We all left Singapore together (Alex, Sarah and I) and went across the border to Malaysia in the local bus which worked out really well apart from a few changes, total journey took about 4.5hours. Bus was really luxury to what I had expected! On the bus we met a Malay man who was really kind and showed us all the right buses to get etc, he just wanted us to have a good first impression of Malaysia, but being typical Brits we thought he was either cracking on to one of us, or trying to smuggle drugs in our bags.

Melaka, the historical town.

Arrived in Melaka in the heat and had to walk for miles with our backpacks, I thought I was going to die, but we finally found I think the cheapest hostel in the whole of the city for 10ringgit = 2 pound per night! It looks like a bit of a hell hole but it did the trick. Really enjoyed my time in this city. The people are just so friendly! There are very few Europeans, and mostly lots of chinese and Indians. But the whole of Malaysia has many different cultures, and I really liked that. I saw a really cute Indian family with the kids playing with a Malay family. For once there was no one trying to sell us anything, and people were very polite and kind. The city has a china town, and a famous street called Jonker street with some good shops. It also has a Dutch centre named after the Dutch style orange buildings. Lots of little trishaws decorated with loads of flowers and big speakers playing music really loud. There are also loads of museums everywhere for everything you could think of.. Museums of Literature, stamp museum etc! I did spend most of the day in the maritime museum (I seem to always find myself in these) and went into this huge wooden boat which was really good. Learnt a lot about how the Malaysians, were taken over by the Portugese, then the Dutch, then British (which apparently led to its decline) and then finally the Malays gained power back. It used to be a great place to sell valuable spices to the ships coming in. I found the old types of ships they used really interesting, they used to call them Junks and they were really big heavy ships.

That same day, I walked up to a big fort and church on a hill, and was lucky enough to see a bride, just married posing for some pics in the stone church. She was absolutely beautiful! Later I met up with alex and sarah and we went to 'Capitol Satay' a famous place to eat, where there is a big saucepan in a hole in the middle of your table with bubbling satay peanut sauce, and then you choose between loads of different skewers with different ingredients on, some chicken, veggie, pig lungs which I didn't realise what it was until I had tried it, and then asked someone!!) Would recommend this place!! Then went to a band we had been to two nights in a row to watch these two girls singing and had a few beers.

Today we mostly chilled out and went to the public swimming pool. Tomorrow we will be on our way to Pulau Tioman, an island off the east coast, it's a 5 hour bus ride, and then 1.5hours on a boat. The island is the main focus for the island 'Bali Hai' in the musical film South Pacific.