My feelings seem to be changing on an almost day-by-day basis as I brave my way boldly into the unknown visiting new towns, cities and places, never quite sure what they are going to hold in store for me.
Most of my feelings I openly express on my blog - in recent times, these are probably mostly negative ones about the hotels I have been staying in. But I try to demonstrate as honestly as I can what I am thinking and feeling about things.
Sometimes in life, it's hard to describe how you feel about things. It might often take you a while to collect your thoughts and want to come up with a view of your feelings over time, or you might want to react to something instantly so you give people your most honest, rawest and uncut opinions. However you go about doing it, a lot of these feelings are verbalised, but sometimes you just get that feeling deep down inside you that it's hard to find the words to describe.
"I just have a feeling", is a phrase which is commonly used by people when they don't know accurately how to describe their emotions. This doesn't have to be bold proclamation as I would say that one of the times when you get these feelings can be about people. Sometimes you just 'feel' like you get on well with someone, or you have an almost immediate 'feeling' that they have personality characteristics which make you click. These feelings are usually developed in different means, but the power of hindsight often lets you look back and realise how you were correct - or sometimes incorrect.
People get feelings about all sorts of different things - take houses for example. Sometimes people say that they have to have the right 'feeling' before buying or renting a place and this is always something which is natural and should come from deep down inside of you. These feelings can't be created, they just develop - and I feel like I had quite a few of those feelings today as I began my stay in Malaysia.
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Having spent pretty much all of yesterday travelling from Jakarta to Melaka (via Singapore), I was ready to throw myself into the sightseeing this morning with many good things promised to me from research which I had done about the city.
Recently Melaka joined another city on the peninsular, George Town, as a UNESCO World Heritage city. I didn't actually know cities could receive such an honour, I thought it was just reserved for individual sites or monuments like the two temples I had visited in Indonesia. I haven't had the opportunity, or the Internet capabilities yet to look up where else in the world has the same title and if I have been to any of them.
With this in mind I had quite a long list of things to accomplish before the day was out, so I grabbed some breakfast this morning, took a shower and headed out into the bright sunshine. Unlike in Jakarta where it felt like a sweltering mid-thirty degrees, it seemed to be a much crisper, much more pleasant mark in Melaka - if that's possible.
Having come through the city in a taxi last night I didn't have a real bead on where anything was in the city, but I did see notice through the window that we came past the river and also the main Dutch Square where a couple of the main landmarks are.
Even though I had quite a long list of stuff to do, I'd read that Melaka was easily to transit around on foot and was therefore comfortable that I wouldn't need an additional day - other than to get here.
Turns out that unlike many of the other places I have visited so far, Melaka has set itself up to be a bit of a tourist haven. Naturally in this peninsular Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur gets a lot of attention as many people tend to gravitate towards the capital for their visits here, but Melaka is fairly well known and definitely served appropriately by transport links meaning that it is becoming more and more popular. I got the feeling from walking around that it was about two thirds of where it would like to be in terms of a huge draw to visitors. There is certainly the capacity for it to become Malaysia's second most popular destination and I'd imagine that the more people that continue to come here, the more that will be re-invested in the city.
The first thing that caught my eye was a huge observation tower in the middle of what looked like a very busy square with a couple of shopping malls behind it. I had read something about the tower saying that it offered panoramic views of the city to visitors for five minutes with a one minute ascent and one minute descent back to the ground. I shelved the idea of going on it as I didn't want to see everything within one view and then be disappointed when I got close up.
From there I headed left towards what looked to be the main hub of the city, or at least the bit that I can remember coming through last night. It was a wise decision as almost immediately I was within sight of a huge boat which turned out to be the centrepiece of the city's maritime museum:
I'm going to say now that Melaka might have the most museums I have ever seen relative to the size of the city. I was unsure if many of them would be open however as I had seen that someone on a travel website had posted some advice to "Make sure you don't visit on a Tuesday when everything is closed..." Just my luck. However I'd read in another place that the city is currently celebrating some kind of tourism festival, so counter to what I initially thought, most things were open for business.
There was so much to do around this area, I almost didn't know where to start. There was a massive wheel to represent the city's links to it's past as a port, and there was also what appeared to be a small fort nearby which stood at one point to help protect the city:
Just down from the tourism office there was a huge cathedral as well as remains of the three other points of the port which had only recently been excavated, but were completely in ruin, and not more than a foot off the ground.
I walked across the road towards the Dutch Square where there are a number of notable buildings:
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| Melacca Clock Tower |
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| Malacca Christ Church |
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| Stadthuy's Town Hall (On the Left) |
Also in this area there was the popular method of transport to get around here which is a trishaw:
They look a bit like the bicycles I described in a previous episode of my travels in Manila, however I discovered later tonight that they come alive after dark, as they are covered in fairy lights and all have music systems attached to them.
I took photos of as much I could in this area, impressed by how good everything looked in the bright sunshine. I like the Dutch-style of red bricks, it makes them stand out significantly from anything which is around. I guess because the bricks look solid and in one place, they seem to have aged better, although I bet they are looked after well considering how valuable they are to the city.
At this point I decided to follow in the footsteps of a couple of people who appeared to be heading up towards some kind of viewpoint up a set of stairs. As it turns out they were actually heading into the Melaka museum, but I continued on up the slope, up another set of stairs and found myself at a brilliant lookout point which enabled me to see everything which I had just walked past:
Naturally the 100ft tall observation tower stands out the most, but there appeared to be a few more attractions I was heading towards, as well as a good view of the sea from here. I continued on the circular path I found myself walking around and came to another set of steps which I walked up to and found St John's Fort which sat impressively at the top of the hill.
It is mostly ruined, but you can walk into what remains free of charge, and it was a good opportunity to stand in the shade for a little while and escape the impressive heat of the Malaysian sun:
I brought a postcard whilst I was up here of a view of the city and the market seller I purchased it from told me to continue on down the hill and I would find another one of Malaka's famous sights which is Fort A Formosa. It is a Portuguese fort, well the remains of one. The only part remaining is a small gate house which is believed to be some of Europe's oldest surviving architecture in South-East Asia.
From here there were another couple of museums, including a naval museum with a rather large boat sticking out of the front:
This one did actually looked to be closed though.
By this point I was getting a little weary from walking around in the sun so I stopped to grab myself a snack in the shopping mall which was right next to where I had finished photographing the boat, the fort, and a museum dedicated to Malaysia's independence.I was still up for some more exploring, but took a quick trip through the mall as I needed to by myself another notepad as I have used all the pages in my current one with notes to help myself along the way.
By now I had done a large circular route as I came back out next to the observation tower, except this time when walking back towards the Dutch Square I took a left, and headed to wards a section of the town which is known as Joker Walk.
All that sightseeing had worn me out so I headed back to my hotel to cool off, but figured to return to the city in about an hour or so in order to take advantage of a river cruise which I had picked a leaflet up about earlier.
The cruises leave the dock near the huge boat I spotted earlier every half an hour and it only cost me 15 RMB which is the equivalent of about £3. The river cruise was about 45 minutes long and was an enjoyable and relaxing sightseeing tour of everything down the riverwalk. We drove up to the jetty as far as the river went before coming back down and then having some commentary about what we were seeing including a history lesson about the significance of Melaka within Malaysia:
We disembarked just as the sun was beginning to set so I walked myself back to the mall I was in earlier, and went in search of food. I haven't exactly been very adventurous this trip with my food tendencies. I've found it quite difficult in fairness because a lot of the places I go haven't exactly been very forthcoming with what they serve. I know a few Malaysian dishes, but I don't just want to eat the same two of three things all the time whey they all involve the same ingredients.
Today however within the shopping mall I found something which was described as food heaven:
It was set up like a traditional hawker centre with all the tables and chairs out around a number of different food stalls. There was Japanese, Chinese, Indonesia and Malay food and I decided to plump for something called Copperpot Chicken with Rice and Salted Fish:
It was absolutely delicious, and I hope to find it again on my stay here, but it was really flavoursome and filling.
On my way back to the hotel, I spent a couple of hours in McDonalds using their free wifi service before returning to the hotel at about 10pm.
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Well it's been a thoroughly enjoyable say in Melaka and I feel like I certainly achieved everything I needed to when I set out this morning. The city itself if fabulous and I would definitely not hesitate to come back again. On my return I will definitely have to check out some of the museums and also get a view out over the city from the massive observation tower. I guess if I was here for an extra day then that's something I would spend my time doing, but I'm satisfied to be moving on tomorrow.
I did get the sense straight from the start that Melaka was going to be a place that I would enjoy visiting. Everything that I read about it was true and it lived up to its expectations. I'd appreciate it if every other city I visit could do the same!!!
The Feeling
Dj Fresh (2012)
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