Having woken up on time to catch the ferry we made our way back to Mersing and booked a bus to Melaka. We arrived in the afternoon and were convinced by a local guesthouse owner to get a taxi to his hostel, "Tavellers Planet". The room was nice so we decided to stay for 4 nights.

Melaka is located in the southern region of the Malay Peninsula next to the Straits of Melaka and from 1826 to 1946 Malacca was under the rule of the British. This makes it an historical town, in the old part most buildings are painted a red colour. They think the British did this to stop the buildings looking dirty, certainly made them look different.

We arrived on Saturday night so we went straight to the famous Jonker Walk for the night market in China Town. The amount of people and variety of food and goods for sale was amazing. It was very busy and we realised we needed to get back into city mode after so long on Tioman! We had dinner at a lovely chinese restaurant and paid pennies for great duck and sumptious pork and we tried the local delight of chicken rice balls. A bit dry but very nice!

Everywhere you go day and night there are locals driving cyclos throughout the town, we had never seen them decorated so much! You can see a picture in our album but the variety was amazing. Some had massive sound systems pumping out pop songs, one had a black scorpian made from tinsel on top and another had barbie dolls hanging from it!

There are many parts of the city, we spent most of our time walking around China Town and Little India, taking in some of the historical sites as we went but what made our time in Melaka so enjoyable was meeting lots of interesting people at the hostel. Each night we all sat round the table in the communal dining/living room and exchanged life stories etc. We met an American called Doug who did a degree in astrophysics about 10 years ago which made for some interesting conversations! We met an English guy called Danny who we enjoyed some local indian food with at the night market one evening. Then there was David and his wife Linda from Australia, both with great sense of humours which made for some very funny nights. We also met a dutch couple on their honeymoon Lonneke and Virgil who we are sure we will meet again.

So, in summary, we enjoyed Melaka but more for the people than the place, perhaps we were still in island mode?! Our next destination is Cameron Highlands, temperatures are supposed to be much like home so we are looking forward to a break from the unrelenting heat!