Visit Melaka at the weekend

After a moderately heated debate with the front desk staff upon checkout (the details of which I'll save you from) we left and took a taxi to the bus station (a very sweaty, chaotic affair). We took the 3 hour bus journey to a place called Melaka. Melaka is much smaller than KL and has a very different vibe; close to the Singapore border it has a lot of Singaporean weekend tourists. We had arranged to be met by 'Howard' who runs a hostel called 'Ringo's'. A lovely guy, he drove us around Melaka and showed us some places to eat before taking us to the hostel. Well, what can I say? It was a great idea; a kind of retro, 60's theme going on, as he had explained, but I think it was just an excuse for no AC and no hot water if you ask me. I normally don't mind taking my shoes off to enter somewhere but when the floor just isn't clean then I have a problem with it. Our room was very basic and Howard showed us around. The roof top sun terrace was barely furnished with decrepit faded furniture but it was the bathroom that truly disturbed us. The floor was grubby and full of debris, the sink was positively covered in congealed grime, the shower didn't have a cubicle (which is normally ok if the floor is clean) and the toilet handle didn't flush, instead a wire coat hanger was used. It was just disgusting. The icing on the cake was that it wasn't non-smoking. We had a walk out and found another hotel soon enough; on our return we explained to Howard that I didn't feel great (which I actually didn't) and that we needed our own bathroom in this instance. He was actually really lovely and insisted on driving us to our new hotel; he wouldn't even take a night's fee from us. It's just a shame he doesn't believe in cleaning too much.

We settled into our new room and headed out for something to eat; it turns out that Melaka is really a weekend place and Tuesday really isn't the best time to be here; virtually everywhere is shut of an evening. We settled for a café that catered mainly for tourists and so it was pretty expensive but quite nice none the less.