Malaysia - Melaka

Hello all

To the surprise of many, I have found a type of food that I completely detest, and that is Malay. The entire time we in malaysia we spent the emtire time eating from the abundant Indian retaurants. Well, I wouldnt call them restaurants, more like places that sold chai tea and did a bit of food on the side. On our forst night in Meleka we ate in a place such as this and opted for the safe sounding chicken curry - thats the other thing in Malaysia you never know what anything means so you could be eating anything! It was quite soon realised that curry contained the entire chicken, feet and all! Nice! I couldnt complain though because it was really tasty!

Melaka is an old colonial town, so there a wealth of churches and graves! The intresting thing that I found was the patron Saint of Goa, St. Fracis Xavier, had lived quite of his life in Meleka and had died there before his body had been shipped to Goa. It would have been really nice to walk around all the forts and ruins if it hadnt been for the rain! If not for the heat you could have easily been in Manchester! We had kind of written off the day, and apart from posting a few things, caught up with some well needed sleep. Not only that, but the hostel had a hot shower, BLISS!

The next day we decided to go to the butterfly park and the zoo, partly because it had been reccommended to us from a fellow traveller, but mainly becasue it was so cheap. The butterfly park was the biggest mistake ever. So we got the bus to the central bus stop and then another to the zoo. We stepped out and as had been ususal, it was raining. So we cleaverly thought we'd go to the butterfly park first. We walked towards the information centre and the woman at the desk told us, yes you can easily reach it on foot its not far up the road. So off we went, both under my tiny umbrella getting soaked. Soon, there was no path and we found ourselves on the hard shoulder of a dual carridgeway, but according to her directions we were going the right way and we had spotted the petrol station she had described. So we went down the next road - the pavement was over grown, there were no signs and no cars. We could see in the distance a hotel so we went in and asked if we were close. Yes, take the next left, its not far down the road, was the response. At this point we were soaked , fed up and had been walking nearly an hour, but if it was close then it would have been a waste of time. So off we set again. Very soon the hard shoulder of the dual carridge way was turning in to the hard shoulder of a motorway!! It was absolutely rediculous, we hadnt even seen a single sign for it!! We felt it was getting too dangerous to walk any further so what did we have to do... flag down a bus and return to the zoo, over an hour of walking and rain later. Moral of the story.... if a Malaysian says something is not very far down the road he is LYING!!!!

After that complete mission we went to the zoo and apart from the rain it was actually pretty good! We saw a lot of animals that I have never seen, there was even a safari walk on a suspended walkway, but becasue of the rain all the animals were under the walkway away form the rain. It also had a few walking in cages with birds and bear cats that spat at Elliott! The hight light was a show that had some funny orangutan and massive snakes. At one point , one of the orangutangs reached for Elliotts had as if to full him over, but instead it kissed his hand - ahhh!

Next stop Singapore! x