Day 35: More exploring in Malacca

Today we wanted to explore the western side of the river, as yesterday we'd mostly stuck to the colonial eastern side of the river. The day started moderately early at 9am, with a nice walk along the canal following the same route that we'd taken in the boat yesterday evening. We'd seen a lot of street art and colourful decoration on the buildings either side of the river, so off we went. We walked for probably an hour along one bank before reaching a point where we couldn't proceed much further, so turned around and walked back along the opposite bank.

They've actually done quite a good job here with the canal (apologies I'm using canal and river interchangeably), with ornate fencing, plants and lamps along the edges. Aside from the occasional burned-out hulk or crumbling building it was actually quite picturesque - still a long way from the canals in Amsterdam, but enticing nonetheless. Also saw a couple of very large lizards swimming in the water, both of them were probably close to 2m long!

Next stop was the Maritime Museum, where there was a large display about Malacca's history inside the hold of a replica Portuguese galleon. It was interesting enough, but most of the displays overlapped a lot with others that we'd seen at other museums previously. It's interesting to see how it mostly all toes a party line of some sort; in that the pre-colonial era was described as almost utopian, the Portuguese were/are absolutely hated for trying to convert everyone to Catholicism and imposing enormous taxes on trade, the Dutch were neutral-ish though disliked for taxes, and the British were despised for deliberately destroying the town as a way to promote the competing George Town settlement. Surprisingly the displays aren't that harsh on the Japanese occupiers, maybe they were just less brutal here than in other areas? They're usually just described as bumbling incompetents and unable to govern (possibly because there was a world war happening? I dunno).

There was also an interesting display about the first person to actually circumnavigate the world who was a Malay. I'd read about this a couple of years ago and forgotten - he was a Malay who met Magellan on his earlier eastbound voyage, and travelled back to Spain & Portugal with him. He then went on the westbound voyage around the Americas with Magellan, and it was when they arrived in the Indonesia/Malay archipelago (after Magellan had been killed in the Philippines) and he could understand the language that they all realised they'd found the Spice Islands and travelled around the world. So when the Malay guy who's name I've forgotten arrived home, he would've been the first person to circumnavigate the globe - at least a year or two before the dregs of Magellan's fleet arrived back in Spain.

By the time we finished with the museum it was lunchtime, so we sampled a local delicacy - chicken rice balls. These are exactly what you think they are! Meatball-sized servings of rice with minced chicken that have been steamed in chicken broth, with a plate of steamed Hainanese chicken on the side. Delicious!

After lunch we wandered around the western side of the river a bit, before visiting our final museum in Malacca - the Baba & Nyonya Heritage museum. Baba (men) and Nyonya (women) are the descendants of Chinese immigrants to Malaysia, so they're basically half Malay and half Chinese with a unique culture of their own, specific to this area of peninsular Malaysia.

The museum was in an old mansion that was previously occupied by a very wealthy nyonya family. We went on a guided tour for an hour which was fascinating, and a great way to see how the 18th century 1%-ers lived. Reminded us both a lot of the Chong Fat Zhee house that we'd seen in George Town, just in terms of the architecture flourishes and the styling and so on.

Last stop for the day was Harmony Street, where there's a Hindu temple, a mosque, a Chinese temple (Taoist, Confucian and Chinese-Buddhist), and a Buddhist temple all within about 200m of each other. The Hindu temple was closed so we couldn't go in, but we had a look around the mosque and the two temples. The Chinese temple was originally built in 1645 and most of the original structure remained! Very lavishly decorated as well, and with so many classic Chinese touches like golden letters, artworks, smoking dragon reliefs on the wall, stone lions guarding the gates and so on. I really love the Chinese aesthetic.

After an ice cream, some local baked goods and a drink at a semi-famous cafe called Geographer Cafe we retreated to the hotel, again tired and footsore. We had our showers and headed back out for dinner at a Portuguese/Malay restaurant. Supposedly the cuisine is quite distinctive - heavy on the citrus and onion to combat scurvy during long voyages, but I couldn't discern much hint of that. The food was still nice, but not quite the experience I was hoping for.

Off to bed as another thunderstorm rolled over the town (they're a semi-daily feature here, though often the thunder doesn't amount to much rain). Checking out of our nice hotel tomorrow but it's not quite the end of Malacca for us! We've decided to spend a couple of days at the flashpacking hostel next door to catch up on work since we've been so busy here and in Singapore. We're also going to plan out the next couple of stages of our trip which will definitely be in Sarawak, Brunei and Sabah. Have decided to skip on Kuala Lumpur for now, as we were there not long ago and we're about 80% set on attending the Formula 1 race there in October.Read more