Melaka-ka-ka-ka.

It's a little town a few hours south of KL, some people think it is a boring little nothing place, others a pleasant little stopover on the way to or from Singapore. We'd fall into the latter category.

Once a big trading post for the Portugese, then the Dutch and finally good old Great Britain it all went a bit downhill when Singapore started being the boss of the whole area and put Melaka in it's place. It's place being as a town that turned towards the tourist dollar (or ringitt) to make it's money. The streets are all very nice with lovely old buildings dominating, there is a big night market which mainly sells crap (or "tut" as Rhiannon calls it) but there is also local food on sale and the atmosphere is very good.

We did the Lonely Planet walking tour as we always do in this sort of town; most of the buildings mentioned were closed for the Kings birthday which was a public holiday, but was on a Saturday when surely everyone is off anyway? Bit of a sly one there from the government I suspect. There were lots of little cafes to while away the hoursjust watching the world go by. Feeling energetic we walked across the river and visited a replica of the former Sultan's Palace which was made out of wood which was nice, although the masses of dummies in all of the displays meant that Rhiannon stared at the floor for large parts of it.

There are the remnants of an old fort up on a hill which despite the tourists and the busker singing a brilliantly incoherent version of 'Take me Home Country Road', was still fun as you get good views across the town.

All in all it was a good stop off and a nice place to rest for a day or two - not any longer though. And that was the last stop in Malaysia. It's fair to say that although we enjoyed Malaysia, we didn't like it as much as some of the other Asian countries, it's difficult to pick out a reason why, maybe we are just suffering from 'Asia-fatigue' or something, as the islands were fun and KL had great food and shopping so perhaps we are just being picky.

Onto Singapore.