- Day 16 -

Malacca

Malacca was such a small town that we almost went through all of it within one day. Nothing especially impressive - not the famous red Christ Church of Malacca, nor the ruins of St Paul's Church, nor the many temples around, nor the Chinatown, nor the people who seem as if they couldn't care less, nor the shopping mall, nor the row of shophouses that close for the day in the evening, nor the poorly arranged museums as well. But rather, we felt the real sense of Chinatown in the rather underdeveloped town of Malacca. The pace of life was much slower, and people lived simply. Just like the old days?


The Christ Church


The beautiful flowers...


The peaceful stream that runs through Malacca


Streets of Malacca


Temples


Another temple

The Swamp

On our way back, exhausted from the travelling, we found this swamp which provided some form of entertainment as we looked at the mudskippers wallowing in the mud, and tried to solve the mystery of the unknown trail of footsteps in the mud... I never imagined myself to be travel all the way to Malacca to look at mud and the living community in the swamp. Haha..



Mystified by the swamp creature

Exploring for Food

After 6pm, the streets of Chinatown seemed to turn all cold - shops were closed, traffic and human traffic were rare, except for a couple of tourists like ourselves. Undeterred, we asked the local guard on the nearest place we could find dinner. And we were directed a rather odd route. We had to cut through a hotel to get to our destination!

We found our dinner place not too far from the hotel. It was a dark street with two rows of shophouses flanking a road, selling several types of food. We finally settled for nasi lemak at one of the stalls, having our dinner on makeshift tables and chairs, right beside the road. I guess it must be quite an experience for the Canadian students with us, since hygiene seemed rather lacking there. But we trusted the many locals who were eating there as well, and gulped down our food. The food was just okay, but when we were hungry and had no other choice, we could live with it.


Malacca night scene