Arrived in Melaka today (obviously the photos with these last few journal entries have no meaning - I just chose them at random). Bus journey was easy. It feels a lot hotter here than in KL (It's about 35 degrees I think), perhaps becasue it's a coastal town. I've checked into a hostel and i've got the coolest room!!! They were fully booked, so they gave me a very cheap "reserve room". I wish I had a camera to show you it - i'll try and describe it, but I bet you won't be able to picture it. It's extraordinary!! When I asked for the room the man looked at me, sized me up and then said they had this cheap one (obviously my eyes lit up at the word cheap!), so I asked to see it. We went into the larder cupboard and he pulled back a curtain in a dark corner revealing a strudy wooden ladder. he then pointed up the ladder, saying that the light switch was inside. "Inside what?!" I thought, anyway i proceeded up the ladder (very elegantly, of course). I pulled back this mini door (feleing a bit like alice in wonderland when she has that potion to make her huge) and climbed up onto a small landing and found the light switch. This room was amazing!! If I was about 8yrs old I would probably never want to leave!! The room is on 2 levels - its a bit like a cupboard above the stairs. The first level is about 4ft wide and then the length of a bed plus 1 metre. So as you climb into the room you're standing on a bit of floor 1 metre long by 4 feet wide. The bed is in front of you and is the width of the room. Above the head of the bed is a fan, a small shelf and a fairly large window (frosted glass). Then there's a platform above where you came in (so now facing the door, looking away from the head of the bed) and this platform is 4ft wide again and about 1.5 meters long. The platform is about 1 metre higher than the one my bed is on, and there's another small ladder going up to it from the bit of floor at the foot of my bed. You can't stand on the higher platform because the ceiling is too low, but you can sit on it, and there's a tiny desk with just enough room to get your legs under it (school-assembly-style crossed legs). I sat there this afternoon writing postcards. I have arranged my shampoo etc on the desk. It's such a cool room - feels like i'm in some kind of aventure playground - i keep expecting there to be a pit full of coloured plastic balls and a slide! I love it. It's incredibly clean - the whole hostel is, and very nicely decorated. Oh - the room doesn't have a lock sadly, and I forgot my padlock (which I could have used becasue there's a convenient catch for it) but I haven't really got anything with me worth stealing, so I'm just carrying around my passport and return flights keeping my fingers crossed I don't get mugged. In any case - no-one would imagine there's a room up there! It ingenious! Right - so the real reason I'm here obviously is to look at the town, not play in my new cool, tiny room that makes me feel like a Borrower. Melaka is a really big nice town, with lovely architecture and influences from the Dutch, Portuguese, British, Chinese, Indian and probably tonnes of other places too. It has lots of history, which i won't bore you with becasue it won't mean anything unless you see the place. But the point is that there's lot to see. I went for a walk around today - saw some nice buildings and went up a hill to see the derelict St Pauls Chirch. Going to chinatown tomorrow - there's a weekend market on, and doing a river boat trip - with a guide to tell me about the history. May also go to a museum or two. Tonight I'm going out for an Indian meal and then watching a film here at the hostel on the "roof top cafe" - haven't seen it yet - I wonder if it's perched on a chimney!! Will stay 2 nights here before going back to KL.