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Melaka to Kuala Lumpur

Monday August 14, 2006

Posted In: Malaysia | Comments: 3 | Written By: Julie Brookman

Melaka

After completing our computer mission in Singapore we hopped an early bus that led us to Melaka, a city in Malaysia with strong Portugese, Dutch, and Chinese roots that intertwine to create a fascinating fabric of culture.

The river winding through central Melaka.

A bicycle taxi driver naps in his flamboyantly decorated tricycle.

The bus ride from Singapore to Melaka (sometime spelled Malacca) was uneventful. The road was a big, multi-lane highway and occasionally we would pass through toll booths with signs that read Just Say No To Porn. On the bus ride we browsed through our “Rough Guide To Southeast Asia”: and decided to stay at the Traveler’s Lodge, a well reviewed place by all accounts. When we arrived in Melaka we were greeted by a friendly man as we stepped off the bus who was handing out brochures of the very place. He told us to take the local #17 city bus to get there and get off at the Equatorial Hotel. We followed his instructions, and low and behold there it was. It should be noted this almost never happens in Asia. Melaka seemed to be working for us.

We spent the next day and a half relaxing. We were exhausted from a sleepless night staying in a dorm room on the rooftop of the Cozy Corner Backpacker in Singapore. It was romantic sleeping on the rooftops in Singapore—we had a fine view of the National Library of Singapore, which is a gorgeous building, lit up at night. However, as the dorm has roll-a-way beds, which are not put out until 11pm, plus the fact that people are coming and going at all times of the night, we didn’t get much sleep. We aren’t really dorm folks anyway. We’ve found that for the price of two people in a dorm, we can usually get a private room. And with this heat I enjoy sitting around in my underwear whenever possible, which is generally frowned upon in the dorms.

The Traveler’s Lodge has a really nice common sitting area—almost Japanese style—with pillows and hardwood floors, not something you see often in this part of Asia. It was there we met Nori, a sweet guy from Japan. He’s traveling through Asia on his own, and is truly a character. He loves kids—in fact he is studying to be a teacher back home—and had just spent a month in the Philippines staying at an orphanage and playing and helping with the kids. He always carries a giant rubber ear with him wherever he goes. When asked why, he says that kids often make fun of him because he has small eyes, so he compensates with a large ear, which always makes them laugh. As it turns out we both stayed at the Cozy Corner in Singapore, and I actually slept next to him in the dorm room the night before but we hadn’t talked. Once again, Melaka seemed to be working for us.

Another perk of the Traveler’s Lodge is it has free, wireless internet, continuing our luck of free internet since our computer purchase in Singapore. We took the opportunity to download some episodes of “24”: from the iTunes Music Store, plus catch up with my Mom using Skype.

Kai sitting in an ancient barber chair while getting a haircut along the river.

The next day we were on a quest for tea, having heard about a good teashop in Melaka from other travelers we had met in Borneo. Finding it was surprisingly hard, which is unsurprising in Malaysia. It’s simply staggering how bad people are at giving directions here. After quite a few wrong turns that took us to many antiques shops with lots of tea cups but no actual tea, we found the tea shop we were looking for just a block down from the old clock tower in Melaka. The tea shop is packed full with teaware, tea, and general junk. A good tea shop needs a certain amount of parafinalia, Buddha heads, and books to give the proper ambiance, and this one had it all. The Eight Immortals House, owned by Susan and Yee, had an abundance of character, along with knowledge and love of tea. Yee sat us down and served us some 15 year-old pu-er tea. We liked him instantly. Ususally white folk like us are handed cheap green tea or maybe an oolong but rarely pu-er, and even more rarely 15 yr old samples.

A Chinatown street.

Yee seemed to have an abundance of knowledge, so we decided to take a tea class, which he offered for RM50 per person, the following day. The class was very informative, we knew a good amount of the material that he covered, but we learned a few things that were new to us, mainly dealing with the etiquette of tea serving. Learning to prepare and serve tea is an art unto itself. Most westerners—and indeed, many people in Asia—think tea is something that comes in a little bag and is dunked into a mug. Nothing could be further from the truth. Tea served in this fashion is the equivalent of wine in a box. One of the perks of the class was getting to sample new teas, including more aged pu-er and a red tea known as Eastern Beauty.

Sampling tea with Yee

After the class, Yee and Susan invited us to join another class that would be taught the following evening at a community center. The class would be taught in Mandarin, so they said we could just sit in for free. The following evening, Yee and Susan treated us to dinner at an open-air food court, and then brought us to the community center in their well-used Toyota Landcruiser. We had both expected the community center to be at a local public school—the one’s that double as a basketball court and smell of mildew and teenage boy sweat. We were stunned when we pulled into the well-landscaped grounds of a very large community center on the outskirts of town. The center is comprised of multiple buildings, including a full cafe, conference room, bookshop, and more. It turns out, the center is part of a Buddhist organization based out of Tawaian, and funds for the center came from there. As a means for supporting the center, the first consumer recycling center was established. Additionally, a drop-in, free medical clinic is available for people unable to afford healthcare. Why aren’t community centers like this back home?

The tea class was held in a beautiful classroom, complete with bamboo, hardwood floors and shoji screens. There were multiple classrooms in the building, all built around a rock garden which acted as the center of the building and had a very high skylight which gave the feeling of being outside. Other classes being taught included sign language and Chinese calligraphy.

The class took about an hour. We didn’t understand much, but we had the opportunity to practice brewing tea in a beautiful atmosphere with a set of fine porcelain Taiwanese teaware.

A tea class taught in Mandarin by Susan and Yee.

While in Malacca, we also came across an artist named Charles Cham, who happenes to be friends with Susan and Yee from the teashop, and actually designed their logo. Charles Cham is a painter, who’s style is both primitive and sophisticated. He claims all of his work is based on the yin-yang principle of life. Because of the rough nature of his paintings, his work is not very popular in Malaysia itself, as most Malays want the clean lines of a realist painting. Fortunately, he has picked up acclaim outside of Malaysia and now shows his work internationally. If you are ever in Malaka, be sure to check out the Orangutan House, where he sells his paintings along with t-shirts.

A wall in the Orangutan House.

Outside the Orangutan House.

Back to Kuala Lumpur

From Melaka, we returned to Kuala Lumpur, finding it hard to believe it had been almost six weeks since our sleepless nights there the first time. We were going to Kuala Lumpur to to finalize arrangements for the next major part of our wanderings: China, which, in many ways, is the main reason we came to Asia (which we’ll get into more in a later post). Because we needed to buy tickets to China, we thought it would be a good idea to get accommodations near Chinatown, as cheaper tickets can often be found in a neighborhood populated by people from the location you’re travelling to. As such, we settled on the Traveler’s Lodge, located in the heart of Chinatown, for RM25 per night (plus free internet from some unprotected wireless router in the area!). Unfortunately, this turned out to be a mistake. On our 4th night there, we returned to our room to find that someone had been in it. Now, we never leave anything valuable in our rooms—we almost always have our computer, cameras, and passports on us, which are the only things of real value we are traveling with. So luckily, whoever had been in our room didn’t get anything important, mostly tearing apart the room and rifling through my dirty underwear. They did, however, make off with $250 in American Express Traveler’s Checks (which were very easy to cancel and replace), plus my prescription sunglasses. Karma will get back on whoever wears them as they will probably get a headache, at least that is what I am wishing.

The hotel manager, upon being informed of all this, insisted on calling the police, who came quickly. They wanted us to file a report so they could do a full investigation, but as we were leaving Kuala Lumpur the next day, we didn’t see much reason in doing so. The police were disappointed by this, but were polite and took there leave. Twenty minutes later, a knock on our door revealed the hotel manager and a new police officer, who said that they needed our passport numbers so they could file a report stating we didn’t want a report filed. We were a bit suspicious of this, as the first police officer had already gotten our passport numbers for the hotel’s guest book. Plus, there was no damage to our room’s door, which means that the thief was either really good with locks or someone with a key to our room had been complicit, or directly involved, in the theft. Sensing our hesitation, the police officer called his commanding officer on his cell phone, and handed it to Kai. After a few minute conversation, in which Kai politely tried to explain that the police already had our passport numbers, the commanding officer on the phone told Kai that if he didn’t give up the passport numbers, he would have him arrested. At this point, Kai gave the officer his passport number, and a fake one for mine, and we grabbed our bags and headed for the door. We took the monorail across town and checked into a nice safe hotel on the other side of the city.

Aside from having some things stolen, our return to Kuala Lumpur was successful. After some research, we purchased airline tickets through Air Asia from Kuala Lumpur to Macau for RM150, which is ridiculously cheap ($40 at the time of this writing). We fly to Macau on the 21 of August.

In the meantime, we’ve headed to the Perhentian Islands for some rest and relaxation, as the past seven weeks traveling through Malaysia have started to take it’s toll on us. Traveling in China will be even more challenging as it is a country enormous in size and populated by a people who speak a language we don’t understand. Until now, we have traveled with a very loose itinerary and sort of figured things out as we went along. With China, this just won’t be possible. Research will be key to a successful trip, especially as we’ll be traveling independently and without the aid of an organized tour. As such, we bought a detailed map of China, the Let’s Go Guide To China, as well as the The Rough Guide to Mandarin Chinese. We’ll be studying these things while we lay on the beach in the Perhentians. In between dives of course!

Also, if any one has any suggestions regarding China (the south in particular), we would love to hear them. (And don’t be shy, we’ve had more than one person tell us they would post but for shyness though email. We’re quite friendly!)

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