Melaka

From Melaka

On Sunday I decided to make use of my weekend car hire by doing a day trip to Melaka, which is on the coast about 2 hours drive south of KL. Having spent half an hour looking for a parking place, I eventually managed to take to the streets on foot.

The touristy stuff is cantered around the old port area and the Chinatown streets. There is sill a fair amount of the old colonial architecture around, and the old part of town contains quite a few Buddhist and Hindu temples as well as the odd mosque or two, as you can see from the photos. Also some interesting Chinese restaurants and tea rooms to be seen, including the one where I had lunch on the renowned Jonker Street.

The old port area contains masses of museums, but some of them are looking rather run down. I had the energy to do about three of those on offer, mainly to get out of the heat for a bit. One of the underlying themes in several of the museums was that the Malays were rather pissed off with the various colonial powers that successively took over the city over the past four centuries. They seemed happy enough with the immigration of the Chinese back in the 1400’s but seemed to think that the Portuguese, Dutch and finally (especially) the British made a complete mess of things.

Anyway, a pleasant enough day out and it was good to see parts of Malaysia other than KL for a change.