Alison: We travelled to Melaka the morning after the leech incident so I was still in a bit of a tender state. Despite feeling completely drained, we managed to drag ourselves out of bed at the crack of dawn to begin the journey to Melaka which would involve 5 different buses and would take us via Kuala Lumpur. We didn't get off to a great start as the old rickety bus we were on developed a flat tire and we were stuck for over an hour whilst the ill prepared bus driver and a few of his mates tried to change the tire with virtually no tools! After this minor set back the journey went well. Every time we pulled in to a bus station, our next bus was there waiting for us and ready to leave.

On arriving in to Melaka I was very impressed and instantly got a good feel about the place. Melaka is a an old port town which has Portuguese, Dutch and British colonial history so has many different styles of architecture and is very cosmopolitan. For our first few nights, we booked in to a hotel in China Town as we felt we needed a bit of a break from dingy accommodation. I was grateful we did stay somewhere reasonable because on the first night I woke up with a fever of 38 degrees and was sweating and shaking. At first I didn't know what it could be but as the night wore on, my throat began to tingle and on inspection of my throat I saw I had developed tonsillitus. Once I had got the temperature under control, I actually didn't feel too horrendous so armed with paracetamol and anti bacterial throat sweets, we still managed to see some sights on the first day.  

China Town is quite a nice little place to wander round and to get lost in. There are lots of twisting streets and alleys but the main attraction is Jonkers Walk which is the main street and is crammed with handicraft stalls and little boutique shops. Across the river from China Town is Town Square which has Dutch architecture and is quite striking to look at. Around this square there is a dense cluster of attractions including Christ Church, St Paul's Hill and Sultanate Palace, to name but a few. As with most other places that we have been to, Melaka is full of tuk tuk men hounding you all day long. Lately I have begun to get a bit irritated by the constant chorus of 'tuk tuk? tuk tuk? tuk tuk?'  but in Melaka I found it impossible to get annoyed because these tuk tuks were fabulous! The actual vehicle was your classic design involving a push bike with a covered carriage on the back for you to sit in but the decoration was extreme. They were covered in tinsel, glitter, flowers, ribbons, paper birds and some even barbie dolls sprouting out all over them. They also had many different fairy lights on them and the best bit about them was that cheesy music played whilst you rode around town in them!!! My favourite was the one that played Michael Jackson tunes :-) They would make me chuckle to myself every time I saw one....I want one!!!  

Nigel: As Alison mentioned, that because we had been staying in low budget accommodation we decided to book in some where nice for a few days. Once we got into Melaka we had a bit of a walk to find our hotel, which, when we eventually did find it on first inspection looked a reasonable place to stay. We did have some problems when we tried to find the remote for both the TV and AC. I went down and asked if we could have them and the receptionist told me that you didn't get either remote. The problem with this was that when the AC was on, it was blasting cold air out in the direction of the bed and it was on the coldest setting. I did however let Alison off her duty of turning the telly over as she was feeling ill, so we had it on the same channel all night. On the second day we adventured a little further into town as Alison was a little better to look around. On our return to the hotel we were greeted with the site of all the old mattresses being chucked out of the rooms and just propped up in the hallways. We then noticed that the each of the rooms were being fumigated. This was a little strange so I went down to ask if ours was going to be done as we had noticed little bugs in our room. They told me that it was a requirement to fumigate the rooms but they weren't going to do ours. We did manage to get them to spray it with insect killer which should have been carried out if the cleaners had done there jobs . This was the final straw and we decided to move to a guesthouse on the other side of town.

Our new place was called Travellers lodge which was a family run place in the new part of town. Across the road was a huge shopping centre which had a cinema on the top floor. As a treat and to get out the midday sun we decided to watch a couple of films for just over a couple of pound each. It was nice to just have some civilisation as the previous 3 places we had stayed at were a little remote. We did even manage to go and play some bowling and that is why you see Alison wearing some nice socks and shoes. Again as Alison was not feeling well I did let here win one game and the match ended 1 a piece....We did go and look around the Malay Sultanate Palace in Melaka which is a replica of Mansur Shah's hilltop residence which was destroyed by a fire in 1460. As well as the the museum in the building you are able to look around the well maintained grounds. Also in Melaka is the "Melaka Eye" similar to the one in London. It has been moved all the way from Kuala Lumpur and is the same height as the one in London. All in all we were very pleased to have visited Melaka as it is a very interesting place and the the people seemed very friendly (even the pain in the backside "tuk tuk" men were ok).