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Our short stop over from Kuala Lumpar to Singapore brought us to the lovely little picturesque city of Melaka. Melaka is now a world heritage city and used to be one of the busiest trading ports in the world, it has Portuguese and Dutch influences, and are told that it is similar to Amsterdam only without the legalized drugs and peep shows. We would only be staying here for one night as it was just a little stop over on our way to Singapore.
We got dropped off at the bus station which was just outside of the city at midday and got a cab into the main part of town where all the guesthouses and hostels were located. We had a look at a couple of places which were full and ended up settling for a place at Shearea's as the owner (Steve) was out on the street and he enticed us in off the pavement to take a look at his guesthouse.
Steve a Malaysian man (The Malaysian Del Boy) who has traveled a bit or so he tells us, was probably the most welcoming of all the owners we have met he really made us feel welcome into his quirky little hostel. There was a shared kitchen which was a first for us, a small living area with TV and DVD player and also a small roof terrace. It was a bit of a shame we were only going to be staying for one night as it was just a short stop over.
After once again dumping our stuff in the room we proceeded to explore what Melaka had to offer. It had a really nice feel about the place and felt kind of Spanish. We made our way up to a little church up on the hillside that was at the center of Melaka which was built by the Portuguese many centuries ago. We got a feel for the place simply by walking around and taking in the sights. They had loads of these little pimped up push bikes (some with music blaring) which you could pay to take you somewhere or on a short tour.
We opted for a quick 30 minute tour of the small area which they called china town, where you guessed it there was loads of Chinese type of buildings selling loads of Chinese type of stuff. The old boy that took us around was probably nearing 70 if not already and was the spitting image or reminded us of Laura's grandad (Bilecki) we weren't sure he was gonna make it back. Thankfully he did, just about.
That night we headed to a Hawker stall market where there were about 20 different stands of food specializing in there own signautre dishes. Turned out no one spoke much if any English and we ended up just pointing at something on the menu that looked alright, it wasn't, well I suppose it was alright but in hindsight I wouldn't of had it again. It was chicken with noodles which was alright and for about £1.50 each we couldn't really complain. Later that night we set off for the riverside to get a boat tour along the river. So along with all the locals we set off on our little tour of the city on our little boat, us being the only westerners on board. There was very few westerners about, but the place had something about it and was very quaint and quite a chilled out small city.
Next morning we woke up fairly early as we were to head off to Singapore. We were about to checkout, but before we did Steve the owner had insisted that we sit down and have some breakfast before we set off. So there was Steve loading the bread into the toaster one after the other and piling it up high on the plate for Laura and I.
Pouring some seriously strong coffee and some local Malaysian tea, and instead of normal milk we had condensed milk (Yummy) instead. Steve also had urged us to try the local Coconut jam which on toast is seriously good, it was quite sweet but never the less it was still very tasty. So with that and the condensed milk it probably wasn't the healthiest breakfast but fair play to Steve he really did look after us during our short stay and we were a bit sorry to be leaving so soon.
It was onto the bus station for our next stop Singapore....
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