Melaka

After a blissful week of beaches and blue, blue seas, Rosa and I made our way to the city of Melaka in Southwest Malaysia.  It took us several hours at the bus station to map out our next move. The guidebooks boasted that Melaka was a bustling city, ripe with tourist sites to enjoy. Four and a half hours after leaving Mersing, we arrived into a gleaming, well-designed city. 

In pictures, perhaps it looks like this. But if you look more closely you will also note the dearth of people. At all times of day, the streets were empty. During the day we figured that this was down to the heat and humidity; but the nights were no different. Even the famous Jonker Street night market lacked any kind of crowd. 

Despite the lack of atmosphere, the city itself was very beautiful and we stumbled across a few gems such as this guy, a tribute to Malaysia's Mr. Universe: 

The colonial past was also evident in the architecture. As it turns out, due to Melaka's strategic shipping location on the Straits of Melacca, the Portuguese came in to set up shop for a cool hundred years. The Dutch took over from there until the British decided it was their turn to run things for a while. In 1957 they decided they'd had enough fun and handed the city over to the newly formed Malaysia. Oh, colonialism. The upside, I suppose, were these beautifully colourful buildings: 

With the Portuguese, also came Catholicism. St. Francis Xavier Church is built on a hill which makes it looks like it's falling over. I don't know how many practising Catholics there are in Malaysia these days but it's definitely a relic: 

And of course there's the biscuit emporium:

Melaka proper also boasts a beautiful riverside/canal side walk that goes on for miles and miles. We walked from outside of the city to in it, again running into very few people. 

The city is famous for its trishaws, most of which are kitted out in lights, sound systems and tacky kitsch. As it turns out, there were more trishaws than people wanting to ride in them and it made me wonder if there was some kind of post-Eid, midsummer clear out.

In its tourist advertising campaign, Malaysia advertises itself as 'Malaysia, truly Asia.' In some ways, I can see this truth. The population is diverse--ethnicities, nationalities and even religions to an extent. You can find Chinese food as easily as Indian as easily as regional Malaysian variations. There's also a peaceful coexistence of people, of architecture: 

But to be Truly Asia, I think a city, a country needs to have a certain kind of frenetic energy. Melaka lacked this. The beaches lacked this. Even Kuala Lumpur lacked this. This is not a judgment; we were just surprised with the level of sleepiness in each place we went. Cultural, time of year or otherwise, I'd be interested to know. 

Somehow, I think Malaysia sees it differently: