Malaysia Part 3: Bizarre Melaka

A piece of art [?] in the most bizarre book stores I've ever seen.
It was covered in some strange, disturbing collages apparently
made by the owner himself, as far as we could tell. 

As for the last major stop on our Malaysian adventure [besides the capital, Kuala Lumpur], we headed over to Melaka after our beach time in Langkawi. Melaka, like the area of Penang we visited, is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site. It has a little “old city” area of its own, which made it manageable to do in the short time we had there. As with many areas in Malaysia, Chinese culture is prevalent here, meaning we again had access to some pretty solid Chinese, or Chinese-Malaysian fusion, food while there. Eating a lot [including awesome pineapple tart pastries] and wandering around the shops on the cobblestone streets in the old city area were our two primary ways to pass the time in Melaka.

A "boiled quail eggs for
sale" sign on Jonker Walk;
now we know why the Angry
Birds are so angry.

Crazy cool antique "piggy" banks
for collecting coins.

One night while we were there, we attended a night market on a famous street called Jonker Walk. Although they were selling things we mostly weren't interested in [including a wax candle you light while in your ear to remove ear wax, which seems counter-intuitive to me, as well as the whole gamut of cutesy cell phone cases and cheap jewelry], we found some fun when we came across the outdoor stage at the end of the street. Previously unoccupied, the stage now hosted an adorable elderly Chinese karaoke singer singing, you guessed it, some sort of Chinese love ballad, it seemed. But even better was his partner: another adorable elderly Chinese man, this time playing the role of accompanying dancing fiend.

The venue of my first paying dance gig.

His moves were like those I had seen groups of Chinese people doing in the parks in Beijing in the morning: gentle and tai chi-like, except when he changed things up a bit and added a touch of jazz hands after reaching his hands out towards the night sky. Seeing this, my friend and I were inspired: we couldn't help but doing our own little dance on the sidelines. Seeing us, apparently the man was inspired, too; so inspired, in fact, that he invited us up on stage to join him. IT. WAS. GREAT. Especially after a few performances [some fun, some traumatizing, all ridiculous] in front of teachers and students at my school, not to mention the everyday performance that is teaching, I am more comfortable than ever before hamming it up in front of a crowd. So I loved it. Our dancer friend was great; every once in a while, he would look back, as if to ensure that we were still following his lead [we were]. Halfway through, he began to add some turns and some more complicated footwork; it was all my friend and I could do not to burst out in laughter. Afterwards, a man in the audience even gave us money! Souvenir or real, I have no idea, nor do I have any idea of where the bill may be from. But regardless, it’s a win in my book [and a check mark on the ol’ bucket list]: our first paying dance gig! It's also one of the reasons I consider our time in Melaka kind of a bizarre experience.

Also part of the hustle and bustle of Jonker Walk at night was a night show hosted by a self-proclaimed Kung Fu master, Ho Eng Hui, who can bust a hole in a coconut with a single FINGER. This sounded like it might be worth it to see, so remiss were we when we realized nearly an hour after the scheduled start of the performance that we were too late... or so we thought. As it turns out, Hui was still going strong, building up the audience in what turned out to be a ridiculously long monologue. He even faked out a poor hipster kid and continued to rant and not poke holes in coconuts to the point where groups of people started to give up and leave. It was ridiculous. Finally, at long last, he centered himself while some gong-heavy music played in the background, and WHAM, poked a hole in the coconut. What should have been a cool end to a long-winded show ended up being kind of anticlimactic, as so many people had left, and watching the poor man rub out the pain of his swollen, disfigured finger proved more grotesque than fun. Another bizarre moment in Melaka.

As for other notable areas of Melaka, we stopped by what is considered one of the oldest Chinese temples in Malaysia that is still open today. It was great. Pagoda-shaped, it was covered in Chinese sculptures and paintings. Even on a Friday or Saturday morning, people were stopping by to quickly light some incense and pay their respects in front of the statues inside.

Oh hayy, peanut satay

Spotted around town: a decked-out bicycle 

rickshaw, complete with its own Hello Kitty hood 

ornament and Barbie passenger.

We ventured outside of the old city area on two missions: the first was to find one of the most popular restaurants in the area, a peanut satay place. There, you choose various vegetable and meat skewers and cook your food yourself in a boiling vat of peanut oil and spices. It was totally worth waiting in the long line of people outside, and despite my fear of cross contamination, all went well.

My favorite type of coconut ever.

St. Paul's Church

The other time we ventured outside of the old city area was on the Saturday morning we left. We headed out to quickly see A Famos, a Portuguese fortress on a hill overlooking the sea, and the nearby remnants of the old St. Paul’s Church. Basically, these were as they sound: ruins from the early 1500s when the Portuguese settled in the area for some time, before the Dutch took over about 100 years later [and stayed there for a few hundred years before the British came into town in the 19^th century]. The church itself is merely a stone structure, large in size, but roofless and floorless. It continues to house a few old gravestones, and presumably the bodies that accompanied them.

The Stadthuys [here and below]

Santa gave me the opportunity to wear  

backpackerish Indian clothes around town,

rather than my typical Indian threads.

At the base of the hill on the way back down to the old city area is the Stadthuys [meaning “city hall”], or what is currently called the Red Dutch Square. Comprised of an old church and a few administrative buildings, the square is another quaint but reminder of the colonial history of this area of Malaysia. Supposedly, here is the oldest remaining Dutch historical building in “The Orient” [not my words]. The square also used to house the Melaka Free School, opened by missionaries in 1826 when the British were in the area. Like many, many cities in Asia [including Kolkata/Calcutta], Melaka renamed itself [from Malacca] after the British left.

So that's all the news about Melaka. Next post, I'll finish up with my Malaysian stories; look for some India accounts to be posted soon!