I am very happy get together with my friends...We are still hanging out in Melaka. Nearly four weeks we have been in this lovely town in south west Malaysia. It is such an easy place to hang out and stay a while. Cheap food, good walks, lots of museums, and plenty of cheap activities, that suit us budget travellers.
We have taken to long walks in the morning, long before the sun and the heat rise and the sweating starts. The wet season is here, wether it is supposed to or not, and it is raining everyday. This is nice as it cools it down, before the steam starts.
We are staying at Arif's house, which is a funky old school guesthouse, that would have had us young hippies going "O wow dude, this place is cool". But has us old hippies saying "could do with a good clean, dude". Tony is a cool guy who loves to travel and tell his travel tales. I am really happy here, and it has been easy to stay for so long. The guesthouse is in a quiet Lorong, which t junctions onto a busy street, with lots of chinese restaurants, and the most famous Sate Celup restaurant in town, The Capitol. I love these old Chinese cafe's. They are a treasure trove of characters and places of serious eating. In the morning a woman brings her cart onto the corner and sells a dish that is a steamed rice flour dough, that is flat and thin and gets bunched into a long shape, that i believe is named something that resembles intestines. The local's love it, and Tony said the older people love it because it is easy to eat after you have lost your teeth. Well it looks pretty dull to me, and the black sauces don't do much for it. But regardless of what i think, it is the place to be in the morning, the tables full of elder people, my favourite the table, permanently booked by "the girls". Elder chinese women, all talking and laughing at once, having a great time.
Kampung house |
Sungai Melaka, morning reflections. |
The food is fantastic here. This photo is taken at the local Madras Cafe. This lovely man makes us roti canai in the morning.That is the roti dough he is tossing. Roti canai is somewhat a staple here in Malaysia, costing only about 30 cents, and served with some dahl or curry sauce, will fill you up for hours. The Madras is a popular corner cafe, just around the corner from our guesthouse. It opens about 7am and goes to sometime way after i go to bed. It is never empty, selling really nice basic food served by a really lovely group of guys, who are now on first name basis with us. We will miss them, they are really welcoming. The place attracts a good mix of people, not only Malays. Lots of characters and interesting people. Just a good place to hang out and watch the world go by. This cook, is actually from Myanmar. He left many years ago to Thailand and then to Malaysia. He would love to come to Australia. We would love to sponsor him and open a roti shop in Emu Park, if only so we can eat roti canai's at home.
Chinatown roof line, from the new Casa Rio Melaka Hotel. We went to the open house yesterday, to check out the new four or five star hotel, built right on the river side, the premium real estate of Melaka. We got a tour of the facilities, some food, drinks a gift bag of vouchers and a pen. We had a laugh at the Asianess of it. The flash hotel opening day, showing the place off to the world, and staff in lovely new uniforms, but the building itself so poorly finished off. Paint splatters, cracks already in new plaster, things breaking off, dirty already etc etc. Just love that about Asia. Lots of rooms and very small restaurant, bar and cafe. The centre piece being a huge pond, a feature of the rooms not on the river. Just a bit of a waste of space in my opinion. Do i sound picky? Yes probably am, but it was so asian. Malaysia also is covered with these huge hotels, that are largely empty, and decaying. This one has a great location, but will be interesting to see if it will decay unused like so many others.
Yesterday was actually a busy day on our feet. After the hotel tour, we headed over the river to the antique bike show. Motor bikes or motosikal in bahasa, collections from all over Malaysia and Thailand entered into the show. It was pretty interesting even to this mechanical klutz. Lots of Royal Enfields, Nortons, BSA's. My favourite was a Series H 1920 Triumph owned by Mr Ghandi. All with leather bike chain. Amazing that is still runs.
The crowd were just as interesting. Malaysian bikies everywhere. Leather jackets, jeans and a sea of black t-shirts as far as the eye could see.
Of course a bikies do is incomplete without a blues band. The photo is the Perambahan Blues Geng. They were good to hear for a change. Malaysian music is generally emo Malay or Chinese. Very emotional men or women singers, putting everything into the love song of the century. Not really my style. But this was a bit more like it for me. A lot of the songs were in Bahasa, so must have been written by the artist in the geng. The bass player on the left, had what looked like a home made fretless, headless electric bass. He is extremely cool that dude. He exuded it. The drummer also was an older rocker, and hung back doing the beat with so much cool.
I, the most enthusiastic audience ofAnd here is Trevor and the small bunch that made the most of the good music, shade and comfy seats.
Next stop was onto Mahkota parade to look for shoes for Grants tired old crooked feet. Rubber thongs just don't support his feet anymore. We do a few kms every morning and he usually has to come back and put them up and recover for an hour or so. So it was into the air conditioned shopping centre for some retail therapy. Buying shoes here is really no difference to home, nothing decent over size 10, and if you have really wide feet sunken arches, and old breaks, like him, forget it. I am not a shopping fan and still haven't been to the new one at home, so the only good thing for me was the AC and the toilet. The photo to the right is me dragging the body home, carrying the gift bag from the Casa Rio Melaka, full of vouchers to the place, which i still can't afford even after the super discounts. Wow it is way overpriced. The pen will come in handy, as did the note paper in Mahkota parade as the toilet didn't have any loo paper.
Well just a few more days here and then off to Borneo for a couple of weeks. The laptop won't be coming with us, so I will be in touch in a couple of weeks.
Take care and be safe and happy.
Much love Ros.