After 2 hours on the bus we arrived at Melaka Sentral bus station and jumped in a taxi to our hostel. Our taxi driver was a bit of a nutter, he spent the whole time on the phone having a huge argument it seemed! He would ring someone, shout down the phone at them, then hang up, and then someone would ring him, they'd shout for a while and then it would happen all over again! We were relieved when we arrived at our hostel, needed some peace and quiet after that! Our 2 bed dorm was actually a 30 bed dorm with curtain divides and no a/c - well we did pay only £4 a night each so we couldn't complain too much!

Went out to explore the small town a bit on our first night and along the way decided to check out a kung fu show happening on a street corner at the night market. When we say kung fu it was more an exhibition from this Chinese man who held a Guinness world record for punching his index finger through a coconut - actually 4 coconuts in 30 seconds!! We grabbed a seat on the kerb which turned out to be the front row and once the show started he decided to pick me (Craig) to be his assistant! This didn't involve too much on my part apart from having the piss taken out of me in front of a couple of hundred people (always enjoyable) and holding, throwing and selecting coconuts for him to use - personally I feel I made the show!! After Master Ho had finished we grabbed a bite to eat in a local restaurant. It was a local special dish which is chicken rice balls - they were delicious - think golf ball sized balls of rice flavoured with chicken. Headed back to the hostel for a sleep but struggled firstly because it was so warm in the dorm with only ceiling fans and no Air Con and secondly because some drunken English t*** decided to stick his head through the curtain separating our beds at 1am apparently looking for his "friend from Singapore" which we obviously were not!

Our second and last day in Melaka was spent exploring the town a bit more - again we lay in bed too late so were walking in the hottest part of the day (you would think we would have learned by now)! We went to a Chinese temple which was the oldest in Malaysia but if I'm honest it was very similar to every other small temple we had seen in Asia. As the locals say "same same but different"!! A bit further down the same road we walked into The GM Choo art gallery for a look round and ended up painting our own masterpiece! They allow tourists to do a traditional Batik painting for around £3 (what a bargain) which involves painting onto a pre-drawn sheet of cotton, kind of advanced colouring in if you like but really good fun! We ventured back out into the heat afterwards and didn't last long - eventually giving up and going for a beer before heading back to hostel to pack our bags for travelling again the next day and grabbing a cold shower and quick snooze!

Grabbed food that night and went for a beer in the Discovery Café which turned out to be a real stroke of luck! As we were leaving Laura spotted a sign on the door advertising bus tickets for sale to Singapore amongst other places (we still hadn't booked our tickets for the next day and were starting to panic a bit) so we went to the bar and asked about it. Turns out we couldn't go direct to Singapore the next day as all the buses were full but we could change buses and travel to Singapore via another town, Johur Bahru, if we wanted. We decided to go for this option and not only did they book our tickets for us but they arranged a taxi for us the next morning and picked us up and dropped us right at the bus station. Satisfied and a bit more relaxed we headed to the hostel for a good nights sleep which turned out to be impossible due to the fat Chinese man (who sounded like a bear) snoring all night!

Really enjoyed our penultimate stop in Asia and learned an important lesson - if anytime you are panicking or worrying about something go in to the nearest bar and have a beer or 2 and everything will work itself out!!!

Craig and Laura =)