Galen & Rebecca Kennel’s Weblog

We get up early and slip out of the quiet guesthouse to get some breakfast before we leave to catch the bus to Singapore. When we return, we find that the wooden, double doors have slipped shut and locked and the only way to get back in is to buzz the doorbell. After buzzing several times and waiting what seems like forever, Galen decides to push on the doors open – he manages to do it without damaging the doors. Once inside the front porch, we can use the keypad code to open the inside door.

After collecting our bags, we go down to the bus stop a block away and wait for the #17 bus to the bus station. It takes the bus a half hour to meander through town and find its way to the station. We are looking to catch the Melaka 707 Express to Singapore which delivers one to the Queen St. Station downtown, rather than the Lavender St. Terminal a little farther out.

We arrive at the station just in time to buy tickets (RM 17 each – about $6.00) for the 9:00 bus. Most of the trip is on the Malaysian #1 freeway through rolling hills of oil palm. We reach the border crossing about noon – where we get off the bus (after making a mental note of the license plate number and the name of the bus so that we could actually find our way back onto it) to go through the Malaysian passport control. Then it is back on the bus and on to the Singapore customs where you take your bags, go through a security scan and then the passport people. It took us a while to get through as we somehow picked the slow line. We were the last ones getting back to the bus which had moved across the border to the Singapore side.

Singapore is actually an island – actually many islands, some of which have been joined with the main island through land reclamation. It covers about 272 sq. miles and is one of only three city states in the world. Our bus crosses the bridge linking Singapore to Malaysia.

It is hard to tell when we are actually in downtown Singapore – the streets and boulevards are lined with enormous trees – the whole city has the feeling of being in a park.

Once our bus delivers us to the Queens Street station, we are eager to find the toilets as we have been travelling for over 4 hours without a chance to relieve ourselves. As in most of Asia, a person is sitting at a little table in front of the toilets collecting money. Unfortunately, he won’t take Malaysian Ringgits and we don’t have any Singapore dollars. I leave Galen with the luggage by the toilets and go looking for an ATM. Surely there must be an ATM near to the bus station.

I end up walking about 3 blocks – I don’t find an ATM, but I find a money changer. I hand over my remaining Ringgits and he gives me a terrible exchange rate. I complain about the rate, but he claims that is the going rate. At this point, I don’t feel like arguing.

Back at the bus station, Galen has managed to sneak into the toilets while the man wasn’t watching. Where there is a will, there is a way.

We had made an internet reservation at the Inn Crowd, as everyone we talked to said it was difficult to find lodging in Singapore. I had requested a double room, but none was available so we ended up with a dorm room. This should be interesting.

The Inn Crowd is located in Little India less than a km from the station. It is an easy walk, as the sidewalks are wide and clear of obstacles. People actually walk in Singapore, I guess because cars are restricted within many parts of the city and public transport is convenient.

The hostel is a beautifully restored shophouse. Inside young people are lounging around, reading, chatting, and checking email. What are we doing here? Suddenly we feel quite old.

We check in and take our bags up to the second floor where we find the room we will be sharing with up to 12 other people. Shoes are left at the bottom of the stairs – there are no shoes allowed within the hostel. The room has 6 bunkbeds and a veranda where the luggage is to be stored. I lock my laptop to the bed frame and we go out in search of another hotel. Surely we can find something better than this. It’s a great place if you’re 23, but it doesn’t quite feel right for us!!

There are a few hotels around the area – they’re all full. We check our guidebook again and decide to look at the Bugis Backpackers Hostel. The hostel is on the upper floor of the Bugis Shopping complex – a mix of shopping stalls and shops. The sidewalk is full of tables and stands of bangles, sunglasses, flipflops.

At the top of three flights of stairs we are met by a locked door and a sign to buzz the buzzer for entry. Once through the door we are faced with the “queen” of the guesthouse – an older woman (probably about our age) who makes sure that everything runs according to the rules in the book. They don’t have any rooms available right now, but we can book into a double room for tomorrow and the next day. No, we can’t see the rooms. And she wants the full cash payment in advance.

She asks where we are staying now and once she finds out that we are staying in a dorm room, she lightens up and jokes about people our age staying in a dorm room while she bustles about preparing the paperwork for our booking. 76 Singapore dollars per night for a bedroom with no windows and a shared bath, no internet service and no kitchen facilities. That’s about $50. Welcome to affluent Singapore.

Here we go again. . . our first day in town ritual – change hotels. There are lots of budget hotels along the streets nearby, but they are either full or not very pleasant. Even though it is Monday and not a holiday, there are still lots of tourists around. The Lonely Planet Guidebook lists the Kancil’s Guesthouse – it’s down one of the main streets coming out of downtown and the traffic is quite heavy, but we walk down it until we come to the traditional Malaysian house with guesthouse sign out front.

The sign on the door says to ring the buzzer, so we push the button and wait. The windows in the front of the house are tinted, so we can’t quite see in. When no one comes, we ring again. Finally a harried man comes to the door and invites us in. He is in the middle of preparing breakfast for himself and apologizes for keeping us waiting.

It is a pleasant house with an inner courtyard open to the sky. We select a room on the second floor with windows opening onto the courtyard. The toilet and shower are spotless, but down the hall from our room. In the back of the house is a lovely garden with tables and chairs. Looks like a great place to spend a few days.

It doesn’t seem to take as long to walk back to the Fenix Inn – funny how it seems to take longer when you’re not sure how far you will have to go. The reception area of the Fenix is so cold it takes our breath away when we step inside. It feels good to get back out into the warm, humid air.

After stowing our bags at Kancils, we walk back into town. It isn’t the most pleasant walk, with no sidewalks and heavy traffic, but each time we walk it it seems to get shorter.

One of the first places we come to downtown is a hill with a church at the top. Tourists are going up and down the stairs to the church, so we decide to make this our first stop. The church was built by the Portuguese in 1521, then taken over by the Dutch in the 1600s, and then by the British. The ruins are now a historical site – a must see for all the tourists that file through this town.

There is a great view from the top of the hill, looking out over the historic town where the old sandstone buildings are painted red, further out to the new condo development, and then out to the water – the Strait of Melacca.

At the bottom of the hill, we decide to go through the Muzium Rakyat (the People’s Museum) which has a varied collection of items that depict the cultural history of Malaysia. Malaysia is a mix of Malay, Chinese and Indian people so the museum portrays the traditional cultures of each of these groups. Halfway through the museum we decide that we are tired and hungry, so we go out in search of food after checking with the front desk to make sure our tickets are good for the whole day. We never do make it back as we get side-tracked exploring Chinatown and getting lost trying to find Little India. We do manage to find Little India and a place to satisfy our craving for lassis – the yogurt-fruit drink that we enjoyed so much in India.

We spend three days in Melaka, enjoying the garden and quiet of the Kancil Guesthouse and exploring the historic town and people watching.

The people watching was almost the best part. We sat around one afternoon in the town square, watching busloads of tourists come to take each others photos around the fountain and then catch a rickshaw ride to the other tourist sites.

Four young girls entertain us with their singing-clapping hand games. I took the video sideways, so you will have to turn your head (or the computer monitor) to see it properly!!

You can see it all in our photos from around Melaka

Our bus to Melaka leaves at 9:00 sharp. It is a comfortable bus with only two seats on one side of the aisle and one on the other. The man we bought our ticket from said that it was a 3-hour trip.

The first two hours of the trip are taken up with driving around Penang and Butterworth. First we drive out to the Express bus station and pick up a few more passengers. Then we cross the bridge to Butterworth and sit at the bus station there – I guess waiting for a full load. It is close to 11:00 before we are actually on the way. Next time, take the passenger ferry across to Butterworth and save yourself an hour or two of bus riding!

The #1 highway runs from the Thai border south through Kuala Lumpur to Singapor. The freeway is in great condition and has mowed edges and pruned hedges along the way. We go through a few areas of tropical forest but most of the land has been harvested and planted to oil palm.

We go into the centre of Kuala Lumpur, a city of about 1.5 million, to drop off a few passengers downtown. The city is clean, the traffic flow well-organized, and most of the older buildings have been restored.

From Kuala Lumpur we head out of town toward the port to the bus station there, then back to Kuala Lumpur before we head south again. It is after 6:00 before we come into Melaka. The bus station is 5 km north of town. We are expecting to be met at the station by a swarm of touts, but there is only one man there asking if we want a taxi.

“No thanks, we’re taking the bus into town.”

The local buses leave from the other side of the station, so we make our way through the building, stopping off at the toilets before we look for the #17 bus into town. The bus is just pulling out and we manage to wave him down and lug our bags up and into the bus. The ticket man is a friendly guy who asks where we’re going.

“To the roundabout on Melaka Raya.”

He says the roundabout is no longer there, but he’ll tell us when to get down.

The ride into town takes us right through the centre of the historic district. Melaka has attracted visitors for centuries, being on the sailing route between India and China. The Chinese, the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the British all controlled the port at different times and each left their mark on the architecture of the city. Tourists from nearby Singapore and Kuala Lumpur come to shop in the quaint shops and eat the unique food. Bus loads of Chinese, Japanese and Koreans come to take each others photo in front of the fountain and tour the town on the colourful rickshaws.

The bus leaves us off at the old roundabout and the ticket man points the direction for us to take. We are planning to go to Shirah’s Guest House, with “Mediterranean colours” and where the “doubles are excellent value.” It sounds good, but when we find it, it looks terrible.

We head back to the corner where the Fenix Inn looks like a great place to stay. It’s rather pricey at 88 RM (almost $30), but it has free internet and the place is spotless.

We’re starving by now. At the corner by the shopping centre are several night food stalls with outdoor tables, so we head across the street to eat. Later we go into the mall looking for the grocery store. We see people coming out with bags of groceries, but we can’t seem to find the store. We keep going in the direction that people are coming from with their grocery carts. On the 4^th floor we finally find it. The escalators are like moving, slanted sidewalks so that people can push their grocery carts onto the escalator. I can’t imagine a supermarket in Canada being on the 4^th floor of a mall, but here it seems quite common.

A tub of yogurt, a bag of muesli, a package of chewing gum.

Photos from the day are here.

In the morning we go looking for a guesthouse that has internet and a nicer place to ‘work’ as I want to upload to my blog. We had met an English couple on the ferry who were going to stay at the Banana Guesthouse, so we decided to go further into Chinatown to check it out. It is along one of the main guesthouse streets, Chulia Street, not too far from where we stayed at the Swiss Hotel the first time we came through Georgetown. The large sitting area at the front of the guesthouse looks inviting. The room we are shown is on the second floor, with a large lounging area open to the outside. It has a shower, but the toilet is down the hall. They have free wireless internet and the place is clean. 45 rupiah.

We are rather enjoying Georgetown. They are doing a good job of restoring some of the older buildings and the streets are clean. It is easy to get around by bus and there is lots of good food around. We get in on the celebration for the last night of Chinese New Year – complete with fireworks.

Here are some photos from around Georgetown.