We spent the day cruising around the older sections of Melaka on bicycle. In fact, the very same ones I'd used when I was here during Chinese New Year. To my surprise, the hostel owner who rents out the bicycles even managed to remember my name. It was also a delight to catch up and practice my broken French with Mohammed, manager of the Eastern Heritage.
Compared to my last trip though, Melaka feels like a ghost town this time round. With the absence of tourists, the majority of the shops either closed very early or didn't appear to open at all! Because of this, it was a lot harder finding a decent place for authentic laksa or chendol, but at least I finally got to sample the (yes, definitely over-rated) chicken ball rice that demanded a half-hour wait during the Chinese New Year holidays.
We also found the time to check out the Cheng Ho Cultural Museum, dedicated to China's most famous sea explorer. Too much reading and blurry illustrations unfortunately, and the place took a little too long to cover. What really amazed me though was the sheer magnitude of the Chinese fleets in terms of size and numbers. It required something along the lines of 20,000 people to pull off one of these seafaring expeditions. On board were doctors, engineers, government officials, merchants... basically enough folks to get a whole new civilization started in another part of the world.
Wi-fi access came courtesy of a cup of iced machia-whatever-ya-call-it at Starbucks. Yes, despite it being a historical city and all, Melaka DOES have a couple of big shopping malls and her share of Starbucks, McDonald's, and KFCs. The connection was pretty darn slow though until 6 pm, when four laptop users (who were still there long after every drop had been drained dry from their cups) promptly left the establishment. I think they were using the joint as their 'office' and 6 pm meant time to go home.
We also met an over-friendly young man by the name of Henry who stopped us in the middle of the road and proceeded to ask me every question that you could possibly ask about a person over the course of a lifetime. Unfortunately he tried to do it in under 10 minutes, to the point where I just answered him with the first thing that came to my mind. At least his enthusiasm in getting to know us didn't lead on to the usual 'by the way, do you think you could you help me? I need some money to...'.
Currently we're stranded at a 24-hour internet cafe, waiting for the rain to die down. Prior to leaving the Eastern Heritage a couple of hours ago, we heard and saw plenty of thunder and lightning in the distance. But Trigger, in her infinitely adorable wisdom, assured me that lightnings occur on a daily basis and that it was no clear indication of rain. So we cruised around some more until the tiny droplets became drizzles, and the drizzles became bit water pellets. And now we're wet in an air-conditioned room.
Hopefully tomorrow will be a clear day. And hopefully we'll both be feeling alright. Got a lot of grounds to cover.
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