Got up late despite of wake up call at 6.45 a.m. Rushed through breakfast and ended up being picked up only at 9.00 a.m. Grrrr. The tours or at least Tour 51 is NOT one I would recommend. We were picked up at the hotel by car and then taken to the Information Centre. Then we had this long wait and the tour that was supposed to start at 9.00 a.m. only took off at 10.00 am. That too, after much fuss and indecision about which bus the various people had to be loaded onto. Since there were about 7 of us for the Malaka tour, they put us into a gray van. After sitting around a while, another man came, off loaded us and put us into this ramshackle old van. What an inauspicious start off. Finally we got onto the real ‘tour’ it was about a two hour drive to Malaka with the guide doing very little ‘guiding’! Almost everyone was soon bored enough to fall asleep.
There was a couple from Australia, a lady secretary also from Australia and a very amorous couple from Saudi Arabia. As an aside I may add that I thought us Asians are conservative where our affections or rather demonstration of our affections are concerned, especially in public and I had heard that the Arabian countries are much more so. Maybe things are changing, for certainly I saw no such conservativeness where these two were concerned. Surprising too since the lady was all covered up in black with only her eyes showing through the veil. The veil of course came askew very soon in the excess of their demonstrations!!!! Raised eyebrows by yours truly!!
Then the guide woke up to say we were entering Malaka. Of course all of us perked up in spite of the weather. Our guide was optimistic that the rain would blow away, but sadly enough his prediction did not hold true. It only cleared up when we left Malaka – or perhaps we left the rain in Malaka for the sunnier climes of KL.
I don’t know whether it was the rain, or whether all tours to Malaka are a bit of a wash out – but for seeing another city – it was rather a waste of a day.
Anyway, we were shown a picturesque Portuguese village, a fishing village, a beach or rather, mud flats which passed as a beach. A curious thing was that most of the houses, especially the older ones, were built on stilts. The guide’s explanation was that it was a precaution against snakes and also to make the houses ‘portable’. What a sweet idea. You dislike you neighbourhood or want a change of scenery, you just pack up your house and literally move house!!!
We were shown a Muslim cemetery, where the tombstones over men were pointed and those over women were flat. Then there was the Chinese Cemetery which is built so that on certain days, the relations come and spend the entire day with their dead loved ones.
We also saw St Peter’s Church both the old and new and the place where his body was kept. The old church is in ruins and it was quite a dicey deal climbing up the stairway in the pouring rain balancing ourselves and our umbrellas.
We were given 45 minutes to visit the old church. Just below the church was a museum which I would have loved to have visited. Our guide never told us about it. As usual Sunethra and I wandered over (rather too late though) and discovered that the intriguingly shaped building was a palace/museum. The entrance fee was only 2RM. I’m sure the stupid guide could have let us go in out of the rain. Everyone would have appreciated that! My friend Kumudu told me that the museum was quite worth a visit. Of course this she mentioned after we came back, since she thought it would be included in the tour!
Anyway, after that we were taken to a lovely Chinese restaurant for a typical Chinese lunch. It was a lovely lunch indeed with water-melon for dessert and green tea to wash it all down with.
To finish off the tour, we were taken to the Jonkers walk in China Town and given half an hour or so to explore the rustic streets and mysterious Chinese shops. There was also a beautiful Chinese Buddhist temple to see.
After that we all piled back into the van and were driven back to the hotel. As far as tours go, it was rather disappointing cos’ we didn’t get to see much, perhaps partially due to the rain. Perhaps another tour operator may do better?
We had a brief rest and then visited the Sogo supermarket to do some shopping. We bought dinner at a hawker street place. It was a nice dinner of Spicy rice and chicken and soup (I can’t remember what it was called though) the owner was sweet! He went through a great deal of trouble doing a demo to show us what would go into the meal. We had him pack it for us to take back to the hotel to eat in comfort. We finished it off with peanut ice-cream from our forays into the supermarket. Today was a nice day cos we were not too tired out. We watched a bit of TV (the TV channels in the hotel need to be looked into – there’s quite a bit of snowing and only one or two channels show programs in English) and then went off to the land of nod.
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