Melacca

Yesterday I left Kuala Lumpur and headed, by bus, down the west coast of Malaysia to the smaller city of Malacca. Today I left Malacca and headed, by bus, down the west coast of Malaysia to the larger city/country of Singapore.

But first, let's talk about yesterday.

The bus that I needed to catch to take me down to Malacca was to depart from a bus terminal just outside the city centre. I could tell it would be too far to walk to from my hostel so I flagged down a taxi a couple of hours before the bus was due to depart. As I jumped into the taxi the driver told me the journey would take around half an hour so I thought this would be a good opportunity to talk to a native of Kuala Lumpur.

Taxi drivers probably know their city better than anyone else and if a common language is spoken a lot can be learned from these manic road users. Early on I found out that this particular man used to work in the Central Market (a famous street market in KL) when he was a kid in the early 1960's. Great, I think. This man could have some interesting stories to tell. I soon also found out that working in a market equals very early hours (4am, he told me) but this is about as much as he told me. For the next 30 minutes he just kept talking about how his taxi was falling to pieces (really comforting to hear this as he is whizzing us through the city's streets) and the mechanics wouldn't help him out efficiently. The man spoke relatively good English but his accent was so strong. He also stuttered his sentences, seemingly missing out any words that are not nouns or verbs and randomly emphasising words at the end of the sentence as if he was blaming me for the taxi's issues. I was glad once we had reached the bus terminal and I had wished himself and his taxi good luck.

The bus journey itself was very uneventful and went by quickly. After a couple of hours we arrived in Malacca Sentral and from here I took another taxi to my hostel. A few rings on the door bell of the hostel, and no answer had me a little concerned. A good 5-10 minutes later after forceful banging on the door of the hostel, and with still no answer had me so concerned that I almost went to a different hostel a few doors down to see if they had a spare bed. Instead of doing this though (I had already paid for the first hostel) I reluctantly gave them a call and after explaining my situation on the phone some lady from down the street came to fetch me, took me around the corner to some random hotel, where I checked in and was given my keys, I was then ushered back to the original door and up to my room in the recetionist-less building. Weird, but at least I had my bed.

Malacca is a very nice city. Previously a Portuguese colony, the city still contains some old buildings and rubble built by the Europeans when they controlled the area from the 1600's. Malacca was a vital port for ships going through south Asia and as a result the city saw huge amounts of trade. The photos are below which I hope shows how quaint, cultural and historic the place is.