The city named after a tree.

After our longer than expected walk to the bus station we had a longer than expected ride on the bus back to Serembam (despite being closer to Melaka than Serembam, there was not direct bus there from Melaka).  What should have been a half an hour ride ended up being 2 hours because there appeared to be some sort of large function going on, with cars pouring in and out of a large parking lot with something beyond.  The road was single lane in either direction.  I remember looking out the window at one point and seeing a little sign that said Serembam 12 KM and literally an hour later I looked out the window and saw a sign that that said Serembam 11KM.  We were rather grumpy when we arrived at the Serembam bus station.  Fortunately we had no problem getting a bus to Melaka from there (there were tons).

Upon our arrival at the Melaka bus station we were greeted by several people asking us if we wanted to stay in a guest house (one guy was nice enough to help e get my backpack on before he asked).  We told them that we had already booked a place (this was not really true but we had decided on the bus to go to a guest house called Jalan-Jalan, which I think translates as "roads" or "trail").  We needed to hop on another bus to get into Melaka proper, but this one was not delayed in any way.  On our way in we saw a big sign saying "Welcome to the World Heritage City of Melaka", it was neat.  Melaka is nicely planned out and very easy to navigate and we found Jalan-Jalan pretty quickly, despite getting off in city centre, not Chinatown.  Yes Jalan-Jalan was in Chinatown, like the vast majority of cheap guest houses in Melaka.  We rang that door and were greeted by a talkative middle aged British guy, who, by the way he spoke anyway, seemed to have just come from the set of a Guy Ritchie movie.
When we told him we were from Canada, he replied, "the whole bloody world must be from Canada!" as an after thought: "or Germany."  There were indeed many Canadians and Germans staying there, but we were to stay in the new guest house (new is a relative term, it was actually in a 200 year old building, but the owner had just recently bought it).  As Alan led us to the new guest house, the speakers from the nearby Mosque started to blare.
"This is one of the good things about the other guest house, buddy here" (indicating the Mosque) "is on about 4 times a day."
When we said it seemed kind of neat, he agreed, except for when he was on at 6AM.  That did sound less appealing.
"He only goes on for about 10 minutes though."
We asked how he ended up here and he replied, "it's a long story.  About 25 years ago I got tired of my job and bought a motorcycle and headed to the Sahara.  Hmm, that maybe another story..."
He had had a business in Barcelona until the economic down turn and then he had headed to Thailand to teach english.  He had been hanging around ever since, teaching or working in guesthouse (he preferred guesthouses).

Our room was very nice, with a window that opened up onto the street below and a balcony (which was for everyone and arrived at through a different door).  It was only 42RM.  The place was clean and well kept and seemed to have wind blowing through the common area most of the time.  As Alan had said it was an old building and the old stone walls gave us a distinct sense of history.  Once inside the guest house we didn't really want to leave.  We sat downstairs on the couches and drank the gratis coffee (which I think is still the best instant coffee I have ever had) and read our books.

Yea it was pretty comfy.

The few from our room.

Also comfy.

When night arrived we decided to stir ourselves and head to the night market, which came highly recommended by the American guy who was also staying in the new guesthouse.  We ate some tornado potatoes and drank some sickeningly bitter Chinese tea (the guy did warn us though).  We also bought some lovely jasmine tea.

In my right hand is a tornado potato.  In my left is the tea (we didn't finish it).

After realizing that we didn't actually want to eat at a night market again we went to the lonely planet's pick for eating in Melaka, Pak Putra a Pakistani place.  It was so good that we ate there for almost every dinner we had in Melaka.  When we returned from dinner some Finnish guys (whose names I forget) were in the common area and we recommended (highly) that they eat dinner there when they got the chance.  They laughed, because the American guy (who I will call James from now on because its possible that was his name) had just told them the same thing.

The food at Pak Putra.  Yummy.

In the morning of the following day, which we woke up much later than we had in other places, James showed us the best place to eat breakfast (western: toast, pancakes, porridge, eggs, etc) which was great.  He also told us a bit about himself.  He was a teacher in Kobe, Japan, in fact his Japanese was good enough that he actually taught history as well as English at a public school.  He had helped out with the evacuation and humanitarian work after the Fukishima disaster last year and one of his friends had started an aid centre in the area.  He also told us about something that made us wish we could afford to go to Japan on this trip.  I think I may have heard of this before, but it was definitely neat to hear about: Up in the Nagano mountains there are several hot springs that have some unusual visitors: monkeys.  Japan has what basically snow monkeys, who are just as happy as hot spring enthusiasts to hop into the hot springs. He showed us some pictures of the monkeys he had lounged with on his visit there.  They looked very relaxed sitting in the springs, with their elbows on the ledge.

We visited the ruins of the St. Paul's Church which was built by the Portuguese in 1547 (or there about).  It was used by the Dutch, as a church, when they took Melaka from them and by the British, as an ammunitions store, when they took Melaka from the Dutch.  It was situated on a hill over looking the city and was quite peaceful.  The peacefulness was helped by many people playing soft music in and around it.

One guy was playing a flute and selling some paintings and when we were looking at his paintings he struck up a conversation with us.  He had also been a traveller for a while (specifically in India), but now he could not travel so much because his daughter was sick (she actually had just recently had a brain tumour removed).  He was worried about his daughter, obviously but at the same time he was not trying to pressure anyone to buying anything from him if they didn't want to.  We spent a long time talking to him about travel and Melaka.  The paintings we did buy (for 30 RM) were of old less touristy Melaka.  While we spoke to him he got a call from his brother and had to leave fairly quickly to see his daughter.  He said that we were the first people from North America who had stopped to talk for a while (there were plenty of people from Australia or New Zealand who had though) and he wanted to give us a flute he was working on.  He said it would be ready in a few days and asked us to come back.  We said we would and he had to run.  His name was Kaam (I think)

We spent the rest of that day wandering around.  Melaka just feels historical to walk around with all its old buildings and land marks.  In one old building there was a restaurant called Nancy's Kitchen, which we came across in time for lunch, we naturally had to eat there.  It was delicious.  More relaxing after, during which Nancy finished reading The Great Gatsby (I had finished it at Uncle Tan's), followed by some literary discussion.

The next morning we took a German girl named Sylvi, who Nancy had struck up a conversation with in the common area, to the the place we had had breakfast the previous day.  She had just come from Penang and highly recommended it.  She had quit her printing job in Germany and went to New Zealand to learn to speak better English in preparation for the longer trip she was now on.  Part of her trip was to go to Canada, in fact, she was leaving for Vancouver from Singapore the following day.  She asked for some ideas on where to go.  We told her we would think about it and tell her what we could at dinner.  We agreed to meet at the guest house before so that we could all go to Pak Putra together.

Melaka has one of the coolest concepts for a museum ever: their naval museum is in a replica Portuguese tall ship.  We enjoyed wandering around below deck learning about the various powers that controlled Melaka since its inception.  We were also more filled in on the origin history (well it seems kind of mythical really) of Melaka.
Melaka was founded by a Hindu pirate prince from Sumatra named Parimeshwara (who was kicked out of his home for an unknown reason).  He and his merry band on sailors sailed about Malaysia looking for a suitable home.  they stopped in various places, once to be cased away by a particularly fierce band of monitor lizards.  One day Parimeshwara was hunting with his dogs.  He saw some mouse deer and his dogs made chase.  One of the mouse deers kicked one of his dogs so hard that the dog ran away.  Parimeshwara was awed by this act of courage and decided that they would make a city on the spot (well just down the way in the bay where he had seen a natural harbour).  He asked (who I don't know) what the name of the tree was under which this act of courage took place.  The tree was the Melaka tree and the   city of Melaka was born
There was a lot inside the museum about ships and artillery and the names of the various conquering admirals, as well as artistic depictions of the stages of the Melaka harbour.

The museum

Me getting keel hauled.

Nancy Ready to climb to the crows nest.

Me beside Alphonso De Albequerque, the Portuguese conquerer of Melaka.

Nancy finding some natural light.

Beside to the Naval museum was the Maritime museum which we were also admitted to with our ticket.  There were some neat galleries about marine life and maritime pioneers, but we were pretty tired after our jaunt through the Naval museum.  As we wandered it a young girl approached me and with a camera and made a clicking motion with her fingers.  I thought she wanted me to take a picture of her and her sisters, who were not far off.
I said, "do you want me to take a picture?"  She said, "yes."  I reached for the camera, but she had already turned around.  Suddenly me and Nancy were surrounded by the girl's entire (mostly female) family, who were mostly wearing head scarfs.  What the girl had meant apparently was "can we take a picture with you?"  So we posed with the group and someone who looked to be their grandfather took a few pictures.  I kind of wish we had them take a picture with our camera.

In the heat of the day we had some Cendol (pronounced Chendol), which is shaved ice mixed with condensed coconut milk, beans and chocolate syrup.  We made sure to have another before we left Melaka.  It was delicious.

We enjoyed our dinner with Sylvi (I hope that's how to spell her name, because we have exchanged blogs with her now) and were even somewhat inspired by our suggestions to sometime actually give Canada a better tour.

The next day we went back to St. Paul's and Kaam gave us a bamboo flute that he had carved himself.  He said that it might be a bit before we could get too much sound out of it (and we could always just put it on our wall somewhere if not).  he told us we might want to get our bus ticket early to Mersing (which was town from which you get to Tioman Island, our next destination) as it was a long weekend coming up for Singaporeans and Malaysians.  He played as a little melody on his own flute to wish us happy travels and we put a small donation in his box.

We went to the former Dutch administration building next which was another museum, but before too long we were suffering from too much museum syndrome and decided that we didn't need to know any more about the various marriage rituals of the various ethnic groups in Melaka.  So we left to wander Melaka some more.  Nancy bought herself a nice dress at a vendor, that she has since put to good use.

The clock tower by the old Dutch admin building.

There was an artist shop right in front of Jalan-Jalan and the guy there told us that there was used book store near by.  We decided to pick up a book each and I got A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson, while Nancy picked up The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham (yes there was a movie based off it out about 4 years ago).

We spent a serene evening reading our new books.

The next morning we mailed some post cards and the paintings (and I traded The Great Gatsby for The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time) before hopping on a bus to the bus station and another bus to Mersing, without any hassle at all.  We did run into a French guy who we had previously met at the Step In Lodge in KK, which was kind of neat.

 Mersing was to be a very different place, but the reward that was Tioman was worth going through it.  But that is for next time.