Get it on, bang a gong

Day 3, Equatorial Hotel, Melaka

(revised and updated with pictures)

Up with the lark again, if the lark had been out drinking until gone 1am and needed to get up to get his breakfast before they stopped serving the buffet at 10:30am. More of the same food except this time I had discovered the waffles. Fresh waffles prepared before your eyes with plenty of butter and maple syrup. Oh, yes. Food of the gods.

Today’s itinerary was to explore more of Melaka town starting with a Chinese cemetery which we managed to reach despite the horrendous traffic (where the hell was everyone going on a Saturday?). This isn't as morbid as it sounds as it is beautifully peaceful, contrasting with the aforementioned traffic, not to mention the fact that it was noteworthy for being the largest Chineses cemetery outside of the People’s Repulic. Wandering through here we came out at the Melaka River, near a preserved Malay village or Kampung called Kampung Morten. If the name doesn't sound particularly exotic, that is because the name is from the last British Governer of Melaka before Malaysia gained independence.

The main house is called Villa Sentosa which means House of Peace. Strangely enough, in Singapore, the former British naval base on an island to the south of the city, where the Brits signed the surrender to the Japanese in WWII is also called Sentosa, and is now a buzzing resort complete with casinos, so I wonder which meaning of the word "peace" this was in WWII or now. Another family arrived just as we did and we were then met by an elderly Malay man called Mr Abdul Rahim Haji Hashim who owned the house and had converted it into a living museum. He proceeded to show the six of use from room to room, each one soaked in history about Malaysia, the Kampung and his family for several generations. There were artifacts from over the last hundred years including old cameras, old versions of the Koran and many pictures of his family and ancestors. There were pictures of when the king of Malaysia had visited, as well as various other dignitaries from all over the world. We saw his guest books going back many years with entries by all sorts of people from all over, and even included an endorsement from Winston Churchill himself. The tour ended when we were invited to bang an ancient gong to bring good luck.

Tranquility in a Chinese Cemetery

Colourful mushrooms growing on a log in the cemetery.

There's more than a little "On Ilkley Moor Bah 'tat" about this

Kampung Morten, with Vila Sentosa proudly decorated in the Malaysian flag.

Merdeka is the name of their National Day

King and Queeen for a day.

Sitting on bridal thrones in Villa Sentosa, Kampung Morten

Gong with the wind.

Banged for good luck, this gong is ancient. Whether whether it works or not, it seems not to have done Mr Hashim and the other residents of Kampung Morten any harm.

After this we headed along the river via a new boardwalk, walking past mudskippers, kingfishers and monitor lizards. This wound its way back into town, apart from one place where the area was dug up forsome new road or other. We went back along the river in Chinatown and stopped at a place called Riverine for food. This was wonderful. I had a delicious spicy laksa washed down with Tiger. It was full of all sorts of stuff like prawns, boiled egg, beansprouts. It’s also very yellow so stains like hell, but the splatters you may get from loudly slurping the noodles (when in Rome..) is worth it.

A monitor lizard
Seen en route from Kampung Morten to Melaka town

Back to the hotel for a swim, a freshen up then out to paint the town merah as they say in Malaysia. We went past a kung fu expert whose party trick is jabbing his index finger into a coconut. He took ages to go about actually doing it so we couldn’t be arsed to stay and watch for another 30 minutes since it culminated in some sale spiel for some miracle oil and we were hungry. However, here is a Youtube link of him doing his stuff. We instead went inland to get something to drink, going back to the Eleven bar from the previous evening for a Tiger. This allowed me to watch some of the football, though I had a bit of an alimentary attack, but survived relatively unscathed.

Being tourists, the next thing we did was go and get a boat cruise along the river. This was fun as all the other passebgers were Malay teenagers who whooped and hollered at every other boat passing and at a lot of people we passed too. We went back along the route we had walked earlier in the day past the Malay village, then back again. The waterfront of Melaka is undergoing a lot of deveopment and it will be a popular destination when it's finished, though it might also tarnish the soul of the town in the process if it's not managed well.

Villa Sentosa at Kampung Morten as seen from river cruise at night

We headed back for more drinks, and had been thinking of grabbing some food, but I wasn't feeling that well up for it, so we just stuck to beer instead. Ahh, the curative properties of Tiger. We stopped off at a couple more places before we weent home. Being in a particularly tourist frame of mind we got a ride back on a trishaw, or cycle rickshaw to the hotel. This is a fun way to travel, even if you do feel a little guilty for the poor man having to pedal you the distance home. Still it's a living for him and keeps him fit. Not sure I'd fancy doing it during Ramadan though when you can't eat or drink during the hours of daylight, especially in this climate.

Melaka by pedal power at night
Our cyle-rickshaw driver slogging away to our hotel while we reclined and took photos. I can defintely see the appeal of being a colonial master

Our driver for the night
Note how gaudily decked out the trishaw is. This was by no means especially heavily decorated compared to others

Sad but true ,, ended the day with a McDonalds burger, because we were hungry and my stomach was still playing Twister, and this sort of near-digested pap is just the sort of thing an ailing gut can deal with. Then it was to bed.

Noodles to Hitler in one day abroad

Day two

Up with the lark. Well, up in time from breakfast at least (not sure they have larks in Malaysia anyway). Breakfast was a massive buffet with the full complement of cooked (no pork, but chicken sausages and ham, not as bad as they sound, and eggs prepared at the egg station to your liking), continental, pastries and of course the Asian selection. You ain’t never been to the Far East if you never had fried noodles for brekkie. I have so far drawn the line at the congee porridge though.

Full up and ready to go, we retraced our route from the last night to take in some of the sights

The first place we came to was St Paul’s Church which has been used by St Francis Xavier to do some miracles, and his body was kept here for a bit and you can see what was his tomb The church occupies an imposing position on a hill overlooking the river and out to sea, and is reached by going on a long slog up a flight of steps after entering through a gate at ground level for. This is called Porta de Santiago which was part of the original town fortress the Portuguese built which was almost destroyed by the Dutch until Stamford Raffles (the one that founded Singapore and gives his name to the most famous hotel there where the Singapore Sling was created) got them to stop. Parts of the old fort and town wall are excavated all around this area.

Jane at St Paul's Church, Melaka

Walking up into Chinatown and the atmosphere you could feel the previous night was no less for the daylight. The shophouses and narrow streets are incredibly evocative, especially those that are preserved in their authentic state. You can easily imagine what it was like in the early part of the 20^th Century or earlier when Melaka was a vital port on the way to the Spice Islands. We came across one shophouse that had been restored to its traditional state as part of a heritage project. It’s simply called 8 Heeren St (see the Dutch history with that name), after its address, and wandering round this it was incredible to think that these places weren’t being snapped up to convert to houses as they would make great modern homes. Talking to the chap who was oversaw the project, and he said they have something like 100 of these places on the go to restore them to their original setup, but it isn’t cheap. They have grants from various sources including the US Embassy and Ford, but it amounts to something like £500,000 just for the restoration. Many more are gutted to convert into modern shops, or are demolished, but it’s good to know that there is someone fighting to maintain the heritage of this historic area.

A view up Heeren St, Melaka. Note the Chinese style shophouses

We went out from here and wandered a bit more, coming across Eng Choon Association, an incredibly well preserved guild house and Chinese temple, with gilt decoration and dragons carved in to the roof and supporting pillars. The amount of work involved in this is amazing, with the columns carved in stone with the most intricate detail. We stopped for another drink at the Geographer’s Cafe before wandering onto Temple Street, as this road is known due to the fact that it has the oldest Chinese Temple, oldest Mosque and the oldest Hindu temple in Malaysia all harmoniously co-existing side-by-side. There were several other Chinese temples and shrines and a Buddhist temple also. The oldest Chinese temple is called Cheng Hoon Teng and built in honour of the Kuan Yin, the Chinese Goddess of Mercy . This was in much better taste than a lot of Chinese temples as it wasn’t really gaudy, but mostly in dark wood and gilt. It dates from 1646 and is still in use as a place of worship.

The Eng Choon Asociation door on Heeren St

Interior of the Cheng Hoon Association complete with dragons on roof

Carved pillar inside Cheng Hoon Assoc

Heng Choon Temple

Detail on roof of Heng Choon Temple

The mosque is called Masjid Kampung Hulu and different to most mosques you see as it was designed in the style of a Balinese temple, and the minaret built in the style of Sumatran mosques, with a tiered design (so the plaque said anyway, as I’m not really much of an authority on Islamic architecture). The Buddhist temple was a fairly modern build and pretty large. It was very peaceful wandering around the statues of legendary monks in various poses, though the significance of these was largely lost on me sadly, but I could see how people could be moved to meditate in this environment.

Masjid Kampung Hulu Mosque

Next on our route we went through Chinatown and to an Indian foodhall called Selvam for some curry which was staggeringly good. This was a banana leaf restaurant where you have no plates, just a large piece of palm foliage to eat off, and no cutlery. The food was rice and vegetable curries, plus dahl which is dolloped onto the leaf , then another man came round to give you rice, and another came to ask if we wanted chicken or mutton, so we opted for chicken which was again curried. It was, as I said, excellent and tasted all the better for eating with fingers. Not that Jane did, she asked for a fork. I on the other hand looked like I’d been snogging a peat bog by the time I’d finished. Of course, the locals are much more adept at this way of eating than I am, but they still provide wash basins which is a good thing or else people would be thinking I’d had an accident with cheap toilet paper if I tried to shake their hands.

We then stopped at a place for a drink called the Discovery Cafe which is very much a backpacker hangout, but the cafe itself has some character despite this, with the bar open to the road but festooned with all sorts of memorabilia like old typewriters, records etc. We enjoyed a beer here to wash down our curry before heading back to our hotel to take advantage of the swimming pool before the rain came.

After a dip, just in time before the rain reached us, and by rain I mean RAIN, complete with thunder and lightning, we went back to our room before we came down to the drink reception we had gone to on the first day for another couple of beers and some food. I then insisted I get to the gym to try out the dance class that was advertised. Big mistake as it was a essentially line dancing, so I did some work on the treadmill instead. I mean where was the street dance attitude? All the finely tuned moves I’d learnt over the last couple of years to hot joints from the street? They wouldn’t go down to the instructor and the two local ladies who were the attendees of his class. Their loss.

Friday night is one of the major nights out in Melaka, where Jonker’s Walk, the area on which the Georapher’s Cafe is situated, becomes a thronging night market. We wandered around this before settling to have a drink in a bar called Ringo’s opposite the Geographer’s to watch the world go by, and listen to Ringo himself (not the drummer, or if it was he has changed an awful lot since his peace and love speech telling pople not to send him stuf for signing) murder a few Beatles numbers. The set up at these bars is odd in that the staff seem to be employed by the beer companies rather than the bars. There was an army of scantily clad girls in outfits from Tiger or Carlsberg serving the beer of that brand. Not that I was complaining as they certainly beat the barmaid at the King’s Arms, on a purely professional level obviously. We headed further up the same street and alighted at another bar called Eleven where we had yet more beer and some food. The speciality of this place is Portuguese-cum-Asian and again was rather good. The prawns in sambal was sphincter quiveringly tasty . As the evening went on it turned into a bit of a pub crawl as we returned to the Discovery where they had a band on , wandered back towards the hotel and to a bar nearby, called Friends Cafe and finally had one at the place belonging to the hotel making it to bed for 1ish.

On last thing. When we were coming back to the hotel to use the bar I spotted a cat that was the spitting image of Adolf Hitler. This meant I spent 10 minutes chasing it around a car park to get a picture. It's not brilliant (it as 1am, I was drunk and I don't think Hitler cat wanted to be photographed), but here it is. I already sent it to the website catsthatlooklikehitler.com so hopefully they'll post it there