Someone I met in Melaka said sort of ominously "It's always good at the start." She's been traveling for over six months. She's from Norway and started the trip in Brazil. She's had some interesting adventures for sure. I hope I don't have her adventures though.
Singapore was what I would have been looking for in Shanghai I think. Very visible European heritage, pizazz (pizzaz?) and cosmopolitanism. But thinking on it again, I doubt that Shanghai would be like that. Hong Kong wasn't like that for me.
Anyway, the neatest thing about Singapore is how modern it is and how, well, cosmopolitan it is. The major groups are Chinese, Malay, and Indian and they let it all hang out. But I got tired of the pizazz. Can't I just spend some time at a WWII site without there being a super audio-visual guided tour? It was also quite expensive, comparatively. I would recommend anyone to visit though. EVERYONE speaks English.
Melaka was really great. It didn't take me long to see the main sites but I liked just hanging out in my really great guesthouse. Part of it was a 100-or-so year old blacksmithy and the other part a Chinese medicine shop. It was very airy and open but safe enough. There were four single-traveller girls staying in the dorm. It was right in the heart of Chinatown which has some beautiful old houses. I was across the street from a Malay style mosque and a Hindu temple, and down the road a bit was a Chinese temple. One night we awoke around 3:15 am to drums and music and shouts and lights. There was a procession to the Hindu temple. I scrambled for my camera and ran outside. A whole crowd of people dressed in their saris and whatnot were in the street around a big electric-lit garlanded shrine housing some statue which they brought into the temple. The guys were handing out some fruit it looked like too. It was so surreal. In the evenings you get Muslim calls to prayer blasting and echoing through the narrow streets. And then the smell of incense from all manner of shrines and temples everywhere.
And what makes me happier than a ruined church and very old grave markers? Melaka was at its prime in the 1400s under a muslim sultan, then fell to the Portugese who were then defeated by the Dutch who then ceded the town to the British in a treaty. The ruined church was originally Portugese. Inside they have displayed Dutch and Portugese grave markers as early as mid 1500s. There's a statue as well of St. Francis Xavier whose "incorrupt" body was temporarily buried there en route to his final resting place in Goa, after he died on Shangchuan Island (China, not far from Macau). What a friggen interesting guy. Buddy went all the way to Japan in the late 1500s.
So I made it to Kuala Lumpur today with two of the girls I met in Melaka. The Norwegian girl will probably travel with me to Pulau Perhentian on the east coast in a couple days. I miss the quiet and chill of Melaka but I'm sure KL has cool stuff to see. Massive mosques I think.
It's been just a week. It's still hard to believe I have over two months more. I love hearing stories from other travelers. Everybody is so different. I hope I don't feel agitated and sick of traveling by the end. I don't want to be bitter. It feels so good to just do whatever I want whenever I want and to not be cold. I don't mind the heat.
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