Continued from yesterday”¦ We headed another block or so down to the town square. The downtown area is actually quite small. It begins at the mouth of a river and is built mostly along the river. The east side of the river has the old Dutch buildings and a few Portuguese ruins (most of the Portuguese buildings had been destroyed by war). The Dutch buildings are all painted a brick red color, which we are told is how they looked when the Dutch controlled the area. The west side of the river is Chinatown, which has endless rows of two story row houses.

The town square has a church and an old government building that now houses three museums. The road in front of it is cobblestone. There is a round about with beautiful flowers and a small windmill. There are tons and tons of rickshaw bikes lined up on the inside of the roundabout, waiting to be hired. The rickshaws are little two person carts attached to a bicycle, and you sit in the cart and have your driver pedal you around town. The rickshaws in and of themselves are quite basic, but, like the bemos in Kupang, the rickshaw owners have totally decked out their little vehicles. Most have umbrellas, fake flower arrangements, tinsel, and other bits of flashy décor to try to get your attention.

We went into the Christ Church, originally built by the Dutch in 1753. It was surprisingly plain inside. There were tomb markers all over the ground of people buried under the floor. We headed up a staircase carved into a hill directly behind the town center to see the remains of a Portuguese church built in 1521 called St. Paul’s. There is a nice view of the town and sea from the top of the hill. The Dutch initially used this church after they took over Melaka, but once the Christi Church at the bottom of the hill was completed, this one fell into disrepair. The church no longer has a roof, but the walls still remain intact. The walls are lined with headstones of various people buried under the ground. People did not live long in those days. Most were in their 30’s when they died. We walked along the graveyard behind the church, back down the hill.

Somehow, we had deviated from the tour and were on the wrong street. We made our way back to the town square and crossed the bridge into Chinatown. This was a tricky spot. There are no sidewalks. Traffic was heavy. All the intersections are roundabouts, with no stop signs or crosswalks anywhere. The cars seem to have right of way and appear to have no qualms about running you over. The streets in Chinatown were even scarier. As the tour progressed, we walked down a long, very narrow one way street with no sidewalk at all. All the streets were decorated with strings of red round lanterns high above head for the upcoming Chinese New Year.

We admired the architecture as we walked. Many of the buildings have fancy designs on them. We went into one of the shops and got a fascinating education on the architecture of these “shophouses”. The shophouses are both incredibly skinny and incredibly long. The front portion of the ground floor is the shop. The back portion of the ground floor is the kitchen and bathroom. What makes the architecture so unique is that there are two big holes in the ceiling, one towards the front third and one towards the back third, kind of like skylights with no glass. They are just covered with chicken wire to keep the birds out. The roof has a steep pitch that drains into the two holes. Either there is a planter under the hole for a little indoor garden, or there is a water collection system under the hole. This offers light and excellent ventilation in what would otherwise be a dark and stuffy space. The living quarters are upstairs. There is a front room that spans from the first hole to the front of the house, a second room between the two holes, and one at the back. The staircases up are near each hole in the ceiling, which is logical, since that is where the doors naturally are. We were told this design works phenomenonally well in the tropical climate. We were also told that because everyone got around on foot or rickshaws, they wanted to keep the city as compact as possible, which is easier to do with skinny buildings than wide ones.

We continued on, passing a few notable landmarks, such as a Taoist church with incredible carved pillars and doors.

As we progressed through Chinatown, it was clear that sidewalks are virtually non-existent. We stopped off for a drink and tried cashew cookies, which are not very sweet but good, and pineapple tarts, which are yummy. We continued on and walked by several more historic Chinese temples, including Chin Hoon Teng, which was build in 1673 and is Malaysia’s oldest Chinese temple. It is devoted to Taoism, Confuciusism, and Chinese Buddhism. The layout and décor is much the same as what we had seen in Singapore, with intricate decorations painted in red, black and gold. You walk in the front doors to a large center altar devoted to the goddess of mercy, Kwan Yin, and from there can go left or right through an open corridor that wraps around the interior behind the main altar. The corridor is lined with smaller altars, most covered, that have images of other gods worshipped. One that particularly caught our eye was a large rock with lots of little Buddha statues in various poses resting all over it.

We also stopped in at a Hindu temple called Sri PoyyathaVinayagar Moorthi temple, built in 1781. The exterior looks pretty much the same as the Hindu temples we had seen in Singapore. We hadn’t actually gone inside any in Singapore. The layout is quite similar to the Buddhist temple. The main difference is you do not walk straight into the main altar. At the entrance you can turn left or right to walk along a hallway, or you can walk forward into the main altar. The main altar was off limits to us as non-Hindus, but they let us walk down the hall lined with small altars devoted to various gods. The other difference is that the entire temple is indoors. There were some people actively worshipping at one of these little altars, which we watched, and the clergyman turned around and blessed us.

We finished our tour back where we started, then separated from the crew of Shayile for dinner. We went to a restaurant next to our hotel that serves Mediterranean dishes. The food was phenomenal. We passed out early, tired from a long day of walking.