MALACCA

I opnly wanted to go to Malacca because I knew that the Malacca Straight used to be one of the most dangerous shipping lanes in the world thanks to the pirates so I thought it might be a little bit exciting. Unfortunately, however, quite frankly it isn't. In fact the best descriptive term that I can come up with for it is that it's a bit naff. The city doesn't even have a port anymore, despite once being the centre of world trade and to be honest it's all rather grim. It's got a lovely colonial quarter protected as a Unesco World Heritage Site, but unfortunately they seem to have forgotten about the rest of it, and considering it's one of Malaysia's bigger cities you would have expected a few more people to be around. Indeed the only explanation I could come up with for the lack of people is that they were all still stuck in the obligatory badly positioned bus station waiting for the connecting service into town.

I actually got really annoyed in Malacca about how badly planned and looked after the place was. I could bore you with a right urban planning rant but I won't, I'll just state the obvious: of course the old town centre and all of the beautiful colonial houses will be derelict if you cut them off from the seafront and everything else with a pointless bloody motorway!

The other bizarre thing the city planners had done in Malacca (sorry, last one) was building a whole town with houses, shops, mosques, roundabouts, roads, parks etc on Pulau Melacka - an offshore island connected by a 4 lane road bridge - and then abandoning it, although it clearly wasn't very old. I'd gone on a bit of a mission to here thinking there might be the slightest glimmer of hope that something even moderately interesting might be going on, but after getting lost thanks to the sub-standard map I stumbled across a huge gate with "Danger! No Entry!" signs at the landside entrance to the bridge. Well, that was interesting enough for me so off I went. The whole place was frankly weird to be honest; it resembled a scene from 28 Days Later - just an empty town. The only activity at all seemed to be happening over on the far corner of the island, with a number of pretty dodgy characters on motorbikes accessing it. I decided it perhaps wasn't the best idea to explore all the way over there, not least because should I need to run I was wearing 50p flip flops which had already taken quite a battering, so instead I decided to ask the normal-ish looking people sat on the rocks who looked like they were having a picnic. In actual fact, I think they were more like having an affair than a picnic and their English wasn't up to much so I moved on, still unaware as to why this island had been abandoned and was so dangerous. Anyway, as the crows began circling overhead (no, seriously they were) I decided to get a bit of a jog on and head back towards the bridge because I know from the movies that this is always the bit just before somehting terrible happens. I decided to stop for one last photo opportunity at the base of the bridge - mainly so if I didn't make it back there would be a photographic record of my final moments - but in a bizarre twist of events it was that decision that nearly did spell the end of me; living under the bridge was a HUGH crocodile-cum-lizard-cun-dragon thing! It wasn't the creature that almost killed me though - it was the heart attack when I realised it was sizing me up for dinner! Anyway, thankfully it didn't devour me whole in one bite so I celebrated by convincing the man I was staying in room 306 (even though I don't think there was one) so that I could spend the rest of the day sitting by the pool in the Holiday Inn.

I can't say I exactly did a great deal of interesting stuff in Malacca. I did, however, go to the maritime museum and learn a bit about the British Empire, have a bit of a wander round China Town (although primarily on a quest for non-Pringles related nutrition), and climbed the hill to St. Paul's Church to watch the thunder storn over the sea. I think though that the only other moderately interesting thing that happened to me was when I was in Carrefour (i.e. French Tesco) and tried to buy the Halal pick & mix (note that I doidn't actually want my pick & mix to be halal but it was my only option). The way the shop assistant bounded over to me and snatched the scoop out of my hands you would have thought she'd mistaken me for being about to put my hand in a tank of starving pirranhas. I'm still not entirely sure what the problem was but apparently non-muslims can't buy halal pick & mix in Malaysia. Perhaps there's a shortage of something with it being just after Ramadan. Either way, my low blood sugar was making my a bit tetchy so I muttered some obscenities to her face knowing full wellshe didn't understand a word I was saying and then continued on a bit of a rant about how this would never happen to a British passport holder at the Tesco down the road and did she know that her city used to be under colonial rule. Barbaraian. She should have been greatful we took over and instilled some order, civilisation & decent quality tea. Bring back the empire!

And so, although it's a great shame, it was goodbye to Malacca and hopefully never to return. But one place I would definitely love to go back to and explore properly, however, is the beautiful island of Borneo...