Kuala Lumpur to Melaka

We're still not used to using Couchsurfing for surfing rather than hosting, so after sending out a bunch of requests way too late we made our way into town. The bus terminal was poorly signposted and the tourist information was on a 2 hour plus lunch 'hour', but with the assistance of a friendly tout and an uncle who wanted to show off a baby we found a bus into town.



Melaka boasts UNESCO world heritage status, but compared to equivalents in Japan we're not really sure why. Nice enough town though, and we decided to give it a chance by staying over Christmas.

Melaka has the rather dubious privilege of having been taken over by a bunch of different colonial powers. First a hundred years of the Portuguese, then a hundred of the Dutch, then two hundred of the British. The Japanese even had a go, persecuting the Chinese population for a while during WWII until the British recaptured Melaka. As a result of all this, there are brick built, red-painted colonial buildings lining the old town, some fortification ruins, old churches, a very artificial-looking mini windmill, some funny street names, a vibrant street market and a slew of excellent restaurants catering to the tourist trade.

The most popular style of cooking is the Chinese-Malay 'Nyonya', and if I were a food critic I'm sure I could write a whole lot more about that. Tasty, anyway. We quickly learnt that price is no indicator of quality though, as the 60 Ringgit Chinese seafood dinner we had was no better and arguably worse than the 5 Ringgit lunch we had elsewhere.

We spent two nights at the Kota Lodge, which had a reasonable air-conditioned room rate but really grumpy staff who took three promptings to even look at the broken shower and then implied it was our fault.

Camara picked us up on the third day. He was constantly on the hustle as his phone never stopped ringing, making transactions in at least four other countries with his family network, moving money between banks - 400 Ringgit here, 600 there - and sometimes shouting quite aggressively into the phone in his South African dialect. It seemed like the last thing he needed was a couple of tourists to show around but he took his hosting duties quite seriously, taking us first to his spartan apartment, then lunch, a beautiful seaside mosque where Hozumi had to wear a concealing robe and a roadside stall where Hozumi had her first coconut milk straight from the coconut. All the while driving one-handed and trading gemstones around the world.

The third day at Camara's we spent at a local wi-fi cafe and Indian restaurant, as Camara had lent his car to some Chinese guy for the day. The problem was that when we wanted to return, we couldn't connect with Camara no matter how many times we tried calling. We eventually resorted to checking back at his apartment every hour or so until we found the lights on but the door locked... We knocked for ages, shouted hello, even tried throwing pebbles at his bedroom window as 11pm approached and we began to wonder if we'd have anywhere to sleep that night. Thankfully he turned up around 11pm, all smiles and apologies, saying he'd spent the day trying to get his mobile fixed, left a key with the car-park attendant and wondered where we'd been all day! That night, as I helped him set up Skype, we finally felt at ease with our entrepreneurial host, and it was a shame we had to leave the next day to make room for his next Indian Couchsurfer, Sidd.

We did meet one last time though, as Camara insisted on taking us out for a 'Japanese' lunch along with Sidd and Camara's girlfriend. Japanese food in Asia was something we had to try just once for comparison, but it was as bad as we expected. Camara greatly enjoyed his 'curry-don', the decor was spot-on, the sushi was half OK, with good fish but terrible rice, the beef and noodles were good but different and the mayonnaise things and chawan-mushi were abominations that had no place on a dining table. Fun experience.