Melaka

Malaysia is just a bus ride away from Singapore, and our first stop in the country was the city of Melaka. Melaka has a long history of colonization. The Malays were there first, joined by Chinese, Arab and Indian immigrants and merchants. Different religions were brought in, especially Hinduism and Islam. The Portuguese were the first European power to colonize, followed by the Dutch, and then finally the English. The Europeans brought Christianity. During WWII Japan occupied Melaka. Eventually Malaysia gained independence in the 1950s, and has been finding ways to market Melaka's interesting past ever since. Due to all this colonialism, Melaka is a smorgasbord of different styles or architecture and has been deemed a Unesco World Heritage Site. The architecture was indeed unique, but it was the way in which all of these different cultures have merged together to create amazing food which made Melaka worth a visit.

We arrived in the city in the evening and were welcomed to our lovely guesthouse by our very friendly and accommodating hosts with cool drinks and cake. They suggested that we hit up a local Indian restaurant for dinner, which sounded great to us. Malaysia is majority ethnic Malay, with large populations of Chinese and Indians as well. Much like Singapore, certain cities and areas of cities tend to contain different groups and types of restaurants. The restaurant served dishes on banana leaves and all of the customers ate with their hands. We decided not to jump right into hand eating, but we did accidentally order two meals apiece, so we had our work cut out for us.

Only one half of our giant feast

Malaysia is a Muslim country and most of the Malay women wear headscarves, and the occasional Burka. We have gotten used to hearing the call to prayer and passing mosques. But as it is very multicultural, and the Indian and Chinese populations are generally not Muslim, it is pretty easy going about religion and we have not had to change our dress. Melaka has a jumbled religious past though, and a history of Christianity. We set out the next day to view some of the old Christian churches in the city. Some of the churches are still used, but most are either in ruins or have been restored for tourists.

As we quickly found out Melaka attracts an enormous amount of tourists, many Europeans, but mostly local. Some folks have taken advantage of the tourist market and offer to pedal visitors around in rickshaws. There is a lot of competition in this business, so the entrepreneurs decorate their rickshaws with ridiculous colors, fake flowers and streamers and play the most obnoxious techno music at the highest possible volumes to attract more customers. It was amazing how many people actually hired them...

Very Decorative

Church, built by the Dutch. Can't see it in this picture, but there was a windmill right near by, might as well have been in Lynden

We went to a couple of terrible museums filled with vacationing families and crying children, before finding a replica of a Melakan Sultan's palace that was pretty interesting. Malaysian architecture is very cool, but unfortunately they used wood to build everything. Wood doesn't have a long life span, so there are very few original buildings left. This replica was built to look just like a palace that used to stand in the same area and was filled with artifacts from the era and examples of court life at the time. One room contained figurines that represented different scenes from a famous Malaysian tale of the hero Hang Tuah. Hang Tuah was a great warrior who had protected and served the Sultan well. The sultan became jealous of him and sentenced him to death. A sympathetic court member, who had been saved by Hang in the past, helped him escape. Hang's best friend didn't know of the escape and went on a rampage in the court to revenge his friend. Since it was an emergency the Sultan was told that Hang was actually still alive, and the Sultan asked that he be brought back to protect the court from the crazed friend. Hang came back and killed his friend because he believed that loyalty to the Sultan should be above friendship. No mention that the Sultan tried to have him killed in the first place! This is a beloved tale and seen as a good moral tale.... How is that for cultural differences!!

Palace

View of the city


That afternoon we ate Chicken rice balls, a regional speciality, which is basically balls of rice with chicken. It sounds weird, but was delicious! That night we decided to try another local speciality, the satay at the famous restaurant Capital Satay. We had to wait in line for an hour to even get a table. Once inside we filled a tray with all kinds of food on sticks, meat, vegetables, bread, tofu, eggs, strange shellfish... We then brought it back to our table which contained a large vat of delicious peanut sauce in its middle. The peanut sauce was heated and we cooked our food right in a the middle. It was a fusion of Chinese hotpot and Malaysian peanut sauce satay, and was so delicious.

Food on sticks waiting for satay

Our guesthouse was located in the Chinatown region of the city, along the river. It was quite a lovely location, at night Chinatown is lit with red lanterns. That evening we wanted to buy some beer to drink by the river, and Dan was going to teach me how to play chess. I have always associated Asia with cheap beer, but Islam is a more dominate force in Malaysia than Asian-ness, and the Islam won the alcohol battle. Beer is incredibly expensive in Malaysia, we bought two very cheap cans of Tiger beer, and it cost us the equivalent of 4 US dollars. On a $25 a day budget, Malaysian beer was not an option....

Chinatown


The next day we were excited to try some more delicious local food. When Chinese immigrants came to Malaysia they intermarried with Malays. Malay and Chinese mixed women became called Nonyas and the men were called Babas. Therefore the fusion Chinese Malaysian food that is common in Melaka is called Nonya food, since the women cooked it. We tried some local noodles and also tried the local dessert, which is a combination of ice, wheatgrass noodles, sugar cane syrup and coconut milk. It was weird, but refreshing.

Dan with his weird ice dessert


That afternoon we went to a Baba Nonya house that has been converted into a museum. It belongs to a rich family who built it several generations ago at the turn of the 20th century. It was built in the Chinese tradition, but with Malay twists. All of the original furniture and clothing has been preserved. We also went to a house owned by a woman who has turned it into a sort of museum that she lives in with her family. She is as old as the hills and has been showing it to tourists for forty years. It was built in the old style, on stilts with open courtyards, and still maintains original furniture. She was a pretty neat lady, she obviously took great pride in her house and showed us the list of all the famous people who have visited.

The very old lady told me to hit her gong three times for good luck

Singapore

We went into our short trip to Singapore with curiosity but not extremely high expectations - we've heard that it is very modern, convenient, and somewhat bland. That's probably true but I've rather enjoyed our couple of days here. Singapore is indeed extremely modern as far as technology, transport, and architecture, but it has an interesting cultural mix that makes it different than other large Asian cities we have seen. English is everywhere, but so is Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil. The Chinese are the largest ethnic group, but there are sizable Indian and Malaysian populations as well, with certain quarters of the city sometimes dominated by one group.

We are staying near the Little India and Arab Street areas, which we explored on foot our first night. It was interesting to go from being surrounded by a large mosque and shops selling burqas to stalls with Bollywood movies and Indian tailors after walking down a few streets. Besides being the budget part of town, it's supposed to be the quarter with the most character. We enjoyed the market, where Chinese vegetable sellers rubbed shoulders with grisly piles of meat tended by large bearded Arabs. It's also been a nice reminder of the past to eat in simple, Mandarin-speaking Chinese restaurants with bright fluorescent lighting and offerings of pig trotters on the menu.

But Singapore certainly shares a lot in common with large Western cities, with its fast food chains, shopping, and British influences from its colonial past. We escaped from the heat into one of the many malls, and were entertained by a Digimon (Japanese kids show) promotion in perfect American English. Today was spent exploring the colonial district, with some heavily British-influenced buildings, and soaking up the technologically savvy National Museum. It is a history museum with almost no captions, but rather an iPad-ish companion device with audio and video. I've been fond of the drink known as the Singapore Sling for years, which started mostly as a joke. Little did I know that I would get to visit the very bar where it was invented, in the historic Raffles Hotel, the preferred accommodation of people like Rudyard Kipling. It has been renovated and now goes for about $600 a night and up, and at $15 we couldn't even afford a Sling, but it was a fun visit nonetheless.

We plan to hit just one more museum tomorrow and get going to Malaysia, which will be harder on our cravings for air-conditioning but easier on our wallets.

Kuta Beach

We bid farewell to our tropical fish friends and left Jemeluk just as a huge tropical storm hit. It was our last full day in Bali, and we would have preferred to spend it swimming with the fishies and lounging on the beach with the large Germans one bungalow down from ours, but we had a super early flight the next day and needed to be close to the airport. Just as well, because when storms hit Bali, they hit hard, and it was good to be in a car. I have never seen rain like that before, streets started to flood and the car's windshield wipers got a work out. We were headed to Kuta Beach, a place that we had wanted to avoid due to it's reputation of foreigner debauchery, but unfortunately it was the closest city to the airport. To reach Kuta we had to take a car from Amed to Padangbai, where we took an incredibly scary motor bike ride through the pouring rain to reach another shuttle to Kuta. Of course as soon as the motor bike ride was over, it stopped raining.

Kuta was an interesting place, I liken it to what I think Cancun would be like, but I've never been there so that is a guess. Full of muscly Australian frat guys, skinny teenage girls in very short skirts and a full range of other undesirable speedo-ed foreign types, all sitting on the beach and/or drinking an excessive amount of alcohol. Very different from our large German friends and the quiet fishing boats of Amed, but it was fun to be there for a day and see what it was like for ourselves. Kuta is famous for surfing, and the waves were pretty great. We spent a long time playing in the waves and swimming in the ocean, which was lovely. The surfers were also really fun to watch, most were quite good. We walked around the town that evening which was excessive in every way possible. Giant shopping malls, giant hotels, giant Bubba Gump Shrimp Co., this was not the Bali that we had been loving for the past weeks. We went to bed at a decent time as we had to get up at 3 in the morning, and of course when we got up we discovered that the town was still alive and everyone was still out at the clubs. We actually got in a traffic jam for about half an hour on our way to the airport. Our taxi driver was also trying to watch a world cup match and would linger in front of bars to try to catch the score, probably causing more traffic problems The clubs looked like a lot of fun, but by 4 in the morning most of the people still up were very partied out and we were glad to leave them behind for our next adventure, Singapore.

Amed

We left Ubud via shuttle bus to go to the eastern coast of Bali. Our shuttle took us through gorgeous country, rice fields, mountains and beaches.

Once in the Amed area we found accommodations in a small fishing village on the beach, Jemeluk. Bali is chock full of beaches to stay at, and we finally decided on this area because it seemed less popular and more relaxed than most spots. We were very satisfied with our choice - the village was tiny, there were hardly any other people, and the seafood was excellent (especially the barracuda).

Probably the main attraction of Amed was the snorkeling. Nissa had never been before, and it was a perfect first experience for her. The coral was so close to the beach that I actually cut my foot pretty badly the first time I tried swimming out without a mask. And the varieties and colors of the fish was amazing. For two days we did basically nothing other than snorkel, eat, take naps, and read, but in the end it didn't seem long enough, and we were a little hesitant to leave.

our guesthouse

barracuda

Ubud: Fire and Trance

Our last full day in Ubud was spent on another hike through rice fields and villages. The countryside is very beautiful and we have enjoyed getting out into the paddies. Unfortunately though, Ubud was not made for walkers, and our hikes have been interspersed with harrowing walks on tiny thin roads with no shoulders, motor bikes and tourist buses zipping on both sides. I have seen very few people walking, Ubud is terribly over touristed and everyone rides in style in tour buses and motor bikes. It is too bad, I think that zooming through a place can't at all compare with a nice walk, but maybe it isn't worth the risk.... It is nice to retreat to our peaceful bungalow for a nap accompanied by gamelon music after dealing with near death.

We've been sampling all kinds of Balinese and Indonesian food, usually we don't know what we have ordered until it arrives, which is always fun. Most of the dishes have been rice based, with a variety of different veggie and meat combos. It has been mostly pretty good, a few misses, but the last few meals have been excellent. The local Bingtang beer isn't half bad either.

we visited a monkey forest on our walk. one of them stole Dan's water bottle

caged roosters

This evening we took in a Kecak Fire and Trance dance. It was pretty awesome. A huge group of men, all sitting on the floor in a big circle perform this haunting chant as accompaniment to dancers who act out a story that really was lost on me, but was fascinating to watch anyway. The next dance was performed by two girls who couldn't have been older than eight. They danced the whole time in synch, with their eyes closed! Very impressive. And they saved the best for last. As the chorus of men chanted a guy riding a stick horse jumped around a fire that was lit in the middle of the stage. He then jumped into the coals and started kicking them around and stepping on them. It was intense. I'm sad that we won't be able to see more dances, they have definitely been the highlight of Ubud. But tomorrow it is off to the beach!

Ubud: Bemos and Body Massages

On our second full day in Ubud, we scheduled the whole morning for an ancient monument called Gunung Kawi. It's a small site, but we knew we'd need the whole morning because Bali has the worst public transportation in the world. It's affordable for most travelers to rent your own car and driver, and if there is one thing this city is missing it is not taxi drivers, but our budget is extremely tight. And so we took bemo. Bemos are the closest thing to a public bus in Bali - basically a van with two low benches inside, usually pretty rickety, riding with the door open to keep things cool inside. They are very cheap, but have few, totally inconvenient routes and no schedules.

It took two separate bemo rides to get to Gunung Kawi, though it was not far away. We were the first customers in our bemo, but we were eventually joined by many older Balinese woman going home from the market. It turns out a bemo can fit 9 people, one baby, 14 shopping bags, one spare tire, and about 20 melons. I don't think too many foreigners take bemo, and some young girls on the street broke into hysterical laughter when they saw us pass by, but it was actually the highlight of our day.

Gunung Kawi and an important temple in the area were a little underwhelming at first glance, but an enjoyable trip nonetheless. We were obliged to buy sarongs before entering, which are large pieces of cloth worn kind of like a skirt by both men and women. Flabby white foreigner legs are not appropriate at a temple, which is probably just as well.





After lunch at a restaurant operated completely by 14-year old girls (with fun Indonesian soap opera TV viewing) and our required nap time, we were ready for a full-body massage. We felt that it was a little weird to be so man-handled by strangers while in our underwear, but it definitely relaxed us for the whole rest of the day.

Finally, we saw our second dance performance, known as a Legong. Unlike the previous night, this was a paid performance specifically for tourists, in a good way. It was a more reasonable hour-and-a-half, written explanations were handed out, and there 9 separate sections to give us a taste of Legong dance, which is a graceful dance performed by a group of young women. Balinese dance is very unique, especially the jerky eye and hand movements, colorful costumes, and eerie background music. The dancing troup was fantastic and the venue, Ubud's royal palace, made for a perfect evening.

Ubud: Arrival

courtyard of our homestay

A very long flight and one stop over in Australia later, we arrived in Bali on June 5th. After ten hours on the plane, we were greeted to Indonesia with a two hour visa line. We just happened to get in the line with the slowest customs agent of all time, I picked the line of course, and it took so long that our checked bags were being put into the lost and found by the time we were finally given permission to enter the country. That wasn't all though, we still had a two hour taxi ride to get to our final destination, Ubud. Bali has incredible traffic, but our valiant and ever so cheerful taxi driver got us there safe and sound. We arrived at our homestay in Ubud tired, but excited to have finally made it to Bali. Quite the climate change for us, coming from winter in the Southern Hemisphere, but we started adjusting to the tropics and spent the evening relaxing and watching the lizards on our walls.

After a much needed rest we woke up the next day ready to take in Ubud. We are staying in a bungalow that is in a family's compound. We have a simple room and most importantly, a porch that looks out into a courtyard filled with jungle vegetation and chickens. The father of the house is a Balinese music teacher so we often times have entertainment while he is teaching his lessons. The mom and grandmother, who are both adorable, make us banana pancakes in the morning and bring us tea. We are woken at dawn by roosters and other mystery animals that live on our roof. But, despite the gongs and cock-a-doodle-dos, it is very peaceful and a wonderful retreat.

banana pancake breakfast

We set off that morning to check out the city and hike through the surrounding countryside. The city of Ubud is actually not very nice, it is super touristy and has terrible traffic. Walking through the large sweaty tourists and speedy motor bikes can be quite a chore, but once out of the downtown part of city we entered a beautiful landscape of rice terraces and lush tropical plants. We hiked through some terraced fields and through a few small villages. At one point we came upon a procession going through one of the villages. It was made up of a large amount of traditionally costumed men and women, chanting, playing instuments and singing, while parading through the streets. We also came across an empty hindu temple to explore, which was a treat as neither of us had ever seen this sort of temple before and Balinese architecture is very beautiful. But we had gotten a late start and overexteded ourselves a little in the tropical heat, now we've learned our lesson and reserve about noon to 3pm for nap time.

That evening we wanted to watch a traditional Balinese dance. Bali has a very interesting spiritual culture, much of which is centered around a unique dance form that we were very eager to see. Earlier, as we sat at a cafe cooling off, I had noticed a procession of women wearing traditional costumes carrying baskets and fruit on their heads, all walking towards a temple. I'm a little slow on the uptake, and didn't realize at first that they were all headed towards a huge temple festival that was to happen that night in town and they were bringing offerings to the Gods in the baskets to bless the event. Thankfully we got a tip off from the tourist office where we had inquired about dances, and headed to the festival. Balinese temple festivals are held for a variety of reasons, unfortunately we had no idea why this one was being held, but we rolled with it and tried to be as unintrusive as possible. As we found out they are basically a large social event centered around a performance to celebrate something or other, and everyone comes dressed to the nines and ready to have a good time. There were hundreds of people there, the men were dressed in long skirts and cloth hats, the women in long skirts and lace tops. Everyone was gathered with their friends, attempting to see a dance that was going on in the middle of the temple area. The dance being performed that night was the Barong and Rangda dance, which involves a dog-lion and witch character and some sort of battle between good and evil. We joined the pressing crowd to try and watch the performance. We were able to see the lion dancing to the music provided by the full gamelon orchestra. The crowd wasn't rowdy, but their were a LOT of people and everyone was trying to get closer and closer. After an hour or so we got very claustraphobic and decided to give up our prime viewing areas, as I was afraid that I was going to get squished. Unfortunately we were then unable to see the performance. Temple festivals go on all night long, and the dances can last more than six hours. It was just getting exciting, some of the masked performers were stabbing each other with knives, but we could no longer see. We hung out for a bit longer and eventually left. It was an amazing experience never the less, and what we saw of the performance was spectacular.

morning offering for the gods - easy to trip over!

mysterious village procession - on their way to a performance?