A few days in Melaka, Malaysia

After my time in Kuala Lumpur, I took a bus about 3.5 hours south to Melaka (also spelled Melacca), a UNESCO World Heritage City. Several people had recommended it as a must see, and after looking at the photos of the historical buildings and the cute river walk area, I was in. This time I chose to stay in a small boutique hotel called Ohana House that is close to the river and the Jonker Street Night Market that only happens on the weekends.

Overall, I don’t know if I was just exhausted when I got here, or if I just had a bad attitude when I laid down on yet another concrete bed, but I didn’t love the place. With that said, I did see some cool art and enjoyed my time out in the evenings. So, here it goes….maybe my pictures will tell the story better than me 🙂

I’ll start with the river, as it was a really cute area and I did take one of the “famous” river cruises that takes about 45 minutes and gives a nice view of the art and bridges. The old church is interesting as it is leaning like the Tower of Pisa, so I named it the Leaning Church of Melaka! Oh, and I snuck a photo of the green screen photo they forced me take at the beginning of the cruise.

On the cruise, I met a funny guy named Bob from Australia, who is working in Kuala Lumpur, and had come to Melaka for the weekend. That evening, we bought each other a party hat and checked out the Jonker Street Night Market and took a ride on one of the amazing trishaws which are quite a thing here (of course, I chose Hello Kitty!). They are all lit up at night and ride around blasting dance music! Later on, we hit the bars on the river and I drug him in to a club for a bit of dancing.

It ended up being a fun night out….

In the daytime, I spent some time roaming around town and here’s what I found.

Oh, and I almost forgot, I took a really long walk to Melaka Island one day in the hot sun to see Melaka Straits, the floating mosque. The island was supposed to be a paradise of glitzy shopping malls and a huge Arab resort, but all projects were canceled midway through construction and now there are piles of rusty steel, broken concrete, and unfinished buildings. Apparently, there was a major upheaval in the government, and China, the main investor, was expelled by Malaysia? Anyway, the mosque is there, but I decided to present the pictures in black and white, because the bright pink paint is all faded and crumbling, so it looked much nicer this way!

And for the last day I visited the Portuguese Settlement. They still had Christmas decorations up, and absolutely nothing going on, after I almost died of heat stroke walking there…

And a bit more around town…

And with that, I was exhausted and ended my Melaka trip….next stop Penang (and hopefully a better attitude! 🙂

Hugs and love! Michelle