Melaka

Last weekend I took a trip to Melaka, a port city in the South of Malaysia. I needed a break from Penang and some time alone so I took the bus there (8hrs) Friday night, arrived Saturday morning, and left to come home Sunday night.

Melaka is a small city with a huge Portuguese influence which makes it feel more European than Asian in many ways. It's great for wandering around and sitting at cafes and has tons of small galleries, artist shops, antique stores, and handmade things. I stayed at a really great guesthouse which is owned by a slightly crazy Swiss woman and her Malay husband. He decided to travel overland to Europe when he was younger, so flew to Sri Lanka, went up through India, and slowly made his way to Europe. He lived in Italy for two years and then went to Switzerland, where he met her. They got married, lived there for 17 years and came back to Melaka 4 years ago. He had such an interesting life story and I spent quite a while chatting with both of them. I also met some Canadians staying at the guesthouse. They were a couple who is planning to teach English in Indonesia but has been traveling first, and their cousin who is visiting for a few weeks. All of them had traveled a lot as well and I had a fabulous time hanging out with them as well as some very interesting conversation.

I spent my afternoons wandering around the city, looking at stores, meeting local artists and talking to them about their work, and reading my book outside. I met so many people - locals and travelers from Singapore and China, and a few guys from Uzbekistan who asked me where I was from because they thought I "looked Russian." I had several people a day ask to take my picture, which I found interesting because there are other white tourists there so I should not have been that special. Nevertheless, they seemed very intereted in seeing a white person and wanted me in their family photos.

In the evenings I went to the night market and hung out with my Canadian friends. We were told by a local that there is a house on one of the streets that is unmarked but if you pry open this gate and go in through the house to the back, some Indian people will feed you dinner for Rm2. We found this house, and walked in. There were several old Indian men sitting on the floor watching TV. We walked through to the back and were greeted by an Indian couple who motioned for us to sit and then served us an incredibly delicious Indian dinner on a banana leaf. They kept trying to give us more but we were completely stuffed. It was SO good. Definitely an interesting experience.

It was nice to have a weekend to myself and Melaka is a wonderful place to go alone and wander around and eat amazing food.