“Beyond Chinatown Melaka loses its soul to traffic, cement and oversized shopping malls.”

Lonely Planet

The section of the State of Melaka where we visited is Melaka Tengah. Within Melaka Tengah is Melaka City and within that area is the small Unesco designated area we visited. So those photos I sent of cute, little, lovely Melaka show only a tiny bit of modern Melaka. But it’s the part we went to see. Actually we went just to be there and walk around and eat some interesting food and see what we would see without making a plan and that’s exactly what we did. I did visit St. Paul’s on the hill and the Art Museum and we did take the river cruise. I think it would be an interesting place to stay for a longer time but a short visit was nice too.

Looking down from St. Paul’s Hill out to the Straits of Melaka

Our favorite places in Melaka were THE BABOON HOUSE restaurant on Heeren Street and the funky Jonker Street.

Fountain at the entrance to Jonker Street

Across the river from the art museum and Christ Church is the entrance to Jonker Street and its neighborhood of shops and restaurants. “Jonker Street literally translated as Second Class Gentlemen in Dutch….In the past, it was the residence of servants servicing the houses of the affluent families in Heeren Street.”

An antique shop along Jonker Street.

In one shop I picked up something that turned out to be a replica of an opium pipe! It was fun to browse but since we had jammed the motorbike carrier with our clothes and rain jackets, we had no room for souvenirs.

Anyone in my family recognize those chairs?

Years ago I bought, stripped, and remade the seats on chairs that look just like these and swore never to do it again!

This shop was a supplier of auto body parts but it was the car that caught Randal’s eye.

Melaka Portuguese food and New Bedford Portuguese food aren’t the same Portuguese food.

I wanted to eat Portuguese food but then didn’t recognize anything on the menu. I had fried squid and Randal had baked salmon but it said Asia to me more than New Bedford. Our second day, Randal and I actually took a taxi out to the Portuguese area but found that weekdays the restaurants are closed for lunch. Without even getting out of the taxi we returned to the Jonker Street area and found a great place to eat called “the baboon house” and I’ll so a whole separate email about it because it was such a neat building.

For a “small fee” at this shop you could find out the best day, time, name whatever before you picked the wrong day, time, name and courted disaster.

This building is on Heeren Street and looks just like a wedding cake. It might have been a hotel but I don’t remember seeing a sign.

A few doors down was this building which I found more interesting though it needs a bit of work. Hopefully it won’t be turned into another wedding cake.

Randal and I took a river cruise that passes through the historic area and then into the areas being renovated with refurbished buildings and green spaces.

Buildings along the Melaka River are being renovated, some with bold paintings.

I like this one and love the outside staircases.

I snuck lots of photos of these 3 sisters.

After the cruise we visited this replica of an old square rigged sailing ship.

Randal was disappointed because only the outside resembled a ship. The inside was a small museum mostly about Portuguese seamen but we were too tired to be very interested.

Places like Melaka, George Town and Singapore offer great places to eat if you don’t mind the adventure of ordering food and then waiting to see what it actually turns out to be.

Restaurant Ole Sayang where we ate dinner one night.

Just looked this place up on the web and everyone said it was the best place in Melaka to eat what is a mix of Chinese and Malay cuisine. It was a few blocks from our hotel so not in the busy hip part of town but when we walked it most tables were taken and not by western tourists. Amazingly enough the folks at the next table had been in the same Portuguese place where we’d had lunch. Unfortunately I had caught some kind of cold and my throat hurt and all I wanted was Jewish chicken noodle soup. But I told our waitress that I wanted soup with vegetables and broth and noodles. It was quite good and also had squid pieces and fish balls that were the Chinese version rather than the Jewish gefilte fish so a bit too fishy for me. But the broth made me feel better. Randal had fried rice and a shrimp dish in some kind of red sauce that might have been red chili sauce and though it was billed as mild was a bit too hot for him. But our waitress was great and had probably been working there since Ole Sayang opened in 1983. The name Ole Sayang caught my eye because I think of Ole as Spanish so it didn’t seem to fit with Sayang which I thought was a Chinese word. So I looked up both words and it’s pretty interesting. A “dondang sayang” is a love ballad influenced by Portuguese folk music and “ole saying” is a “Nonya-Chinese-Malay” expression that means “gift of love” And lots of web blogs I found said that if you want Nonya food in Melaka, eat at Ole Sayang!

But our most fun meal was at the baboon house, a renovated shop house that needed lots of photos so I’m writing about it in a separate email.

Ru

DoraMac