Our first port of call in Malay­sia was the UNESCO town of Melaka, which is nestled on the west coast of the pen­in­sula below Kuala lum­pur.  The jour­ney from Singa­pore to the town was unevent­ful being mainly two good roads (the 1 and the 5), but I was feel­ing an increas­ingly vivid sense of excite­ment about truly get­ting into SEA and tak­ing that first foot­steps on our jour­ney.  Then per­haps this was only due to the bus driver using the roads as his own per­sonal for­mula one track.  The guide books assured me that Melaka was an amaz­ingly beau­ti­ful town but when we arrived at the bus sta­tion called Melaka Sen­t­ral I real­ised that the town was really at the centre of a mod­ern city and we had arrived 5 miles or so away.  The next thing I real­ised is that it was damn hot, even by Singa­pore standards. 

We made our way into the bus sta­tion to find a ATM from which I needed to extract the local cur­rency (Ring­gits).  At that moment I had noth­ing but a little Singa­pore money.  The ATM spat me out £10 worth and refused to give me any­more.  I tried all my cards, VISA, Mas­ter­Card and Switch but noth­ing worked.  A rising sense of worry hit me; I was in a very for­eign coun­try with almost no money at all.   Being the first time I had exper­i­enced this dread I was quite mor­ti­fied by it.  Now, of course, I don’t give it a second thought.  You see I soon learned that all my banks and credit card agen­cies block my cards once I cross any bor­der.  I have to make a round of phone calls to the UK at high cost to get them work­ing again.

“It’s for you pro­tec­tion,” they always tell me.

“It’s an auto­matic sys­tem,” they some­times claim.

“Well turn it off!”” I ask, but this of course they can­not do.  Nor can it learn.  I am jour­ney­ing around SEA and will cross many bor­ders, if they know that it is me using the cards in Laos can they not work out that it is also me on the bor­der town with Cambodia?

Obvi­ously not!

Any­way, we caught a taxi to our Guest House (Num­ber 20) that was within the old town on a street called Jonker Street, which is within the China town centre of the district. 

The view from our Guest House

The China Town here is made up of the clas­sic open fron­ted stores, which could be selling any­thing from soap to sing­lets, and man­sions built to house the rub­ber bar­ons that made the port so profitable.

 

Temples abound in the area

I sat under the air­con in our room try­ing to cool down enough for my mind to focus.  Suf­fi­ciently cooled we went explor­ing.  The old town is split in two by a large river run­ning through the middle.  One side is the China town, resplen­dent with many Malaysian-style temples the other by a fort called A Famosa atop a steep hill. 

 

The fort on the hill con­tains the bones of those who fought the British

Sur­round­ing the base of this fort are all the museums and attrac­tions.  The his­tory of Malacca is extremely com­plex, but the gen­eral gist is that the Brit­ish took it over from its pre­vi­ous European incum­bents and the town flour­ished into a major trad­ing port.  If one is really inter­ested, then a par­tic­u­lar historical-fiction novel gives a lively account of the period through the eyes of its eponym­ous hero.  The novel is called, “Flash­man and the Great Game” and fea­tures many of the her­oes and vil­lains from that era.  Most not­ably the great Vic­torian explorer and adven­turer James Brooke who after hav­ing his penis shot off by pir­ates went on a bloody ram­page across the coast and put all pir­ates to death.  Such suc­cess he had that he was able to be appoin­ted the Raja of Sarawak and Brit­ish influ­ence in the area was cemented.

You wont get much of that tale in the excel­lent Inde­pend­ence Museum, it men­tions him only a little, but the Brit­ish did have a massive influ­ence here until the Japan­ese invaded and after the coun­try had a long hard slog to inde­pend­ence.  Some­thing that they are par­tic­u­larly proud of.  The museum recounts all this and includes the later struggle against com­mun­ists that much of the SEA has suffered from.

The car which the Pres­id­ent drove to Independence

One of the pecu­li­ar­it­ies about Malay­sia is the price the beer.  Being a Muslim coun­try, the loc­als don’t drink hardly at all and beer is con­sequently impor­ted for the minor­it­ies and for­eign­ers and costs a lot of ring­gits.  I was pay­ing 14 for a large bottle and some nicer places had it even higher in price.

 

James goes glass-eyed as he real­ises the price of beer in this bar

On the recom­mend­a­tion of the guide­book, we tried the national dish; Satay at the Cap­itol Satay res­taur­ant near the (very) little India north of the main square. I have always been a big fan of this in the UK and had been look­ing for­ward to try­ing it in its home.  We went to the res­taur­ant, which was a run down place and full of loc­als (both things I know know are actu­ally good signs), and was seated at a table with a large gas bottle burner under­neath and a hole in the middle.  They then brought out an entire cauldron full of pea­nut satay sauce and turned on the gas bottle.  A flame licked the bot­tom of the sauce and it star­ted to bubble. We were then invited to take plates of uncooked food from a large open front fridge and cook it ourselves in the bub­bling brew.  It was quite a lot of fun, although the mul­ti­tude of other tables and there­fore open flames made the already hot envir­on­ment akin to a fur­nace.  We boiled the meats, veget­ables and cheeses and then tried vainly to get it onto our plates and into our mouths without mak­ing a mess every­where.  Even­tu­ally I real­ised that mak­ing a mess was all part of the fun and got stuck in. 

 

Cesca, unfor­tu­nately, doesn’t par­tic­u­larly like satay, was suf­fer­ing a little from the heat and not lik­ing the mess when she spilt a big dol­lop on her top…

After that we adjourned the meal.  I am just glad that, what with the port being so close, the loc­als prob­ably have heard worse swearwords.

Prob­ably.

After a few more pleas­ant days explor­ing Melaka

 

This is Melaka: temples and Tuk-tuk’s

we decided to head back to the sta­tion and catch the bus to our next stop, Kuala Lumpur.

KL is the cap­ital of Malay­sia and, so far in our jour­ney, the city I have enjoyed the very least.  I don’t know what exactly I don’t like about KL, for it has another great China town, a smooth run­ning trans­port sys­tem, large open spaces and of course those twin towers to visit.  It is also very very busy, smelly with big open drains, packed to the gills with traffic, and full of a feel­ing of danger.  I think I got the sense that it was not a city at peace with itself in the way say, Mel­bourne is.  Any­way, we had a mis­sion to per­form while here, which was to find Cesca an inter­na­tional plug adapter for her com­puter and cam­era char­gers.  We decided to try in one of the large malls and were poin­ted towards the low Yat tech mall across town in the Golden Tri­angle area.

   

Rid­ing the mono­rail train ser­vice was an exper­i­ence.  I had no idea so many people could fit in such a small space without under­go­ing grav­it­a­tional col­lapse and becom­ing a black hole.  The joke was not lost on me that, what with the mono­rail going in essen­tially a very big circle, and the crush inside, if we were to hit some­thing then we might well dis­cover the Higgs Boson make the Large Had­ron Col­lider obsol­ete over night!

Even­tu­ally we reached the stop (Imbi) and made our way down the cor­rect mall.  The city was thronged with people and, strangely, mas­seuses and we gingerly picked our way through them all.  The Low Yat mall was even busier. 

 

I grabbed an iced cof­fee and jumped into the throng.  7 floors of pulsat­ing tech­no­logy of all pos­sible types.  I expect it was my friend Kieran’s very idea of heaven.  I saw everything under the sun that required a plug, all man­ner of Mp3 play­ers, laptops (includ­ing the new IBM mini laptop – nice!), phones of types I have never even heard of (and I read Engad­get!), huge stores of com­puters, bags, geek clothes and mul­ti­tudes of music and gam­ing shops. 

One strange thing, amongst many, was that here they don’t buy games they go to a store and pay for a few goes like an arcade but with PS2’s.

It was also a place that had no idea of the recom­men­ded retail price.  By shop­ping around we were able to find one store selling the needed adapter at a quarter of the price of the oth­ers.  And although it does have a cheap Made-In-China look to it, it does work fine.

That night the heav­ens opened and we spent the even­ing in the China Town mar­ket watch­ing the world flow by.  The mar­ket runs South to North along Jl Petal­ing behind the main China Town roads.  It is thank­fully covered and we escaped most of the rains retri­bu­tion.  Food in any China Town is always much of a much­ness, but it was a pleas­ant meal non­ethe­less with lots of flu­ids to replace those we have sweated out dur­ing the day.

 

The next day we spent hik­ing up to the Men­ara KL com­mu­nic­a­tions tower, which has fab­ulous views of the city and sur­round­ing areas and is well worth the hike through the thick forest that circles it.  It is def­in­itely the best place to take pic­tures of the Pet­ro­nas Towers. 

The cost of entry includes a video con­sole which gives you a window-by-window tour of the city.  In the after­noon we walked over to Mer­deka Square, which was host­ing a cycle race.  This large open space is basic­ally dif­fer­ent colo­nial build­ings sur­round­ing a cricket pitch.  Its open­ness makes sun­stroke a real pos­sib­il­ity and so we made our way down to the north end which boasts a large set of foun­tains, the spray from which cooled out heads nicely.

We left KL the next day and I was glad to get away from the chaos of that city.  I don’t sup­pose more people live there than Lon­don, or that the streets are any less chaot­ic­ally laid out, but I didn’t wish to return any time soon. 

We were head­ing towards the Cameron High­lands and a spate of cooler weather!

 

 

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