We arose on Wednesday (12-10-11) and grabbed our free breakfast before heading across town on the shuttle bus to main Bus Terminal. We managed to get some tickets for a bus 20 minutes later which was good, and it only took an hr and 45 min to get to Melaka, probably our shortest journey so far. When we arrived we tried haggling with the taxi driver to get the price down from £4 but failed so went and found a bus for 45p for the 2 of us. We arrived and got pointed in the general direction of the guesthouse area.

We walked towards it and someone approached us and led us to his hotel…….if you can call it that, he guided us up the stairs which looked like a jail corridor with blood dripping down the side, probably from the last people that stayed there. He then took us to the room opened the door and said that's the first room and pointed for us to go in. We stepped in and that's when we started suspecting it might be a bit rubbish (the corridor wasn't a hint). I kindly stepped back out of the total black room and asked the kind guy who looked like he had had his teeth punched out, whether the room came with a light and if so could he point it out so we could see what we were getting. He rummaged around in the room for a few minutes then finally turned on the light……. We quickly asked him to turn it back off, thinking that if we decided to stay there we would probably prefer to keep it off so we couldn't see anything. He then took us to the second room which wasn't much better, so we kindly excused ourselves saying we would look round and might come back later (that is if it is illegal to sleep on the streets here, which were much better).

We headed 5 doors down and found a place recommended by the lonely planet. We went up the stairs and half way up was a door-padlocked shut (probably for safety from the guy 5 doors down). There was a kiddies horn attached to the door so we squeezed that and a guy came to the top of the stairs, we asked if there were any rooms and he kindly opened the door and showed us a couple. We managed to get a room which was clean, comfy, had an attached bathroom, and was £3 cheaper then the…… lovely place 5 doors down. The guy then called Rachel and introduced her to Princes, one of his many pet birds. She sat on Rachel's finger while the guy told her a bit about them and then explained that we might hear them in the morning. That's when I realised this guy was very smart, he made Rachel adore this little bird so that she stopped me ringing its little neck in the morning when it woke me up. Thankfully we didn't hear them so he didn't have to worry after all.

He then gave us a map and draw the directions to town on them, explaining you go left outside of the guesthouse, turn left at the end of the road, walk to the end of the next road past a shopping centre on both sides, then right and your in town……..oh dear, past a shopping centre…….on both sides, I then started to consider getting a taxi even though it was only a 15 minutes walk as thought I would never manage to pull Rachel past 2 shopping centres. Thankfully after an hour and only visiting 1 shopping centre I managed to drag her away. It was pretty easy actually as we only had 3 RM between us (about 60p). We headed into the main historical town area and got a bank and then sat by the river having a drink and a snack.

After that we wondered around town on the Heritage trail, then went to China Town (Jonker Street) and got some grub, trying the local Laksa dish, mmmm. We then headed to the River and got the River cruise and saw the town lit up which was pretty cool. We then walked back to the guesthouse at a time when the shops were closed.

On Thursday (13-10-11) we had a lazy morning then headed out. We tried finding the sea front, but there was just a muddy marsh land area, with weird crabs, prawns and fish things on top of it. We headed to the main town again and grabbed some lunch, they had a deal on so I got another Laksa and a free drink which was called jelly something. I will never have a drink with the word jelly in it again it was disgusting, had stringy things like the texture of frog spawn in it which kept coming up the straw, needless to say I left most of it. We then grabbed a coconut milkshake to take the taste away before heading towards the maritime museum, which was a replica of a Portuguese ship. This was pretty cool and told us all about the history of Melaka as a major international port. It also had a meteorite museum attached.

We then headed for a drink and tried one of the famous Cendol dishes, beans which are covered in crushed ice-cream with coconut milk, very tasty. We then headed back and I let Rachel explore the shops for a bit before we relaxed in the room doing boring and scary stuff like checking our banks and how much we've spent. Then we headed out for some grub.