Melaka, UNESCO gone wrong

The original plan after Cameron Highlands was to go to Taman Negara National park, one of the oldest rain forests in the world. Unfortunately the weather forecast was against our plans again, and a whole week of rain in a jungle didn't sound like a good plan at all. This is why we decided to go to the historical city of Melaka instead.

The name of the city is very evocative, the strait of Malacca and the colonial period. The city was under the control of the Chinese (Ming dinasty), the Portuguese, the Dutch and the British in different moments of its history. Not much remains of that past, but a few monuments still remind you of the influences that the city has received. The oddest thing is that most of those monuments have been painted completely a red-brick color. The official explanation is even odder: this should be a solution to the problem of the many citizens that spit daily on those ancient walls. I agree that people here spit a lot (I would say too much actually), but why should the red color stop them? Does it makes it more visible? Or, on the contrary, it camouflages it better? I guess that we'll never know.

View of Dutch Square

The brick-red Christ church 

Apart from the few famous monuments, the real pleasure in Melaka is to walk around the city center, among the colonial buildings and old temples that still resist in this part of town. It reminded us of Georgetown a little. 

Unfortunately here the tourism exploitation has been much stronger, and the place feels more like an attraction park than a real city. The main touristic streets are packed with shops and restaurants, the weekly night market offers mostly touristic junk, and the number of tourists (Westerners and not) is astonishing. Not to mention the many colored and oddly decorated "rickshaws" (sort of taxi pulled by a bicycle , each one carrying around a set of colored lights and a huge sound system typically played at extremely loud volume.

Tacky vehicles by day...

...and by night

 We made a sort of a plan to visit the city, but we were done with most of if after little more than one morning. The rest of the time was spent at a mall, looking for a "le petit prince" book that we obviously didn't find, walking around and trying to rest in our very hot room.

Remains of the Portuguese period

At night we would walk around the night market, looking for food and trying to avoid the most dense parts of the crowd. 

The river at night

One night we saw a concert, and the next day what looked like a politician speaking in Chinese (or what we assumed was Chinese). I forgot to mention that in Malaysia there is very large population of Chinese and Indians, not recent immigrants but as part of the history of the country. In certain cities they probably form the major group. The curious thing is that they still form a strong community, the Chinese more so, therefore it's easy to find "Chinatown" and "Little India" in all cities, with shops, restaurants, dressing style and ethnic traits typical of their respective country. Our stay preceded by a few days the Chinese New Year, and all Melaka's streets were getting decorated for the occasion.

Getting ready for the celebrations... wish we could stay longer

The real upside of this mixed culture for us is that you can find Indian restaurants everywhere, which is wonderful news as that's our newly discovered passion. At the night market I was able to try the Durian fruit for the second time on this trip, this time in the form of a sweet tart. Once again it tasted rather weird (K said that an onion tart would taste better). I wouldn't say that I liked it, but the people of Melaka really seem to love this fruit as it is sold here in every form imaginable.

Durian fruits

"Heaven for Durian Lovers"

The charms of Melaka are limited, and the temperature is horribly high and humid. After a couple of nights we decided to start moving towards the north and Thailand again. Malaysia is not bad, but we haven't found it very interesting: it's modern and tidy in parts, but none of the places so far seemed as impressive as the guide books make it sound. Before we would return to Thailand, there was one obligatory stop we had to/wanted to make - Kuala Lumpur, the capital city.