Melaka-ka-ka-ka
Trip Start
Nov 12, 2008
1
17
49
Trip End
Apr 30, 2009
Melaka,
Melaka State,
Malaysia
Friday, January 9, 2009
The centre of town has centuries old Churches and Official Buildings built out of the disitinctive red stone. Obviously following the Unesco way, every thing has been turned into a museum. Its a bit weird, a bit like the prisoner, except you're welcome to go in and look, and you don't get chased by a large white balloon. We visited a few of the museums (you couldn't do them all, like Temple overload there is only so many 'Chinglish' translation information boards you can read). We went to the Church on the hill above the city (up countless excessively steep stairs). This was very pretty location wise, a bit functional architecturally. The Portuguese built it and when the Dutch took over, they made it there own church and lovingly cared and extended it. Then the Brits came. Were we sentimental? Were we 'eck, we built a bloody great big lighthouse on the front and used the Church to store gunpowder. You have to smile when you see some of the things we did on our great Empire tour. Another Church in town we didn't use to store gunpowder this time, but unlike the Dutch who impressively built it, crafted it and extended it, we made our own contribution according to the information board...a weather cock. That's enough, what they complaining about?
We visited the governers museum, alot of empty display cabinets, golf trophies (!) and no one there (we could see why), if there was anything worth nabbing we could have walked off with it easily. We saw the Townhall or Stadthuys, we saw some galleries. After a while it really was a bit of a joke. They have museums to democracy, to melakan literature, to the sea, to the Navy, to the Customs Department, to local art, to not local art...
The real jewel in the crown of the city is Chinatown. Tucked away across the river from the historical part, it is a maze of tiny little streets of old buildings sagging under the weight of themselves, dark little alleyways, surprising little courtyards and the occasional temple and mosque in between. It has a touch of the old colonial about it, stone buildings adorned with the wooden shutters, 'whoomping' fans on the ceiling, open cafes and al fresco dining like a 1920s Sino-French novel (I should send this blog entry to Conde Nast!). As it is getting close to Chinese New Year, the streets are festooned with red Lamps. Colourful and very interesting, you could spend hours just poking around doorways and little nick-nack shops.
None of these shops surprisingly sold Scrabble, and that is what we needed. After a few hours we found it, in the local mall. Eating chocolate cake, drinking tea and playing scrabble was how we whiled away the afternoon (not really the Lonely Planet travelling life!), and after arguments about the words 'cyan', 'fiche', 'yeti' and 'rancor', we then had to invest in a little English dictionary. Needless to say the girl serving me had a little trouble working out why i wanted to buy an English dictionary.
This place is hot, real hot. We're leaving it to go to Singapore, decision time re: how we get into Indonesia looms...
