Category Archives: The Story So Far

Singapore: At the Elephant’s Snout

A Melaka Day

One thing I don’t seem to do often enough in new cities is go to museums. Given the long history involved in Melaka, and the entire Strait of Malacca region, I wasn’t going to pass it up here. Rising early and making the short walk across the river from the Tidur Tidur Guest House, I was not immediately impressed by the selection of museums.

The Stamp Museum. Not exactly for me.

I decided to pass on ones like the Melaka Stamp Museum. The historic remains of colonial buildings which I saw illuminated the last night were interesting, but too recent to be of significant interest to me. I was interested in pre-European history of this region, perhaps suggesting something similar to what I found at Lembah Bujang?

The traditional history museum, thankfully provided a fantastic portrait of how old Melaka, and also old Malaya actually functioned. In addition, it had a small exhibit on loan about ancient Chinese artifacts, which were particularly impressive.

Some ancestral Malay musical instruments. Unfortunately, I couldn’t take picture of the really good stuff.

But the time I walked out of the museum, the token heat of southern Malaysia had kicked in full. Still, I had been to Chinatown the last night, so now it was time for Little India of Melaka. Little India here is not obvious, but it sprawls a significant ways in Melaka.

So I found a place based on a traveller’s rule of thumb: Go where the locals are going. This resulted in me sitting at a 3 meter aluminum table alongside very anxious Indians. My meal was something I picked at random and was then served on a banana leaf. This variety of meat-pastes I was given blended nicely with the rice and naan, completing what, I think, is my most authentic Indian meal to date.

An article written about the owner of the guesthouse.

By now, the heat was exhausting, and I had a ways to walk to the bus stop. I thanked the owner, Stanley Chin, of the shop again and bought one of his Chinese Zodiac year t-shirts. Unfortunately, he didn’t have an Xl and the L in Asia is never the same as a European or American large. So, it doesn’t quite fit to this day.

Once back at the central bus station, it was a few hours until the next bus to Singapore. Passing time in a bus station is always tedious, though some station are admittedly more entertaining than others. The Melaka Bus Station, despite its size, is very boring.

A Melaka Night

A Melaka Introduction

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Despite Jolene’s insistence that Kuala Lumpur was a boring city, I was finding enough to keep me entertained exploring for a few more days. Unfortunately, I had a vague schedule to keep, it was time for me to move on as I packed up and headed south on a rainy morning to Melaka.

Melaka (or Malacca) is one of those cities that, as you get nearer, you hear more and more about to the point that once you get there, it will never live up to the expectations. In shorter words, it’s overhyped.

The entire town, along with George Town, Penang, is a UNESCO World Heritage site given its history of colonization to secure the Strait of Malacca. Like Penang, Kuala Lumpur, and Singapore would in a few days, the entirety of cities in the Malay Peninsula has a fantastic blending of cultures present: Indian, Malay, Chinese, and English. This makes for a fascinating blending that made Malaysia one of my favourite places I’ve visited yet.

Melaka, as a city, did not live up to its hype. It’s not the tourist mecca or overloaded with fascinating sites that hype set it out to be. What it is is a nice town. The history, the museums, the cuisine, and especially the riverwalk all add to its charm. That is to say, I was not blown away by it, as all the build-up I had heard promised. Nevertheless, I thoroughly enjoyed myself there.

I arrived from the comfortable, air-conditioned bus after rain had subsided and one thing was immediately apparent when I stepped out: Melaka was hot. A second bus took me into the city and dropped me off in the main intersection of English, Chinese, and Indian cultures. Many tourists were gathered around the Christ Church, a reddish church left over from the days of colonization.

The Christ Church of Melaka.

Crossing the bridge, I was struck by two things.

I was most certainly in Chinatown, blatantly pointed out by the 10 meter long red and gold Chinese dragon suspended over the intersection.

Two doors down from the dragon stood a Hard Rock Café. I checked it out, only to find it completely lacked the “Café” part. Instead, it only sold rock memorabilia.

River entrance to the Tidur Tidur Guesthouse.

There are a good number of guest houses in the area, and many of them are along the very attractive riverwalk. After a couple tries, I found mine in the Tidur Tidur Guest House, a few rooms in the back of a store owned by a local artist, which had a back door directly out from the guest rooms to the riverwalk. For 20 ringgit (US$6) I got my own room with a bunk bed. The owner even provided me with a power adapter, convenient, since my computer had been dead since Penang.

By this time, the sun was falling and it was starting to cool off. I left my room for the riverwalk and headed upstream. A series of bridges cross to its parallel sides, which are lined with outdoor cafes, colorful murals, a good variety of architecture, and Malay tourists who were fairly insistent on getting a picture with me.

Wandering off the river brought me into a neighborhood of Little India which had several streets flooded with smoke that seemed to be coming from nowhere. Despite this, I did find one alley directly aligned with the sunset, which made for a good picture.

Smoke that seemed to be coming from nowhere.

A Melaka Alley sunset.

In the last of the light, I had the fortune of stumbling on a poor excuse for an amusement park. Still, there was a Ferris wheel that gave me a great, if slightly dirty, view in all direction of Melaka in the dusk. Unfortunately, I got way more than I paid for and was on the Ferris wheel for many more cycles than I would have cared for.

An early view from the Ferris wheel

And a later view

When on the way back to the guest house, I stopped at one of the river cafes for a beer. Sitting next to me were 4 people chatting away in English, but I couldn’t quite pin down what accent they were speaking with. Eventually, we all started talking and I found out they were all Malaysian and in Melaka for a friend’s wedding.

I asked them if it was common for Malaysians to speak to each other in English rather than in Malay. They told me that most who are educated or in cities will. Malay is used more in the rural areas. They also answered my curiosity on the random Arabic writing I had seen around their country, saying that it was an attempt by certain groups to reinforce their Islamic traditions, despite the fact that most Malaysians don’t read Arabic.

It was an intriguing conversation to end my introduction to Melaka on.

The Batu Caves – Riding Out the Storm

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Hinduism has fascinated me more than any other extant religion for a long time. I think this is mostly because it is the oldest major religion in the world, and along with so many variations, and no one can actually pinpoint where it came from. Having never been to a Hindu temple of any sort, and there being a large Indian population in Malaysia, I figured I’d check one out here.

On the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur is a Hindu cave temple called Batu Caves. While I wish I could have included this in the Lost Cities category, it is far too recent, dating from only the 1890’s.

The entrance to the Batu Temple Caves.

Getting to the caves is a simple enough matter. Only 2 blocks from the Reggae Mansion was a large city bus stop at which bus 17, labeled with Batu Caves, begins. The ride slowly works its way out to the surrounding districts of the city, with Batu Caves near its outer terminus. The stop is easy to see, as the entire view is dominated by a giant, golden statue of Murugan, a Hindu deity that likely stems back as far as the Indus Valley civilization.

Walking toward the shrine, the first thing you will notice, besides Murugan’s stoic grin, is the colorful slope of 272 stairs dotted with monkeys. After some friends’ experiences in Lopburi, Thailand (a town notorious for its monkey gangs) I wasn’t too keen on letting these simians too close to me. A small golden Hindu shrine off to the left of the main stairway was full of people, but also surrounded by a series of bars I didn’t feel like navigating.

Interestingly, the stairs were numbered, so it was a simpler matter to know how close to the top you were. It also provided a one less worry that you could instead turn toward navigating through those menacing monkeys.

The mouth of the cave and the way its ceiling rises immediately to vast proportions make it immediately impressive. However, the scattered refuse of modernity in it quickly replaced this awe. Broken handrails, stray and unused electrical wires, and other metallic scraps dotted both the edges and random spaces of the cave.

This being my first time in a genuine Hindu temple, less the mostly ruined Lembah Bujang or Phanom Rung, I didn’t know quite what to expect. Instead of being one continuous temple construct on the inside of the cave, random shrines and decors instead dotted its entirety. And while I would like to be someday, I still am not knowledgable enough about the infinite facets of Hinduism to be able to identify most of what I was looking at.

The largest structure inside also had a multitude of people in and surrounding it. I was one of maybe 8 westerners there. The rest seemed to be of Indian ethnicities. Inside this shrine were men playing traditional instruments, and other people worshipping. I had to wonder if these people working the shrine were actually part of the Hindu temple or just working as a tourist attraction; something I had seen all too many times before.

In the far back, the cave opens to a circular aperture staring at the sky and ringed by greenery. It was here that the overcast sky shone through as a near black and thunder echoed into the cave. People were starting to leave.

I had just gotten here and I wasn’t done yet. Despite being a relatively small cave I wanted to take in its entirety. The music, the colors of the shrines, and the natural cave scenery all made for a spectacle in the dying light of the oncoming storm.

By the time I got back to the entrance of the cave, the rain had started. People were scurrying down those 272 stairs with less grace than those frantic monkeys that dot their steps. And, in the newly dampened surrounding, this lack of care made for more than a few slips and falls on the crowds’ rear ends.

View of the city from the Temple Cave.

I was still not in such a hurry to leave. And, I had no desire to take a massive fall down these wet steps, despite being the epitome of grace that I am. I, I instead followed a side path over to another cave entrance marked with a sign advertising the “Dark Cave”.

It was intriguing to watch the storm come in over the horizon. The view from any part of the top of the stairwell gives you a two-dimensional silhouette of the skyscrapers of Kuala Lumpur. This view was darkened and then completely blacked out by the solid could of gray which overcame all in view.

In the process of waiting, I was with a couple Germans and a Malay family. I tried to get into the Dark Cave, but their last tour (apparently it’s only available as a guided tour) had already finished for the day. Instead, I ended up chatting with the Germans for a little while after they saw one of the nearby monkeys steal my water bottle and started laughing. We took turns photographing each other with various scenes in the background. Unfortunately, only a handful turned out semi-presentable for me.

Within an hour, the torrents had subsided and we were all on out way back into that formerly hidden city skyline.

Getting High in Kuala Lumpur

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Yes, getting high was topping my list of things to do when I got off the bus in Kuala Lumpur. Although, not likely the same sort as those sharing the Reggae Mansion with me. Within the year, I had been to 9 or 10 major world cities with Singapore being added to that list within a week. But in all that time, including 5 months in Bangkok, I hadn’t yet been atop a skyscraper. I intended to change that here.

My initial view of KL as it popped out of the green mountains.

Kuala Lumpur is home to the Petronas Towers, the world-famous twin-tower connected by a sky bridge. Its surreal silvery glow dominates the skyline from any part of the city. I had first seen it as part of the convoluted story of Entrapment when it seemed to be on a 5x daily repeat on HBO 10 years ago. This, I had resolved, would be the skyscraper I would stand atop.

It didn’t turn out that way.

The street where I was staying.

Getting there was simple enough. From the Little India/Chinatown area where the Reggae Mansion is, it was a short walk, following the direction of those shining towers.

Walking toward the towers.

Walking through Kuala Lumpur was a wholly different experience than Bangkok; mostly in that it was pleasant. Granted, KL is a much smaller city than Bangkok (14 million vs. 3 million) but it was just a nicer feel to it. Sidewalks were clear rather than filled with odd stands and motorbikes. Buildings were varied, well kept, and attractive. On the way, I passed through a good portion of downtown Kuala Lumpur and what I think was the central commercial district of the city.

Arriving at the base of the Petronas Towers, there was a mob of tourists trying to take photos. In order for one photo to be taken of me, I had to agree to take several pictures of others. It ended up being better to just photograph them and them take my own MySpace-style self pictures.

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When I finally got inside, it was far too late. Apparently, you must but your tickets to the top of the Petronas Towers early in the morning. And only a limited mumber were issued. I could not get into the towers that night, despite my pleas to the ground floor security.

That left me with only one other option: the KL Tower. One of those rotating towers akin to the Seattle Space Needle or Toronto CN Tower, it stood even higher above Kuala Lumpur than the Petronas Towers. The annoying part of this came when getting to it. It stands higher geographically because it is on the top of a relatively steep hill, which you must ascend before entering.

Climbing to the KL Tower.

The ticket to go up into the KL Tower includes the choice of a few other entertainment options once you came back down. So, ticket in hand to go up, I would be returning to the ground level to an apparent racing simulator.

The chandelier, taken badly.

At the base of the tower’s elevator hung a marvelous chandelier reminiscent of the faceted surrealism of the Petronas Towers. At the top was a quiet observation deck sparsely dotted with gift stands, a handful of visitors, and a very large wall display making sure they all knew the KL Tower was the “Tallest Telecommunications Tower in the World”.

One advantage of this tower’s admirable panorama was that it included the Petronas Towers amidst its starscape skyline, something I admittedly would not have seen from atop the towers themselves. A similar situation presented itself when I was considering going to the top of the Empire State Building or the Rockefeller Center in New York a year before. However, the price of both of those put me off of the idea.

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While slowly looking the observation deck, a Malaysian father and daughter approached me. The daughter didn’t speak English, but the father asked me if she could take a picture with me. I agreed, not often having been in that situation in Thailand, and a little wary of it.

After she had gotten her picture, he offered to take one of me with the city in the background. So it worked out well enough.

The city was a quiet one compared to not just Bangkok, but most large cities I have been to. Occasionally I came across the stray nightlife, but nothing seemed to be going on in the streets past 8 or 9 pm. This seemed particularly true in the Little India & Chinatown area of the city where my Reggae Mansion hostel was located.

The Reggae Mansion at night.

Thankfully, that was not the case for the Reggae Mansion itself, which came complete with a rooftop bar. And this place was going strong very late into the night. Like the Reggae Hostel in Penang, the Mansion also had its own American entertainment coordinator.

The Rooftop Bar.

And its view.

This proved to be a fantastic hangout for the nights I was in Kuala Lumpur. The first night, the coordinator got a very large game of waterfall going, which lasted for some time. The next night, the hostel arranged a 70’s night, complete with a dance competition. Several activities followed in the consecutive nights, though just sitting in some of the large lounge chairs and taking in the view from the rooftop as you chatted with random travelers proved to be the most fun.

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