Discovering the history of Malacca

There are many things to see in Malacca that have Malay, Chinese, British, Dutch and Portuguese influences and today we had a day planned of walking to explore most of them. We began our day at a museum that has been made inside a replica boat on the river front. The museum itself was interesting but it's information lacked enthusiasm and it was hard to read board after board of solid text. Unfortunately the most memorable part of the visit was when it came to needing a wee and I had our worst toilet experience to date. I won't go into too much detail as I hope this will be erased from my memory soon but it involved a disgusting squat toilet and cockroaches. I miss normal toilets and hygiene! After that point I was traumatised and needed a sit down and we left pretty soon afterwards. We did learn about the different European countries who invaded Malacca though all mainly on the rumour of it being a gold mine. Afterwards we had a ride on a circular platform that rises you high in the air and rotates to give you 360 degree views of the city. We got quite a nice perspective of the area and even managed to work out how to get to the mall we were aiming to visit next. After arriving at the mall we visited the supermarket and invested in some lunch foods before returning to our hostel to dump our shopping bags and cool down from the heat. After a short break we visited an area with Dutch buildings including a church before heading up to St. Peter's Hill which had the ruins of a church at the top. Our last stop was to the ruins of the old fort which was a small tower but at the museum we had seen how extensive the fort had been so that gave us some perspective when looking at this area. Our last stop of the day was on a river cruise down the river that made Malacca such a successful trading port. We saw some beautiful buildings and street art and even some monitor lizards in the water. The round trip took 30 minutes and was a nice end to our extensive sight seeing day. We returned to the cafe we visited for dessert last night and had some great food. The place is so sweet, our table was an old singer sewing machine table. We came back quite early so watched a Danish film in the movie room that had English subtitles. It's so nice having somewhere else to hang out rather than always in the room. Quite a nice day overall exploring Malacca.Les mer