Took a day trip out from KL to Melaka today!

It was quite interesting, steeped in history apparently, with Dutch, Portugese and British leftovers. In the guidebook it says that the bus station is 10 minutes walk from the centre. But this guidebook is old. Which means that the new station is obviously far away from town and I spent a good half hour figuring this out.

Finally decided to take a taxi, and told him to take me to Bukit St. Paul, meaning St. Paul's Church, and he had to discuss this with his taxi driver friends until he was confident he knew where to go. The drive was much longer than I expected (I was still convinced that we were a few kms from the town...) and at one point he theatrically turns off the main road and drives up a hill to St. John's Fort.

It took me some time to locate this on the map because it was completely not where I intended to be! So I told him in my limited Malaysian* that St. John and St. Paul is not the same thing. And we got there eventually.

These taxis don't have a fixed fare so you can haggle... It worked out pretty well, I paid him about 3 francs for a 20 minute tour of the city!

Well the whole of central Melaka has been painted a burgundy colour. This was weird, and I don't fully understand why they did that. But I found a great little museum about Beauty and Kites (yes, I thought the combination was odd too) but at least they were on separate floors.

The kites were pretty, but the beauty part was all about cultural views of beauty and strange customs like feet binding and lip plates and those huge nose and ear piercings. I am not really one for museums unless it is an art gallery, but this one was really great and gruesome and interesting. Also provided a break from the heat outside.

I also had a wander around Chinatown (so far, every city I have been to has one) which was the best part, all these tiny little shophouses with the strangest things inside them. Most of the doors were left open and I saw countless old men dozing beside fans.

But it was really too hot and humid to be wandering around, so I went back to the station and caught the bus back to KL, slept most of the way after being told angrily that these were assigned seats and I had not realised.

In KL two hours later we were greeted by a thunderstorm! So a bit wet right now, but it has cleared the air and its cooler now :)

*I now know how to say 'welcome' and 'exit'.