Melaka Night Zoo, Malacca

(this happened on 24th January)

So another late night means another late morning to follow.

I crawled out of bed around 10:30am – Sofia told me to go and get some breakfast (donuts) so she could sleep on, otherwise my fiddling on the computer and other stuff will keep her awake. So to the Big Apple Donut stand it was and another truly delicious coffee and donut combination. My intention was to follow it up with an hour or so’s wander around the town but first to the ATM machine to get some cash. Dam, dam and dam again none of my cards will work, twice already on this trip we have had to call the bank as they have put a security check on the cards, even though I have already told them our itinerary they obviously still don’t trust us with our own money, it’s a shame they did not look after all their customers as well as they seem to be looking after us! However after a phone call today it would turn out that the cards are fine so hopefully it’s a problem with the system this end and even more hopefully it’s sorted soon as the cash in hand runs out around lunchtime tomorrow I estimate! So after all the calling to the bank Sofia was obviously awake so she got up and dressed.

We need to find somewhere to go after Melaka which is not proving very easy, we are trying to keep our budget down. We were considering Tioman Island on the east coast but it would appear this is monsoon season and most resorts don’t open until March, there is one that we can afford that opens on Feb 1^st but so far my emails and calls have gone unanswered so that’s not looking good. So that idea is defunct, we need a new destination. I am sure there are hundreds of places to visit, but the ones we see are spread far and wide, plus because we are traveling with so much luggage and as a group of five, self driving is probably out of my comfort zone over here as the road craft is a bit dicey and I would rather leave the driving to others while here, although as we found out yesterday that’s not always the best option!

So we were reading the guide books, checking out the web sites and drawing lots of blanks. The Malaysian holiday industry has not fully embraced the internet , which means lots of Hotels either don’t have websites or, if they do they don’t have a way of booking rooms online or if they do they want you to give all of your details, credit card, passport number absolutely everything over non secure emails or web pages rather than HTTPs ons, I have already booked one hotel that way and I refuse to do it again, it’s a stupid thing to do once, to do it twice would be really asking for trouble. So we finally decided to try a place called Desaru – but of course all our attempts to book on line were futile, and all our emails went unreturned.

So although we check out on Tuesday we still have no idea where we are going or how we get there.

We eventually gave up and decided to go for a walk, Sofia in her nearly new and worn only once shoes she had bought in Manila, I was pleased as I really like them on her, well they lasted all of 50 yards from the hotel before one of them self destructed! Sofia had to hobble around barefooted until we could get in the mall and believe me the bloody pavements are hot! Now the problem we are having is shoe shops over here seem to stop at around size 39 for almost all there shoes and Sofia is a 41. Bit of a problem. She eventually found something, not perfect and sadly not as sexy as her recently defunct pair, but shoes until we can find something better.

We wandered over to the Chinese area (Jonkers Street).and were going to try Dr Fish again but they were closed, so we went for a drink and something to eat at a place called Calense Art Café, it was a good choice and we spent a leisurely hour or so there.

We headed back to the hotel where after a freshen up we were down in the lobby waiting for the driver (not the same one we had yesterday!) to take us to Melaka Night Zoo, we had decided against wandering around the zoo in the heat of the day. A lovely evening cool and pleasant and the animals were active, more so than in the heat of the day. We went on a little trailer train around the zoo, but also got to explore on foot, we arrived at 8:00pm and did not leave until 10:45pm. Sofia fell in love with the Slow Lorris and came nose to nose with a Bintarong. The biggest cobra I have ever seen impressive, the cloud leopard took our breath away, and we got very close to white rhinos, giraffes, elephants the works! We enjoyed the white civet cat but it was a bit smelly and the fruits bats…. Well they were very fruity.

OK it’s not the Singapore Zoo but the fact is we all had a really good few hours wandering around in the cool evening air and the fact that there were so few people meant it almost felt like a private viewing, recommended. The drive back just like the drive to the zoo was uneventful and so we took the drivers card for future use.

We got him to drop us at Jonkers and we wandered around a bit and by chance we found the same café Sofia and I had visited earlier, so we took the others in to enjoy the food and drink. We all had supper and played cards together, Gabrielle is a bit too good and keeps beating us at our own game. She and Sasha had, had their photos done at one of the booths, the type that lets you add loads of special effects, it was so good the owners put one up in the booth to attract new customers.

The stroll back to the hotel was pleasant and at around 1:00am.

Much more pleasant than a walk home from a pub or club in the UK, I did not hear anybody shouting out “what the F you looking at”?  and the girls never had anybody shout “oy show us yer tits”. The more time I spend here, the less I want to go back to England, I really think I could enjoy living in Malaysia.

Hell Ride From A'Formosa

(this happened on 23rd Janaury 2009) in Malacca

At 1:00pm we all met at reception, we asked the hotel to organize us a taxi to take us to the A’Famosa Waterpark and bring us back later.

We all piled in the vehicle which was being driven by an old man of I would say Chinese decent. Our day was about to really start, this guy was driving on his own special road, he would go up the inside of traffic cut in at traffic lights and approach junctions way to fast.He also did not seem to understand English. We were all clearly not comfortable with his driving, he actually hit the umbrella of s poor woman, he was just inches away from hitting her and a couple of times at junctions rolled back so that the cars behind us had to hit the horn, he did manage to get us there in about an hour. So after a very eventful journey we ended up at the waterpark.

For the next four hours, everything was sunny and relaxing, the waterpark is very good with a wave pool, a selection of waterslides a lazy river which Sofia and I were floating around while the girls read and sun bathed and Basty threw himself down every waterslide he could find in the park. The rubber rings were quite difficult for Sofia to squeeze over her bust and hips, she did get a bit stuck when she was washed into the shallows in the wave pool, I had to rescue her as she kept getting knocked over by the waves, very funny (for me). The girls eventually got in the water and I think they enjoyed themselves.

We watched a Gibbon put on a world class, Olympic gold medal winning performance on an island in the middle of a lake on the adjacent wild life park, it was a real joy to watch as it really looked like it was having a great time.

The weather was perfect, it was hard to see the muslim ladies covered from head to toe in black even when swimming and even worse was them not swimming while all their families did.

We all enjoyed ourselves and at 6:30 we all piled back into the taxi and he set off. The next hour and a bit was a very scary period, I don’t know what he had been up to while we were in the park but I suspect it involved either drugs or alcohol or both as his driving was worse by a magnitude. At one stage he was doing his usual trick of making his own road by going down the layby actually onto the grass verge, I look up quite shocked at what he was doing and as I did I realized he was closing fast on a cyclist and although in broad daylight he obviously was not seeing it, at the last minute I  shouted out “what are you doing? STOP” at that he seemed to finally act and instead of smashing the bike straight up the back he caught him with the wing mirror at about 40mph depositing the cyclist on the road, I can not tell you any more than that as our hero did not stop, he just kept driving. I at that point should have stopped him and we all should have got out, but we were in the middle of nowhere we knew and so we stuck with it, our next adventure was when he got to a police checkpoint and seemed unwilling to stick around and talk to the police, at the check point it was also clear our driver was lost and we had to turn around, for the rest of the journey we were all very unhappy and a couple of times I screamed for the driver to get onto the right side of the road. Finally back at the Hotel, we reported him to the girl at the hotel reception desk, recommending they never use him again.

No one had eaten all day so we told the kids to get ready and we all headed out to the street market at Jonkers Walk.

As we walked through the mall there were Chinese dancers that we watched for a while, Sofia thought they were quite cute very gay guys who were more graceful than the girls, what do I know?

When we got to the street there was a man with bull whips who was putting on a show of punching his fingers into coconuts, we left the kids to watch and carried on down the street, we found the Limau Limau Café still open in the evening for a change, so we ducked in from the crazy heat and got fruit juice while we waited for the kids, we waited and waited but there was no sign of them so we ordered food, it came, we ate it and had some beer, still no children.

So we continued on through the market and waited up by the place we had discussed having food, they turned up as soon as we got there, so we fed them.

We all headed back to the market, Sofia’s new flip flops were hurting her toes so Basty kindly swopped shoes with me. The girls went off and we saw a huge iguana sitting on a mans shoulder and another man having a tattoo in the street.

So much colour and life and bats dancing above it all with Samba music playing and stars in the velvet sky.

Sofia, Basty and I headed back to the hotel.

We watched Boston Legal but could only watch one episode as the next one is the final episode.

(this happened on 22nd January 2009)

First order today was to move rooms to one with a double bed, yeaaahhh.

We decided not to even try to wake up the kids, we just left them just stopping to tell them we had moved to a different room.

There is a very tasty looking doughnut place in the mall across the road, so that was where we were headed. The Big Apple is the name of the Doughnut place and having bought two I was surprised to find that a cup of coffee comes with a free doughnut as well, so I had to endure  a third, Oh dear the things we have to do.

They were delicious and I will be back! Sofia and I then went for a walk though the mall because we needed some bathroom essentials. We enjoyed a gentle stroll and then went back to the room to drop things off.

Today is a ‘rest’ day so we decided to go to Limau Limau Café for some lunch, I had a very enjoyable lasagne and Sofia had some pitta bread with salad which she also enjoyed. We played some cards for a while, after that we wandered back though the wonderful Melaka streets to the Mall which we use as an air conditioned walkway to avoid the searing heat (as much as I love it) and we decided to find out what was on at the cinema – Inkheart at 7:00pm so we decided that would be good, we headed back to the hotel and knocked on the kids room door, they were still asleep (well what would you expect it was only 3:00pm) we told them to meet us at the cinema at 6:30pm and we returned to our new room to check out the net, and have a little read.

We met the kids outside the cinema, they were carrying a box of donuts!

It strikes me that the cinema although good quality and well priced is not as popular in Malaysia as it is in the Philippines or Thailand as this film was new in and the cinema was 98% empty and that was as busy as we have seen it.

Mind you, to be fair they do seem to have a lot of Malaysian language films so maybe they get the queues, either way it’s like having our own cinema, which is cool as it costs just GB£1.80 each. We all enjoyed the film (Inkheart).

Afterwards we went to Burger King as Basty had a major need for some degenerate western burger. I then headed out to get a massage, the girls were too late to have the photo booth session they had planned, so they went off to the park to take some pictures and apparently had quite a following, they then did karaoke in a near by KTV bar.

Sofia and Basty checked out the toast café (not it’s name but what it is), Sofia had whole wheat toast with coconut butter (yummy) and Basty had tuna toasties. When I returned Sofia was already in the room.

I spent a few hours updating the blogs and wandering the internet.

A Day Trip to Port Dickson, It's OK

(this happened on21st January 2009) 

After a crappy nights sleep in single beds!!! We got up and got ourselves ready,

We had arranged a driver to pick us up at midday and take us all to Port Dickson which according to both our guide books is a seaside resort that the KL residents head too at weekends, with dirty sludgy water and a 15km long beach, The Rough Guide says “The rather dismal strip of the coast” “polluted sea” “It’s not much more than a few shops and banks”. So you can imagine we were rather unsure about it, but decided to take a risk and, guess what?

Yep, we had a great time on a soft white sandy beach in a crystal clear, bath water warm sea.  The road from Melaka to Port Dickson was full of interesting towns and lush greenery.

So we all went into town and ate at a very local only type of place (menu in Malay only), we choose blind a bit of a lucky dip but we enjoyed the food, especially the fact that it cost just about £1.20 each including drinks.

Our driver was superb, more than happy to take us around with a smile on his face. 

Then we walked through the shops to try to find something to wear for swimming in because of course after reading the guide books we had not bothered brining anything with us.

Sofia got a tube of Malaysian fabric (very pretty) to wrap around herself, got Basty some shorts, Sasha can’t swim due to a new tattoo and I only wanted to play football and paddle anyway. We then drove back to the beach, at some shops there Gabrielle found a rather glam sarong in black with large red hibiscus blossoms.

Sofia’s flip flops which have lasted the last 2 ½ years finally died and the pavement was burning her feet so she basically grabbed the first pair of flip flops that would fit her.

The water was very, very warm and felt lovely and there were very few people on a very long beach.  We stayed chillin’ on the beach until 6:30pm then headed back to Meleka which is about an hour drive. We saw monkeys on both trips and Sofia asked the driver if the rivers had crocs in them and he said yes.

Back at the hotel we freshened up ready for the evening. We also booked an extra two nights as there is still lots to do here and we also asked if we could move to a double bed tomorrow, we can.

Upon returning to Melaka we headed out for Sushi and all had our fill and enjoyed it. We also tried a place called Zen for coffee and beautiful looking cakes – but it was all illusion the coffee was shit as were the cakes. Leaving the kids back to the hotel then Sofia and I went to get massages, there was a 40 minute wait until 11:00pm so we went for a walk and found a café for a drink and some cards. The café seemed to specialize in toast, I must tell the kids they would love it. Chocolate Toast and Peanut Butter Toast were just two of the options.

Back at the massage spa, I had full body aromatherapy massage and Sofia had a foot massage.Back to the hotel for two more episodes of Boston Legal, only three episodes left.

Time to leave Kuala Lumpur and head back to Malacca

Head from Kuala Lumpur back to Malacca

Up today packing and moving on again, back to Meleka but this time with Gabrielle coming along for the ride.

As much as we enjoyed the Hotel Puri our budget dictates that we need to start spending less, so back on the net and Trip Advisor (highly recommended) and a well reviewed but cheaper hotel was the Fenix Inn. 

We already knew where it was and although not in the really cool Chinese area, it’s right next to the malls so all that will happen is we will be doing the same routes but in the other direction.

The van was waiting for us, the Malaysians do seem to be like us Brits as far as promptness goes – Germans or Americans could do with a few lessons.

The drive back to Melaka was again a joy, the Malaysian roads we have encountered so far are smooth and not to busy (except obviously in the centre of KL).

We were dropped at the hotel and soon had our bags in our rooms.

The Fenix Inn (Pheonix) does not have any of the beauty or charm of the Puri, but as hotels go, it is clean, the reception were very efficient and all the staff seem smiley. The rooms are small but clean and it does have the benefit of wired internet (although it is very slow)!

Once settled in the hotel we all set off towards Jonkers Walk (China town area) and to the Limau Limau café which is simply a relaxing and cool place to eat and drink.

Then a walk around the town through the mall (much cooler than walking the street way).

For the evening it was again Jonkers Walk and we had food and drinks at the Geographers Café. Very tired we headed back to the room for Boston Legal, we are getting dangerously close to the last episode.