Museums of Melaka – Baba-Nonya, Sultan’s Palace & More

Continued from yesterday”¦ This house is actually three shop houses side by side, with doorways through the structural walls so one can walk through all three houses without having to go outside. Two of the houses were for the family, and the third was the servants quarters. The outside looks similar to all the other Chinese shophouses, with European style shuttered windows and relief style decorations designed into the exterior walls. The doors are made of a heavy, dark colored wood and intricately carved. The foyer is in the center house, and as soon as you step inside, it is clear that all the furniture in the house and many of the dividing walls are made of the same really super intricately carved dark wood. The furniture is inlaid with mother of pearl and gold and silver leaf, as are the walls. The glass is etched with designs. Quite large and expensive tapestries decorate the walls. The floor is tiled. It is the kind of place you are terrified to bring your young children because there are so many breakable things around, and it is hard to believe that young children once lived in this house.

We got to see the kitchen with all of its old school appliances hand crank ice cream makers, hand crank pasta makers, wood fire stoves, ice box, mortar and pestle for grinding up food, and all those other things that make a woman so thankful for modern day appliances. Upstairs, there were displays of Continue reading

Museums of Melaka – Maritime Museum, Customs & Baba-Nonya

The hotel we stayed at is called the Herring House and it is quaint and charming. Christi’s allergies started bothering her in the night, so in the morning she was looking forward to a long, very hot shower to clear her head. No such luck. There is a water heater mounted to the wall of the shower and she couldn’t figure out how to turn it on. Neither could Eric, so we both wound up with cold showers. Well”¦ cold is the wrong word. We’re in the tropics, where cold water doesn’t exist. Tepid would be the appropriate word. But it still didn’t have the safe effect at clearing out your sinuses that a hot, steamy shower has.

Eric had been saying for several days now that he thought he might be fighting off a cold. This morning he felt like the cold had won the battle. He was not feeling good at all, with a sore throat and achy back. Christi was sneezing and sniffling and loudly blowing her nose. We were quite the pair.

We were meeting the crew of Shayile at the Maritime Museum at 1000. With a little time to kill before our meeting time, we wandered around the corner and down a street we hadn’t explored yet in search of an ATM. This street is a main drag. The side of the street we were on had a nice park and a brand new mall. They are also in the process of building Continue reading

Exploring Melaka, Malaysia’s Most Historic City

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.

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We went into the Continue reading

Exploring Port Dickson City and Melaka City

The first task of the day was to go to Port Dickson to check in. The marina charges an $5USD surcharge if they call the cab for you, so we decided to walk down the road to the taxi stand marked on the map the marina gave us. The tree lined, nice looking road we were on let out onto a main road with blocky, unattractive military housing dominating the other side of the street. The “taxi stand” was really a bus stop. In Singapore, you never waited more than a minute for a taxi at a stand. After 10 minutes, only two taxis had passed, both full, and we began to wonder if not paying the surcharge might have been a mistake. Should we go back to the marina? Fortunately, a cab pulled up right then.

The taxi driver asked us where we wanted to go. We said Continue reading

Welcome to Port Dickson, Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia

There is evidence of humans in Malaysia as far back as 40,000 years ago. The original inhabitants are thought to be the Negrito people that live in the northern mountainous rainforests. They were later joined by the Senoi people who came down from Thailand and the Malay people who came up from Indonesia. By the second century AD, Malaya was already known for gold, tin and aromatic jungle woods and Indians regularly came to buy these goods. The Indians introduced Buddhism, Hinduism, and the notion of Kingship.

During the 7th century, the Malaysian peninsula was conquered by the Srivijaya Empire, which was ruled by a king in Sumatra (the island directly west of the Malaysian peninsula, across the Malacca Straits, and today part of Indonesia). Under that empire, southern Malaya flourished as a trading state. The Srivaijaya empire lost control of Malaya in the 13th century. Malaysia went back to being made up of several small and separate empires ruled by local sultans (kings).

In 1400, a self-proclaimed sultan conquered the town of Melaka and turned it into a thriving trading port where Indonesians, Malays, Chinese and Indians came to trade goods. As Islam gained popularity in India, the Indians introduced Islam to Melaka and it eventually spread to the rest of Malaysia and Indonesia.

Meanwhile, the Portuguese Continue reading