Malaysia Part VI: Melaka

Kuala Lumpur's Puduraya bus station was absolute chaos. There were dozens of ticket windows for dozens of different bus companies. For buses that were about to leave men stormed up and down the aisles shouting the names of his company's about-to-depart destination. There did not seem to be any order to how the ticket windows were organized; each bus company posted its routes on the window and patrons were either expected to know which company to use or to brave the crowds and peruse each window individually. I finally stumbled upon a guy yelling Melaka, gave him some money and headed to the correct platform. It turned out the bus wasn't leaving yet. In fact, it didn't ever show up. We got stuffed onto a beat up school bus of sorts that was already mostly full.

A slow and fairly uncomfortable three hours later, we were at the bus station outside of Melaka (for some reason most of Malaysia's municipal transport hubs are inconveniently located outside of the city necessitating many taxi rides). I ended up at a charming guesthouse across from a mosque a block off of Chinatown's main shopping street. I dropped my stuff off and walked over to the historic colonial part of town, where the Dutch, Portuguese, and British had set up shop over the last 500 years. The Studhuys town square, St. Paul's Church (with a view out to the Straits of Melaka), and the other buildings were charming, but the area was a bit too overrun with tourists for my taste. I did, however, enjoy the brightly-decorated trishaws which blasted 80s pop music, like "Don't Stop Believing" and the "Final Countdown."

Starving, I headed back across to Chinatown looking for lunch. I stopped at a small restaurant packed with old, contemplative Chinese men drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes and ordered the house specialty, chicken satay. It was the freshest and most delicious satay I've ever had, with just enough bite to keep me honest and cucumbers to cool me down.

Refreshed, I wandered down Jalan Hang Jebat, Chinatown's main street. It was a bustling mix of modern shops selling knick-knacks, dusty antique shops selling highly overpriced trinkets - I saw a Guinness pint glass on sale for $50 - and art galleries. Regardless of the product being sold, every house's windows were beautifully painted in bright colors and intricate designs. It was the perfect place to do a photographic study on windows and doors.

Continuing my wandering, I passed by beautiful Chinese temples and stumbled upon a batik gallery. Batik is a technique of painting on silk using what looks like a quill to outline a design with hot wax; once cool, the wax acts a barrier to paint spreading beyond the desired region and I had the pleasure of seeing an artist at work. Rounding a corner in a quieter part of town, I noticed a parade coming my direction. The police were closing streets one by one and it was clear that hundreds of people, some in elaborate silk costumes, were involved in the parade, including many floats. As the parade passed, I stopped a boy that looked like a boy scout and asked him what the parade was for. He looked at me blankly and, in the most matter of fact statement I've ever heard, replied "The birth of God." I was too stunned by his nonchalance to ask him which God. Hot and tuckered out, I went back to the guesthouse for a shower and a rest.

Since it was my last night of vacation, I intended to make myself presentable - at least more presentable than I had been for much of the past week - and treat myself to a nice dinner. As I was wandering to the fancy Malay-Portuguese restaurant I had in mind, however, I noticed that Chinatown's main street was closed to cars and motorbikes. Intrigued, I went over to discover that a huge night market was being set up. I walked through to get a sneak preview and then decided to get a few beers at the beautifully colonial and perfectly located Geographer Cafe. I got the absolute best table possible and sipped deliciously cold beer as the market took shape. These were probably some of my most content moments on a trip of much contentment.

Ogling the street food vendors with a few drinks in my belly and hunger lurking, I opted out of the fancy sit-down dinner and set off to enjoy the wonders of street food. I'm not sure exactly what I ended up with - something like a spring roll, some sort of fried prawn puff, some spicy vegetarian Indian food, sweet barbecued pork, sweet dough rolled in crushed peanuts, and the Melakan specialty pineapple tarts. And all of it was not even $5. Good choice. Moreover, the open market was incredibly fun to walk around and was bustling with (mostly local) activity.

There were a number of particularly entertaining sites that are worth a brief mention: Chinese temples were turned into karaoke joints and aerobic dance classes. There was a huge stage for karaoke at one end of the street, complete with tables and chairs for onlookers. I couldn't help but admiring the dance moves of an older Malay man (sorry, I only got a video). Then, just as I was about to call it a night, I stumbled upon a street show. Nothing like juggling fire or magic or any of that nonsense. I mean a real street show: a guy trying to hawk some ridiculous product. In this case it was a stocky, middle-aged Chinese Malay guy, speaking a mix of English, Malay, and Chinese. He had gathered a crowd of several hundred and he was selling some sort of pain-killing ointment. I will give him credit for being able to hold the crowd and for his great sense of humor (even if I couldn't understand everything he was saying). But the true selling point of his show was how he demonstrated that the ointment worked. The man took a fresh green coconut - hard as a rock - stood on two clay pots and managed to punch through the flesh of the coconut using only his hand in four jabs. In a great show of theatrics, he then had his assistants pour the ointment all over his hand and after a few minutes, he paraded his hand, not at all swollen or bloodied, around the crowd. And people absolutely ate it up, buying up to ten bottles of the ointment at about $7 a bottle. It was like being in an infomercial and surrounded by a whole group of people who actually believed that the product being sold to them wasn't a total farce. This in and of itself was almost as amusing as round two, where our entertainer elbowed through another coconut in a series of three blows. Knowing that this would be hard to top, I called it a night.

On Sunday, my final morning in Malaysia, I relaxed before catching a taxi back to the bus station. At the bus station, I caught a bus to Seramban, where I transferred to a bus to the airport. Arriving about an hour and a half before my departure, I asked where to check in, forgetting that Air Asia is in a different terminal than the other airlines. So I had to take another taxi the fifteen kilometers around the back of Kuala Lumpur International Airport to the Air Asia terminal. A somewhat stressful end to an absolutely wonderful trip. I certainly hope that I will have the opportunity to return to Malaysia and explore in more detail.