Day 11 - Train w***ers Part 1!

Day 11 begins with yet another early morning with a very swift packing of my bag, we again had breakfast in the hotel, Becky was absolutely distraught about there being no hash browns this morning!! I had pancakes and syrup, continuing my American tradition!! I'm not having a local breakfast... These people seem to eat the same thing for every meal, noodles and rice, I even saw broccoli!! No thanks! After this we went to check out, having a few charges for beer and wine and the meal for the other night so they just deducted our deposit and it wasn't that much. We then needed a taxi to the train station to catch the train to Tampin which is the nearest station to malacca! We're very sad to be leaving kuala lumpur, another city with its ninja taxi drivers and militant motorcyclists!! The concierge at the hotel told us the night before we needed to go to the old Kuala Lumpur station so this is where the taxi was told to go! Upon arriving at the station we were told by a very nice Malaysian man that we were in the wrong place! He told us we should be at 'KL sentral' station which was one commuter train stop away, so we went to a ticket office to get a ticket only to be told that we had to go to the platform to get a ticket for 1 ringgit each! However the helpful lady at the ticket office said we could buy our ticket for Tampin there so we did, we plumped for 1st class... 27 ringgit each, about £5ish...
So we walked up and over to the platform to buy our ticket and just as we did a train arrived! Love timing like that! One quick stop on the train and we were at KL sentral (I know it's central, but sentral is Malay) we go upstairs to the platform where the train is due to leave and wait to be called! We're called and we head downstairs again to the platform and into the first class carriage! This train is great, it looks about 40 years old and so does the interior, the seats look like they might have been on the old intercity trains back home. The seats have seen MUCH better days but we don't care we're comfortable and on our way!!
The train may be the slowest form of transportation in order to get to malacca, but we didn't want another horrendous bus journey or a car! The scenery along the route is much better than if we were on a motorway. In parts there is thick jungle either side of the tracks, broken up by the occasional farm with some VERY lean looking cattle, someone from a beef association back home needs to come over here and teach them how to rear cattle properly! They were followed by some HUGE palm tree plantations!!
After a couple of hours on the train we'd arrived in Tampin, we hopped in a taxi and we were on our way to malacca (or Melaka in Malay), the taxi driver was a talker... I know some people (becky) don't like taxi drivers who talk but luckily I'm the king of talking to taxi drivers! We discussed football, rugby and the local history, it made the hour long journey go a little quicker! We arrived at our hotel to find that our room wasn't ready yet and wouldn't be for about 3 hours! Ideal, we can go and explore what Melaka has to offer! It's a very historic city, with British, Portuguese and Dutch influences in architecture! We walked up a bit of a hill to a very old Portuguese church that they'd built in the 16th century, in fact the Dutch and Portuguese fought over Melaka a few times in that period, hence all the differing architecture! After seeing this we walked down the hill and over to 'Jonker Walk' which is the main strip in the old town, with numerous antique shops, restaurants and souvenir shops! Here we had a spot of lunch at a nice little bar, the old town is a lovely place! After this we walked the 15 minute journey back to the hotel before a little nap in the hotel and some supper on jonker walk!
We found a real little gem in this place, really glad we came here to break up the train journey down to Singapore! I'd highly recommend a short visit if you're ever in Malaysia, it is a lot like morecambe (it has a polo tower), Amsterdam with its river cruises and dutch buildings and an algarve port with its Portuguese fort!