Malaysia Part 2: Melacca

We left behind the hustle and bustle of Kuala Lumpur and headed to the coastal city of Malacca. Malacca started out as rocky as its beaches. We arrived at the Bus Station and went looking for a taxi to take us into town. Our travel books told us to always negotiate prices with the local cabbies. However, before we really started to negotiate, the driver asked in a very irritated tone, "Who are you going to trust, me or your book?" You see, I had a Lonely Planet book in my hand and I don't think he was a fan. We walked away and found a much nicer cab driver, who by the way was very proud of his Malaysian built car and it's two different fuel sources.


Malacca is a city of 760,000 and we were staying in the Chinatown part of town. This area was full of shops blasting music in a variety of languages, restaurants, bars, and places to stay. We were extremely fortunate to be staying in a former Dutch Mansion turned guesthouse named, Twenty. What does "Twenty" stand for? The owner's cleverly named the guesthouse after it's street address. It would like you naming your guesthouse 1012-c or something like that. This place was beautiful. The room was large, the views were great, the breakfast was included, and it was right smack dab in the middle of things. We were even able to hear the calls to prayer from this place. The only drawback was we had to share a bathroom, which big picture, really was not that big a deal. We never ran into many of the other guests, so instead of it feeling like a hostel or a guesthouse, it was more like we were staying at hotel. The amount of interactions we had with others was very minimal. But, the place was beautiful, had a comfortable bed, and a fan that didn't make a lot of noise.

So, we had some fresh digs, now we needed to explore the town. We went for a walk down the street to start checking out some of the shops. We knew we were going to do some shopping while we were in Malaysia, but we also knew that we didn't have much room in our packs. Fortunate for us, the street was lined with stores selling trinkets and stuff that would barely take up any space at all in our bags. We learned a very valuable lesson right away. We bought this lamp which is made of four wooden sticks creating a square framework with red paper in-between each of the sticks. Very Pretty. We decided right away we wanted one. Lo and behold, it was even on sale. NO WAY!!! (Some of you might be shaking your heads at us, but don't worry, we shook our heads at ourselves later on.) So we paid 32 Ringgits for the lamp. Roughly 4 dollars US. Then, as we walked into another store of a similar nature, NO WAY, there were more lamps. You betcha, they were nearly a dollar less. This is where we shook our head at ourselves. We saw those same lamps being sold at many of the shops we visited. In fact, at one point, I even told the lady she was selling her lamps for way too much. She argued with me for a moment until I pulled out mine and showed her that it was nearly a dollar cheaper than she was selling it for, and her neighbor was selling the same lamps for even cheaper than I paid for mine. We had a good laugh and moved on, but not before I noticed some beautifully decorated what appeared to be back scratchers for Ken and Barbie, but no silly, those are ear wax scrapers, duh!?!




The next day, we went for a nice long walk and ended up near a mall. We thought the mall was very out of place because it was filled with modern stores, mall type music, fast food restaurants, and bright fluorescent lights. It fit into the town of Malacca like a square peg in a too small round hole. The kind of peg where little toddlers notice they won't fit, so they try to pound it through with their mallets. We probably would have heard the banging sound if it weren't for the lovely mix of techno, disco, and cheesy 80's hair band power ballads being played on the loud speakers of the flamboyant trishaws passing by. No, No, No! Don't get the wrong idea here. The trishaws were magnificent. The bikes were all painted yellow, had sidecars for riders, and were decorated with everything from flowers to horses to flags. The ornamentation was just as loud as the music and we loved it. At one point we were in a state of shock and were not sure what to do, so we got in the most festive trishaw we could find and went for a ride. The driver was a nice man who stank, but so would you after pedaling tourists around all day in the hot sun. He was also very proud to be a driver and especially proud of his bike. He explained to us that he spends several hundred dollars adorning his bike with the best plastic flowers. It sounds funny, but the bike was a beaut.

Here is a taste of the Malaccan trishaw for you.




Malacca was a great location for us to visit. There was never a shortage of things to do, but the vibe of the place was very relaxed and contagious. Well, except for the wine bar we decided to visit. We had a lovely table with a view of the river delta. It was fun to wave to the tour boats as they cruised by. There was usually several people as dorky as us who waved back. If you were to take a picture of the place, you would think it was perfect. But, that is because the picture would not be able to capture the sounds coming from the kitchen. The cooks must have been listening to some very very loud industrial metal. We could have dealt with the music by itself, but the bar was also playing some mood music. It was some lady with a pitchy voice singing classic ballads. So, when you combine the two types of music, we were slightly annoyed. The night did get much better. We found ourselves sitting at a restaurant on the corner of the river and ocean one night and were blessed with the beautiful sounds of a local band. The band started with just a woman singing some very nice songs in English and in Malay. Then a man joined her onstage for a rendition of "Endless Love" which although cheesy, seemed to be a perfect song for the moment since Sarah and I were feeling all mushy at the time. They sang several songs together and as they took a break, so did Sarah and I.



We also decided to visit a tea house that had been calling our name. To get to this place, you had to walk through a long (100 Meter) hallway that was covered in ivy. The lady showing us the way told us the path used to be the way the servants got around the house when it was still a mansion. When we got to the tea house, we were treated to a lot of tea. In fact, I don't think I have ever drank so much tea. It was really good, and the host who sat with us for a while was filled with lots of tea knowledge. I was surprised to see that my tea loving wife was even learning a thing or two about tea. As we left, we wished we would have found the place earlier because then we would have been able to tour several of the dutch mansions located on our street. After seeing how beautiful our guesthouse was, we were definitely intrigued.




I know you are wondering why am I looking at a Giraffe's butt. I figured if Sarah and I were lucky enough to see this on our way to the tea house, then we should share it with you.

On the main street of Chinatown we found a corner restaurant call "The Geographier." The food was good, the location was great, and the beer was cold. We actually like the place so much, we went there twice. What can I say, it was comfortable. There was a TV showing a video of the place during a weekend night. I guess they shut down the streets to cars and it becomes a very happening place. The images on the screen were filled with people smiling, dancing and having a great time. We were too, but we both wished we were there for a piece of the weekend pie. But, it was not meant to be, and there was more pie to be had at our next location. We just had to get there first.

Malaysia!

MALAYSIA
Part I
Kuala Lumpur

We started our Malaysian adventure in the capital city, Kuala Lumpur. When we arrived in KL it was late afternoon. We took an express train from the airport- which was clean and beautiful, into the central station. From there we took the monorail a few short stops to what is called the Golden Triangle area where our budget hotel, "8", was located. We followed the directions the hotel provided on their website and found the place. We were so intent on getting our heavy packs off our backs that we had tunnel vision until we were checked in and were able to figure out what we wanted to do first in the big city.

The hotel was nice enough- not as fancy as the website makes it out to be but still a nice place for the price and in a great area, Bukit Bintang, the Golden Triangle. The Golden Triangle area is where the Petronas Towers are located, some fancy shopping malls and theaters. If you check out the hotel website, I believe our room was the one featured. Check out the "doubles with bathroom attached" link. At least a couple of years have lapsed since they took that picture and some mildew invaded the windows and some spiders moved into the lofty ceilings. The room turned out to be just fine though. Air conditioning was a must and so we were happy in the end.

After getting settled, we realized that the sun was quickly setting and we were getting pretty hungry so we changed into our warm weather clothes, counted out some money, got our cameras ready and headed out. We were immediately impressed by the diversity in Kuala Lumpur. On the street in front of our hotel we saw women wearing hijabs- head scarves, saris and still others wearing shorts, t-shirts, jeans etc. The men were obviously of different ethnicities, Middle Eastern, Indian, Chinese and Malaysian. The diversity was also reflected in the shops and restaurants we passed on our way. We had so many choices we didn't know where to start!


Finally, while passing perfume oil shops like those I remember seeing and smelling in Egypt, and shops selling "designer" clothing we found a restaurant with a kebab stand outside and decided Arabic food would be the our perfect 1st meal in Malaysia. I was so excited about eating Arabic food that I ordered a sampler platter full of tabulie, hummus, babaganoush, olives, pita bread, grape leaves and pickled peppers and I savored every bite. Loren was drawn in by the tantalizing smell coming from the rotisserie and ordered a chicken schwarma. He knew from spending time with my family that he had to eat it with a Pepsi, so with out me even making a comment, he did so.



After dinner we strolled around, checking out the shops and restaurants by our hotel. The sky was getting heavy with rain clouds and beginning to fog over so we decided to stay close to our temporary home. As we turned a corner, we were immediately taken by a beautiful view of the famed Petronas Towers glowing in the mist and rising above the buildings framing our street. We couldn't resist and so spent about 10 minutes trying to get a perfect shot without tripods.

We were lucky we got our shots when we did because after that it started to rain and we figured we'd call it a night.

Our next day we were determined to see the Petronas towers first hand and to walk across the sky walk connecting the two towers so we set our alarm and were up by 6:30! We ate our free breakfast of fruit and toast and asked the hotel clerk how to get to the towers. He looked at us, all gung-ho and sadly told us that the towers were closed today but would be open tomorrow. It was 7:30 in the morning, on our first day and we didn't know what to do. He said most of the shops, etc. wouldn't be open until 10 or so but then he realized the the National Museum opens at 9am. We decided that would be a nice way to start our relationship with Malaysia and asked the clerk to get us a taxi.
He told us not to pay more than 15 ringgot for the fare and sent us on our way. The taxi drivers in KL are notorious for trying to rip off tourists. They almost never use their meters when asked and assess their fares based on how rich you look. We got into taxis many times and then got out again after the driver refused to lower his price. It was a hassle!
Our trip to the museum was worry free though and we arrived just as the doors were opening. We were the first guests. The museum was well laid out and started in the prehistoric times of Malaysia and took us all the way from Malaysia's conversion to Islam as their main religion, to Holland's colonization of Malaysia, to modern times. It was a nice introdction to Malaysia.

As we were getting ready to leave the museum, I noticed a group of young Malaysian ladies wearing brightly colored hijabs. They looked so beautiful and exotic that I had to take a picture.
I thought it was great when right after I took their picture, some of their other friends asked a group of young Malaysian guys if they could take their picture! One of the many wonderful things about Malaysia is the diversity. The people may all dress differently and have different religions, but they all speak and are Malaysian.

When we'd finished strolling through the museum, we wandered outside to see where we were. It turned out that we were close to the National Mosque. Loren had never seen a mosque and we were both very interested to learn more about the Islamic influence in Malaysia so we headed out. We passed many interesting buildings along the way.


One thing that I didn't even realize I missed about being in an Islamic country is the beautiful design and art work. Islamic design is full of intricate, geometric patterns. Even the Arabic script is beautiful how it slashes and loops around. In the mosque I was reminded of the beauty.
Before we were allowed to enter the mosque, we had to remove our shoes and put on purple robes to cover ourselves. If Loren had been wearing long pants, he could have gone in bare foot, no robe, no problem. I however, was wearing a skirt and showing some leg which is frowned upon.
We left the mosque and realized that we were right next to the Islamic Arts Museum and headed in. At this point we were incredibly enough not "museumed-out" yet. No pictures were allowed in the museum which was disappointing because of the beautiful art work and Mosque replicas that were on display. There was even a tapestry that had at one time covered the Kaaba standing about 2 feet away from me. It was incredible to imagine what the tapestry had seen, what it had felt as it draped and protected that epic site.

At this point, we'd been going since 7am with only toast, coffee and a couple pieces of fruit to sustain us. We were torn between checking out the other sites and finding some food. We peaked around a corner after leaving the museum to discover a bird sanctuary. The strange bird calls and sound of flapping wings almost beat out our hunger, but in the end we decided to head to "Little India" for some Indian food and shopping.

We were overwhelmed by Little India. There were so many different shops and people in Sari's and Bollywood movies being played and soundtracks being blasted from speakers that we were quickly disoriented. Weren't we in Malaysia? Not India?

It took us a little while to decide where to eat. Most of the restaurants looked maybe a little too local but we couldn't find any others so we decided on one that looked like it had a table open and had some vegetarian options available. We were very happy when the food came and scarfed it right down. It was delicious, and super cheep!

After we'd had our fill of India in Malaysia, we headed to the famed China Town markets. There were a lot of the same types of products to buy in Chinatown as we found in Beijing: knock-off purses, jeans, movies, and clothing. We were more prepared for this market than we were for our experience in Beijing and got right to the heart of bargaining when we found anything worth buying.

The experience quickly wore on us. It had been a long day! After Chinatown, we headed back to the hotel area for a nice dinner.


(Chinese Tea Shop with Malaysian flag.)
(Mosque in the same area. )
Our last day we set the alarm again for a 6am. We were determined to see the Petronas Towers! This time after the same breakfast of toast and coffee, we headed out to the towers and stood in line for a good 2 hours before we were given a time of 9:15 to enter the towers! I nearly fell back asleep in line just sitting there. It was worth it though. We were finally ushered into a waiting area with the history of the towers and the Petronas company then into a small theater where we were shown some propaganda about how great the Petronas company is and how well they treat their employees. It was strange when we were expecting to learn a little more about the construction of the towers etc.
Finally, we got on this small elevator with about 13 other people and were lifted to the walk way between the two towers. The views were beautiul and the experience was worth the wait.