Melaka: A European City in Asia

Melaka: quiet, charming, historic, delicious. The word that best suits our first two days in Melaka: surprise. After Singapore, we wondered how we might enjoy the next town.

Melaka is beautiful. It's charming and full of character. All the buildings are pastel, two-stories high and cropped close together. The city is spread out but small, occupying just a few big blocks. It was Malaysian first, then Portugese, Dutch, and British respectively, before regaining its roots. The city acquired fame early in the fifteenth century as a spice trading hub, and today there are still Chinese medicine shops and Nyonyan food stalls showcasing the herbs and spices in strange and fascinating ways.

Our River View patio

River View Guesthouse is a lovely colonial house with ancient dark hard woods, nestled among a row of colorful townhouses lining the river promenade. Framed by gardens, it smells like jasmine at night, and has a patio on the second story overlooking the river. The kind owners of River View, Mina and Raymond, have armed us with a map of the city and several carefully recommended options for dining. Daily Mina also leaves wonderful little cakes for our gastronomic enjoyment at the kitchen table.

Our choice for our first night of Malaccan food is a family-run Indian restaurant close to our homestay, Selvam, specializing in Southern Indian food.  The menu options are simply chicken, mutton or fish. We each received banana leaf placemats and a nice Indian man walked around with a cluster of stainless steel buckets dumping great spoonfuls of rice, cucumber salad, spicy pumpkin curry, and a mustard seed coleslaw, each in their own separate tidy pile on our banana leaf. Then we look side to side to make sure it's culturally correct (we were not given a fork), and dig in with our hands. This had to be the most authentic Indian cuisine we've ever had, and also the most fun!

Walking home along the river bank is very romantic - it feels almost like Paris with its iron lampposts marking the way, or Amsterdam with its red tiled canal walk and tightly knit concrete houses. Light blue twinkle lights dangle like jungle vines from a long arbor hugging the bend of the river on the bank opposite our homestay. Ah, but this is Melaka.

The beds here are plush and cozy, accented by cool white linen. We sleep about ten hours each night, exhausted from eight hours of walking each day. We woke up to a passionate thunder and lightning storm and made some coffee to enjoy on our covered garden patio while we observed the village life. The patio is just off our bedroom and feels like our own, as rain pours down and I don't have a thing to do but watch it and revel in this small delicious luxury.

Once the storm clears we're off to discover the pastel majesty of the Dutch square, which dates back to 1660. The ambiance of the square is Salmon. Or perhaps Old Brick, though everything is made from concrete. The clock tower sits at the square's center with a Victorian fountain, bordered by the minimalist Dutch church, and town hall - all painted "salmon." The effect is quite festive, emphasized by the twenty modern rickshaws, bedazzled with flowers and neon lights and bumping with music ranging from Celine Dion to David Guetta, they offer personal - and loud - tours of the city.

A short hike up the hill from here leads us to the ruins of St Paul's Church, and a picture-window view of red tile roofs stretching out to the Straits of Malacca. The church roof is long gone, but a dozen hand scripted tombstones lean heavily against the walls, carved with stories of brave men and women who died at the ripe old age of 29 in the 1600s. We tip a jaunty Malay man rocking out on harmonica, and make our way to the old fort at the bottom of the hibiscus edged staircase. Several canons guard the fort, with elaborate curly-q iron work. Past the fort sits the Istana Ke Sultanan - a dark timber palace on stilts that was home to the Sultan in the 1500s. Not a single nail was used in the construction of this impressive house. It's currently a museum and houses scenes from Malay court life as well as a fabulous collection of traditional garments and delicate gold hair pieces.

At this point we are dragging our feet and cranky with hunger. We head back to the river for lunch at Riverine. Our table is on the promenade and comes with a sleeping cat and her rambunctious black and white kitten below my chair. Chris orders the Ayam Pongteh - a traditional Peranakan style chicken stew braised with tauchu, gula Melaka, soya sauce gravy with potato, and sweetened with sugar cane. Peranakan and Nyonyan food are unique to this area, referring to the merging of Chinese and Malay appetites. Myself, I am after Grandma's Chicken Rendang - curry with dried coconut and Nyonyan herbs. After this feast we allow ourselves an hour or two of relaxation before heading out to dinner, which promises to be a lengthy affair, but one we've been looking forward to.

By 8pm we are in line at Capitol Satay, maybe 30 people between us and a table at this popular local peanut satay restaurant. An hour and a half later we are seated at a large round stainless steel table with a hole in the middle of it. The restaurant lacks atmosphere and bears close resemblance to my junior high school cafeteria. A woman places a stainless steel bucket of peanut sauce in our table hole and adjusts the propane beneath our table. We meander over to the large open fridge where meats, seaweed, bits of fish, and even some angry birds (fish balls for the children we are told) are stacked in neat piles. We fill our tray with goodies - at RM0.90 per stick, how can you go wrong? Our peanut sauce is boiling when we return to the table and we eagerly plop our satay sticks into the strange fondue pot. The chicken is tasty, the fish balls are odd, and the fried bread is delicious. We forgo the seaweed, which we both agree looks like grass wrapped around a stick. Rabbit food. Overall the food is good, but not worth the long wait. However, it's great fun and a good experience to remember the town by.

Chinatown

Kampung Morten stilt house

More exploring to be done today. We walk north along the river to Kampung Morten, a small settlement of historic stilt villages. Many have now been renovated to serve as guest houses and as a result they have a similar look: red corrugated steel roof, yellow walls, and fencing around the porch leaving the stilts below exposed. The village makes sense here, as we've already witnessed a bit of flooding from the river. On our walk back we stop at Limau Limau Cafe for a late breakfast. It's a cute coffee shop with a wall of chandeliers at the entrance, all different sizes colors and materials. There's a distinct Parisian feel and the food holds up to the expectation. We wander through some art galleries on our way to the famed Jonker Street. Jonker runs though the center of Chinatown and is crowded with tourists and food stalls, souvenier and curio shops, as well as restaurants with specialties like chicken rice balls or cendol - a treat that varies but from our experience is like shaved ice with fresh fruit and syrup on top. Durian is a stinky but common and favored topping.

View of Jonker Street

Dinner and live music at the Geographer Cafe on Jonker. Our last night in a city we like to treat ourselves to a restaurant and beer (versus street food and bottled water that occupies most of our meals) We have a jug of Tiger beer, and I try the Portugese fish fillet. We were instructed in Singapore to try the Portugese food, which is supposedly quite good in Melaka. My fish arrives buried in a spicy chili paste and steamed peppers, the portion is small but delicious. Here we are confused in Asia once again at the clash of cultures: listening to a Malay woman singing Brazilian music as I enjoy a Portugese plate in the middle of Chinatown, at an English restaurant filled with expats and tourists.


It's late at night now so we're getting ready for bed. Chris is already asleep and as I'm reading I hear several siren cars go by. Chris keeps sleeping through all the noise. I can hear shouting now and for some reason I have the eerie feeling that there's a fire somewhere. Doubtful that this could be true, I pull back our curtain and there's a blazing inferno right across the river from us! Chris is awake now and we're on our little patio with everyone else from our small homestay, watching the fire engulf one building, then the one adjacent. Massive rolling clouds of smoke and large embers skyrocket from the site, which firefighters are working hard to quell. More shouting and then the sound of a crumbling building. Things are not looking good. At least we have a river between us, I have never been near a fire larger than those we make on the beach at the weekend. We all watch silently, captivated by the force of nature behind this fire. An hour or so later and the fire is looking more controlled, we head to bed one by one.


When morning comes we are still alive, and the fire across the river has been extinguished. The building has a black charred appearance now, and there's a hole next to it where it's neighbor used to sit. The news says nothing. It's astounding, and yet very telling, that events like this are of no great consequence in this country. It begs the question, what else happens that we don't know about?