Saturday 14th March

Travelled down to Melaka today on the bus, It took about nine and a half hours even though it should only have taken seven. But we cannot complain as the buses are so cheap and comfortable. The ride only cost us just over four pounds each.
Found our way to the hotel by bus, which was in the middle of the town.

Sunday 15th March

Up early this morning we only have two days here so we wanted to see as much as possible, there is a lot of historical sites in the city. The hotel was in a very good position easy walking distance for the sights. We set off for the Portuguese village, which was quite a walk, it wasn't as we had imagined or as it had been described on the information we had so we headed back into the centre. The next stop was St Paul's church, set on a hill the derelict building was where St Francis Xavier, the saint from Goa was buried and then exhumed, we seem to be finding him everywhere we go. The maritime museum was good with a replica of the Fleur de Mar a Dutch ship that you could walk round. Later we headed to Jonkers walk where every Friday, Saturday and Sunday there is a market which goes on late in to the evening, it was a great atmosphere lots of people. There was a strange dish being sold that we had not seen before called Cendor, so we thought we must try one (In a lot of the hotels they have posters up with the message “No Durian”, when we asked about this we were told it is because of the smell the fruit has) we found a stall selling Cendor with Durian on top so we sat down and ordered one. We wont be trying it again, the Cendor was ice which was grated by machine into fine snow like bits, on top of some noodles and red kidney beans, then ideal milk was poured over the top followed by the Durian and caramel sauce. The taste and smell of the fruit is one that won't be forgotten in a hurry.

On the way back to the hotel we stopped at a bar on the river side, just to have a drink to take the horrible taste away of course. Further along the river was a band playing who were very good so we sat for while and listened with the locals.
Got back to the hotel quite late and very tired, Melaka is a lovely city a must see when travelling in Malaysia.

Monday 16th March

Made our way back into the city after packing our cases to finish off some sights we didn't get round to yesterday. We went to the museum in Dutch square and then to a replica of Melaka Sultanate Palace, which is a museum.

Got a taxi to the bus station, but before catching the bus we ventured over to the Tesco store to see just how exotic it was, it was like being back home but with different foods, they even sold the Durian fruit but we didn't buy any.

We said goodbye to peninsular Malaysia, our bus journey was about four hours down to Singapore, we were quite quick getting through customs as we had read it could take a long time. We got dropped at Lavender street bus station which was quite a way out of the centre, we had to get a bus to Orchard road by Raffles hotel and then an taxi to the airport ready for the flight in the morning.