November 5th- November 8th

We arrived in Melaka, after another coach journey. This coach journey was not only ridiculous long and fraught with countless stops but it was also freezing. Seriously, the AC was on 18 the whole way, it got so bad, when we stopped off Declan went into the luggage part to get himself a coat!!! We arrived quite late and couldn't be bothered trying to work out the local bus system, so we just got a taxi. Turns out we had a taxi driver who had just been released from the nut house. This guy was so chatty, he knew loads about Britain, he had travelled practically everywhere in the world and he just kept making us laugh. "Never call a Scotsman an Englishman, he chases you with a whisky bottle, but he not catches me" "Never call an Irishman an Englishman..." This continued for Welsh and even Northern Irish, making up even more bizarre things each nationality did, whether it was true, we did not know. He then told us his life story and how he went to Plymouth for Uni in the 70s. After that he then told us everything he knew about the area even though we had arrived at our hostel. Still it's nice to get friendly people when you arrive somewhere and not just someone annoying you for easy money. Our hostel owner was just as friendly and we were starting to get a good feeling about our last Malaysian visit. It was dark by the time we went out to explore; Melaka is quite a big place so we knew we couldn't do a quick recon in an hour or so. We located a place for dinner and found the main travellers road, happy that the map we had was to scale we headed back to our hostel. The hostel we booked was a very tidy place that backed on to the Melaka river front. The upstairs had an open balcony chill out area so we did just that and watched the night fade away.

The following morning we woke up and set about our exploration of Melaka. The town is pretty historic and has loads of museums and sites to see (History lesson). The reason Melaka has so many different places of interest is because they are a bunch of surrender monkeys. They might even be worse than the French! Malaysians ran the joint up until about 1560, and then the Portuguese came. They took over and kept people happy while building a forte about 10 meters high. The Dutch turned up in about 1750, easily took over the forte, were guessing with a long ladder, and kicked out the portugeezers. They then set about making the place look all Dutch, with a big windmill and red things. Obviously the place wouldn't be quite right until the British turned up and showed them how to run things properly. The Dutch didn't even put up a fight and left without losing a man. The British kept all the previous stuff, built a bigger pier and a few churches. It stayed this way till WW2.

Before we journeyed around Melaka's history we needed to eat. We found a Dutch cafe and ordered. Now before we continue, certain things in life need addressing. So here we go. The pictures on a menu should be pictures of the actual food that the restaurant provides. Declan ordered an 'American' breakfast that quite clearly showed 2 sausages. Upon a further, more detailed inspection of said photograph it was determined that they were proper English looking sausages. Now what arrived was one, not two as stated, one, massive frankfurter, with a skin as tough as leather. Thankfully the day got better from there and the ranting stopped soon after we left the cafe. On our journey to our first stop we ventured inside a stationary store. Now this place was a far cry from Staples. Everything was still in brown boxes, stacked next to each other and piled up to the ceiling. The women though must have an eidetic memory as she went straight to a box and pulled out what we asked for.

We continued on and found Red Square. Now this wasn't the drink like some would assume. It was the town square full of markets and Trishaw drivers. It is also known as Dutch square, as when the Dutch turned up they painted it red. We continued down the river front until we found the platform for the river cruise. The river cruise took us on a 10km trip up and down the river and explained about all the different areas we passed along the way. At one point the driver turned the boat and headed straight for some bushes along the bank. This wasn't by accident as he showed us giant iguanas lounging about in the trees.

After the river cruise we decided to enter one of the museums. Not any old museum though. This museum was a life-sized replica of a Portuguese merchant ship. It looked very 'Pirates of the Caribbean'. After encountering and then being laughed at by a bunch of school kids we toured around the belly of the ship. It had lots of information about the Portuguese but we instead opted to take photos of guns. We found out the ship ticket was a 3 in 1 that allowed us into the maritime museum and strangely the meteorite museum. In the meteorite museum we looked at rocks from space while waiting for the opportune moment to ask a stranger to get a photo of us next to a spacesuit. We voyaged on into the maritime museum. This large warehouse was full of old ship parts including a fine armoury of massive guns. We took it in turns sitting in the large rotating ones pretending to shoot things down. We then found an entire room full of navy and helicopter uniforms, sadly they wouldn't let people put them on, they're missing a trick there. Mel found a large ship wheel bolted to the wall and made an attempt to steer something around. After our walk round the museums we decided to climb a massive hill that some Christians had built a church on. The church was destroyed by the Dutch at some point, however the four walls still stood and the Malaysians' are now attempting to rebuild it all. Tired and journeyed out we headed back to the hostel, the owner had baked some cake and we nabbed a piece as we wandered past.

That night after dinner we headed to the shopping malls. It was in the mall that we found another niche store where Declan acquired the world's greatest t-shirt. After perusing the store for an age we found an item that has eluded us all over Asia. Once Declan had tried on every size they had to see which was the best fit and then ummed and ahhed about it we finally headed to the till. The sales guy then led us to the front of the store, told us to log in to Facebook and like the page, in doing so he gave us 20% off!! Result!! This made the purchase even better. We then sweet talked him into giving us more freebies and we let very happy. Following our acquisition we went to eat some popcorn and watch Skyfall.

On our last day in Melaka we decided to rent out some bicycles and journey about the riverside and water front. The bikes we were given had a lovely basket on the front and came with a foot stand for when we stooped, they also came with very narrow handlebars though which made turning a bit elbowy. We set off down the road and didn't consult the map; Declan had 'memorized it'. We paid no attention to road signs or the one way system that was in place but found the riverside in quick time. Within a short time however we realised we were lost and resorted to looking at the map. Upon the discovery that we were heading in totally the wrong direction, we about turned and got back on route. We cycled all the way up the river past cafes, houses and people. When we got to the end we rode back after we had crossed a bridge so the view was different. It was a great few hours and the weather was on our side, we even took some action photos/videos! After a quick rest we headed back out in the evening on the bikes to get our stuff sorted for leaving Malaysia and to eat. With a well earned sleep we headed to the coach station early next morning to journey to Singapore; our last stop before a year in Oz.