City Theme Hotel Melaka

... a nice breeze in Singapore so I wasn’t too bothered by the heat. But Melaka was definitely hot!

We spent 2 nights in Melaka, and mostly just wandered around the town doing fairly standard touristy stuff – visiting a museum and other historical buildings, and doing a river tour.

Malaysian food experiences!

We found a great food court (Newton Cultural Food Centre) where we enjoyed an awesome laksa - for the grand total of NZD1 ...

... twice the usual amount. So at 5am I waved Michelle off on her way to the airport and I settled into McDonalds, with cheap tea, for the next 2 hours until it was time for my departure.

So maybe I missed the boat with Melaka, maybe I had had my hopes built up by the excessive 18 pages in the damned Lonely Planet, never the less the hostel bed was comfy and I left feeling well rested for the bus journey to Singapore.

... it was very relaxing and we got to meet a couple of friendly and interesting locals and get to know them a little better. That's the advantage of staying in a place for a longer period I guess. It also goes to show that online reports of guesthouses aren't often what you get yourself. We had a great time there and Melaka would probably have been more disappointing if not for the place, yet the online reviews for it (mainly from crazed Lonely Planeters) are rather scathing!

See you in Singapore,

Tom
-x-

... and Fran. Mira, our group leader, brought us traditional Malaysian fruit, of which we can only remember one of the fruit's names - Mangosteen. They were delicious. That evening, we went to another resort for dinner right by the beach. It was stunning. We went back to the room and found that in the apartment (we had locked our separate rooms) our room wouldn't unlock. So we had to get the maintenance man to come and fix it at 11 at night ...

Well, Dan and I were in KL when we got an email early Friday morning from our traveling buddy Louise, a Scottish woman who swears that English is her native language. Louise got robbed in Melaka and lost all of her credit cards, cash, and ATM. Friday I was planning to go north to Penang, and Dan was planning to return to Singapore for a Sunday afternoon flight to Australia, as there was not a room to be had in ...

... compared to Chinatown) parts if KL. We made it back just in time to have dinner and a few beers with Nigel and Jen who looked exactly like we did when we stepped off our flight from Melbourne. We were back in our hotel by about 11, had another beer and promptly went to sleep. It was good hanging out on the rooftop bar with Jen, Nigel and Milli. I really liked the Indian noodles even if Jen did cry that there was too much chilli. Pfft Lightweight.

... was conquered by Alfonso d'Albuquerque in 1511 and ruled by the Portuguese until 1641. The Dutch took it from the Portuguese and ruled for 154 years. The British took over in 1824 and ruled Melaka and Malaysia until independence in 1957. The city itself is interesting, but could use a face lift. We saw several sights including: St. Francis Xavier's Church--built in 1849 in honor of St. Francis Xavier who died in Melaka. A very simple, yet beautiful Roman ...

... we'd seen since being in Panang's Botanical Garden sneak up on you and try to run up the wall three feet from where you're innocently relaxing. Bloody wildlife!! Once we'd returned to the cool air conditioned room back at Twenty, and I'd had a kip, we didn't feel up to much else that day, so we spent the evening exploring the town and sat ourselves in a bar around the corner from the guesthouse, listening to a guy playing the guitar and singing ...

... de regreso a casa, ainda deu para uma interessante conversa com o Tony ainda antes do almoço e passeio de despedida de Malaca antes de partir para Singapura. [1] Tony's ...

... where we spent the weekend hanging out with Jenny's mate Rich. Rich is working in Singapore for a few months and was a great guide, giving us a good insight into the ex-pat lifestyle and introducing us to some of his mates here. His friend Emma is a seasoned ex-pat in Asia (something like seven years here) and was also full of information about the place. Anyway, yesterday we got on our bus into Malaysia, country number eight ...