City Surroundings

Well, Melaka was pretty wonderful. It was a very well-kept city with a fair bit to see. The oldest in Malaysia, it's got history from a number of periods of colonization (Portuguese, Dutch, British, and a brief stint with the Japanese). We spent our first evening in Chinatown walking through a night market and checking out what people had on offer. I'm in love with fabrics and Kev's in love with sweet treats. We ran into a talent contest (with some pretty offkey Neil Diamond type tunes), a line dancing class that would give Nashville a run for its money, a man yelling out "Sugar Cane Juice" and a number of other entertaining things. Trust me, the Sugar Cane Juice was funny if you could hear his voice as well as amazing to see someone doing something in such a rhythmic way.

The next day we checked out a museum of Melaka history, the only remaining piece of a Portuguese fort, "Porta de Santiago", and a church on a hill that was once Portugese and then Dutch. After that, I need an air conditioning break so we hit a mall for lunch. Later in the afternoon we checked out a Chinese cemetary which seemed to have more mosquitoes than areas of interest but it was a nice, cool walk all the same. We then thought that we'd head to the Portuguese square to check out the action. Too bad we didn't find any. The cabby dropped us off and we looked around in wonder for a while. I know there are very few Portuguese descendants left around but we couldn't find a tourist or any sort of wanderer to save our life. One restaurant was open and one shop, neither of which had more than one person around. We walked to the beach, that's supposed to have a beautiful view of the sunset and saw easily the worst beach that either of us have seen in our lives. It was terrible and dirty and gross. Beside this beach was an incredible, new hotel, again without a soul around. It was almost eerie this strange place we found ourselves in. So we decided to back away slowly and find a cab (we had to walk 15 minutes to a road with people first). After that disappointment, we headed back to Chinatown which we loved!

Then yesterday, we made our way to Kuala Lumpur, the capital, where we are now. We spent most of the day shopping in the mall, trying to find gifts AND......WE GOT A NEW CAMERA! I was discouraged at first because cameras seem to be te same price as at home and then I started asking for the "cheapest digital SLR" and all of a sudden lower offers were coming out of the woodwork. Every store we went into offered us a lower price and in one place when Kev said, "Is that your lowest price?" it went down again. The whole thing was pretty strange and whirlwindy considering it was only a camera purchase. We capped the night off with a movie 1408, which was a mistake when staying in a hotel and walking home in a strange city at night, but it worked out okay.

Today we're visiting the Aquarium in KL and a few other things and then we're going to the Cameron Highlands tomorrow to relax in the cool air and get some hiking in. I'm about done for with cities, I think, with the exception of a few bus transfers.

Well I'm sure that's more than enough for now. Be in touch soon.

Oh, we're early risers in Asia, we have yet to get up past 7:00am! Fancy that!