer a ride for a certain price for a certain period of time. If you say no, they say, “Maybe later” and try to get some commitment from you. The next time they see you they will ask, ‘Ready now?” Obviously, they can’t remember everyone they have spoken to so many of them just start with “Are you ready now?” hoping you will not remember that they are not the one who spoke to you before. I was able to resist the temptation of riding in a flower bed that sprouted bad music, loudly.
We continued our tour through a couple of museums of Malaysian history with a stop for beer and chocolate. Being a Saturday, the area was crowded with school children. It was fascinating to watch them. The boys were in uniforms of blue pants and white shirts and the girls wore long dresses with a patch on the left breast and head scarves. It seemed strange to see them in head scarves but they acted like children of every country, laughing and pinching and taunting and giggling. We took pictures surreptitiously but sometimes when they saw us, some turned away and some posed for the camera. We ended our day in a palace which had been built for the Sultan, mostly wood but well preserved.
That evening, we went to a Indian restaurant. (They serve beer. The Muslim restaurants do not.) We struggled with the order but got it done. I had no idea what we were going to get to eat. They brought out pieces of banana leaves and placed one before each of us like a place mat. But, they turned out to be our plates. They brought us rice, several vegetable all somewhat spicy, papadan (sp?), a hard puffy bread like a taco, some chicken which had been cooked whole and then chopped up and served, bones and all. We ate with our fingers just like everyone else in the restaurant. I’ve gotten used to seeing this though this was the first time I had tried it. All the Indians and Yemeni and Saudis (the Arabs) at school eat with their fingers. One student told me if he eats with a fork, the food tastes different to him. Obviously, all Indian restaurants have large sinks in the dining room where you can wash your hands before and after the meal. The food was good and they brought us more whenever we asked. We took pictures like tourists and the waiter took one of all of us. They are used to westerners coming in and are very tolerant of our behavior.
We went back to the night market, walked around and drank more beer.
The next morning, we went separate ways. My group went to another museum and then down by the river. In the mud flats we saw what must have been “walking catfish”. They swam to the edge of the water and then crawled around in the mud, obviously breathing air. Had never seen them before though I had heard of them.
An uneventful, boring bus ride got us back to KL in the late afternoon.
Next trip….. Singapore!
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