Activity Summary
Thursday 20th October - Day 49 (continued)
Travel to Melaka
St Paul’s church
Friday 21st October - Day 50
Sri Poyyatha Vinayaga Moorthy Temple
Cheng Hoon Teng
Melaka river walk
Morton village
Cinema & arcade
Summary
Melaka is a former Portuguese, Dutch and British colony which has retained a fair amount of especially Dutch heritage. It made for a nice little city to walk around but certainly didn’t have much in it to keep us busy for more than a day so we padded our time out with various mall chilling sessions as our hostel wasn’t overly comfy to relax in (unlike KL). We were happy with our time here but wouldn’t be somewhere we would say was a must have in the travel collection.
Accommodation
Haven Inn - 2 nights - £4.55/n/p
Simple bunk bed room with shared bathroom. Location was great for getting to the city centre and very cheap accommodation. The bunk bed was unbelievably squeaky so Nicola couldn’t move without waking Luke up but wasn’t all that bad.
Sadly the bad experience was the wafer thin walls & door with annoying Russians chatting away incessantly until 2am one night. Nicola was very much unaffected mind.
Travel
TO
Apartment -> [Grab] -> Bus terminal -> [coach] -> Melaka bus terminal -> [Grab] -> hostel
Diary
[Continued from KL]
The journey from KL to Melaka was pretty short and it was easy to secure a grab from the coach terminal to our hostel. We chilled for a little while before heading out to wonder around Melacca, first really wanting to grab a sugary drink. This proved harder than expected as we walked down the river and the expected ‘prime’ locational joints to find out most weren’t open. So we settled on a not so nice looking place and we’re greeted with sewer smells and mozzies biting Luke to death so we swiftly moved on.
Trying not to complete Melaka, we slowly sauntered up St Johns hill and the church before concluding it was too hot and we were too tired to carry on. We therefore went to the nearest mall, grabbed some churros, a lemon tea and bubble tea. One of the odd highlights were the mass of bike taxis that are all glammed up more than the cast of the only way is Essex. Each has a theme (mainly Disney it seemed) and they definitely took this to the next level - the bike taxis in London have got nothing on these bad boys.
We were told Jonker market was supposedly the best place to go for food but was non-existent this evening so had a short walk around looking for a decent food place and in the end got a slightly more expensive paella than it was worth at Salud. We took off back to the hostel and crashed out.
Day 2 of Melaka would be exploring everything else we didn’t see the day before. We started the day at a local cafe for a tasty croissant and Nicola even managed to get freshly squeezed orange juice. Happy bunny.
Our walking tour took us through Sri Poyyatha Vinayaga Moorthy Temple, Cheng Hoon Teng, down the Melaka river walk (which the lazy tourist got a boat down - it was incredibly short) and Morton village. We managed to complete this in about 2 hours while dawdling so we were kind of a bit stuck for an afternoon plan.
We waltzed back over to the mall for an iced tea and allow Nicola some time to recover from the heat and her headache before sacking off our half arsed attempts to carpe diem the rest of the day and went to the cinema to watch Black Adam. While the film was mildly entertaining (and cinema freezing cold) it was definitely the right choice. Once the film ended Luke got to relieve his childhood days and play time crisis 2 at the arcade, although Nicola wouldn’t join in so his lonely shooting naturally failed miserably. He did however kick her ass at air hockey.
One of the riverside restaurants claimed to be famous for its pies, so Nicola being a pie fiend and likely their harshest critic, we had to give it a try. Verdict; pie not saucy enough and the buttery mash tasted like smash minus the butter. After weeks of eating sensible portion sizes (finally), having American/ British style mass platings got the better of us and made us feel a little ill. Our day finished early evening and went back to pack before leaving Melaka the next day.
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