I went down to Melaka last Friday with Ray, his distant cousin-in-law
Joanne, her friend Jamie, and her boss Samir. I was meant to have gone
to Melaka earlier in the week, but my first (and hopefully last) bout
of Traveller's Diarrhoea left me unwilling to move very far. For some
reason I managed to survive Indonesia...
Population: Melaka was the major trading port of the region
hundreds of years ago. It has populations of Chinese ("Baba-Nyonya"),
Indian ("Chitty"), and Portuguese descendants that are considered to be
native Malaysians.
Museums: There are fifteen or so museums clustered around Stadthuys,
Melaka's red fort - many for local and national government,
independence, and culture; another for beauty, several on Islam and its
roles; one for UMNO (the political party); one for architecture.
There are more museums elsewhere - a Baba-Nyonya museum and another dedicated to Chinese explorer/ambassador Admiral Cheng Ho in Chinatown, a
Malay museum in the Malay kampung (village) area, maritime and naval museums on the waterfront, and probably others I missed. Lots of historic buildings and temples too.
Royal Malaysian Navy: Did you know that three RAN officers commanded the RMN? Two of them were Chiefs of Navy post-independence...
Chicken Rice: For lunch on Friday we had chicken rice, which consists
of steamed chicken with soy-chilli sauce, and rice shaped into balls.
Only Melaka does chicken rice this way. I liked the chicken, but the
rice balls were only so-so.
Kaya: Coconut milk, Palm Sugar, Egg. Jam it. Serve with slices of very thin white toast. Breakfast on Saturday. Delicious.
River Cruise: We went on a river cruise on Saturday. The river was
rather filthy, but our amusing but garrulous guide kept emphasising
that the government was in the process of spending millions to upgrade
the riverfront, add walkways, implement flow control, and restore it to
a more pristine state. Garrulous? He spent five minutes saying goodbye
in as many languages as he could think of.
Snails: After never having had snail before, I tried escargot on
Friday night, and sea snail on the Saturday night. The escargot tasted not like chicken but like very garlicky oyster. The
sea snail came in a salad and had a rubbery texture and bland taste. I
was pleasantly surprised at my lack of reaction, as when I had raw
horse in Japan fifteen years back I totally froze up and was unable to
continue eating once I knew what it was.
Portuguese Settlement: On Saturday night we went for seafood at
the Portuguese settlement, which is a few kilometres outside central
Melaka. Melaka's Portuguese have intermarried - they're brown-skinned
- and those of the settlement make a living by catching and selling
seafood. We bought food from two stalls. The one we were sitting
beside was operated by free-divers, who had lots of fresh shellfish
from the ocean floor - huge oysters with shells bigger than your hand,
mussels, furry-shelled clams, Horseshoe crabs, sea snails; that kind of
thing. The other sold shellfish/crustaceans, and fish. We ate a lot
of seafood, and (with the exception of the snail) it was delicious and
(because it was so fresh) un-fishy.
Highlight: Assam prawns.
Parties: The brochures issued by Melaka's tourist office have an unusual slogan
written on them: "Even birds sleep in Melaka". I'm pretty sure that
there have been better ways to suggest that the city is worth
visiting. A bunch of people came down from KL on the Saturday to go to a Chinese Dance Club, and more came down for a rave.
