A minor meander around Malacca

At last report, I was headed "somewhere". That somewhere turned about to be Malacca. Malacca is about 2/3 the distance between Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. It's a historic city, whose founding marks the beginning of Malaysian history. But Malaysia is not China and Malacca didn't exist until 1390 something AD. Thus, Malacca's history is not a song of the ancients but a more recent tale of sultans, spice trade, and European colonial power.

The last 3 days have been spent wandering around the small old city and China town. There are churches, mosques, Hindu temples, Budist temples, and a large "Chinese" temple (Confusionist?). Nothing that would likely impress me at the end of the trip but I'm jut beginning and host of this stuff is still new to me.

Yesterday, I went on a brief river tour. Building old and new were pointed out, including temples and traditional Malay houses on stilts. But what I found most interesting were the mud skippers and monitor lizards that lined the river bank. Today I came back with the Minolta and it's telephoto lens and got some good wildlife photos only yards away from crowds of tourists.

Malacca is a fairly pleasant town. The old town is compact. Costs are low by Western standards. If there is any serious fault, it has to be traffic. This is perhaps the most pedestrian hostile tourist town I have ever visited. The old town has almost no usable sidewalks, no traffic lights, no stop signs, inadequate crosswalks (mostly ignored by the cars), and a continuous stream of automobile traffic. And, more baffling, this includes areas were lanes are wide and construction is obviously new. It is also strange that a town with at least 2 huge modern shopping malls, doesn't have safe tap water.

Oh well, aside from some good local food, that pretty well sums up Malacca.

Tomorrow, I'm off to Kuala Lumpur. I will have almost 4 days there before I fly off to Kuching. I'm not expecting great things there but apparently there is enough. And I still have some errands to run, notably, I still need to find me a workable tripod.