After arriving into Kuala Lumpur I decided I didn’t want to spend all my time in the city and had heard that Malacca was nice. In traditional fashion I made a complete hash of trying to get there involving going on the same, incorrect, loop of the light rail three times (!) whilst getting to the bus station. However, after that it was straight forward – just a case of kicking back on a coach for a couple of hours.
Malacca has had an interesting history of fairly regular conquering by various Asian and European nations due to to it’s strategic and trading importance. This history is very obvious and is probably the main reason for people visiting.
I think it did what it said on the tin, but like so many places I can’t shake the feeling that I got here too late. Not two hours too late, but thirty/forty years too late. I expect then all the staid boutiquey shops would have been a lot more interesting or maybe not even interesting, but just more natural. Obviously I am a tourist, but I wish there was a way of being low impact when tourists are en masse which doesn’t change the whole countenance of a place. This is probably unlikely, but probably should be aspirational.
Still – it was nice to see the historical buildings, the weather was stunning and I had some good food. It could be much, much worse than that!
Mark's Hikes & Travels 