Wednesday 26 September 2012

Melaka

I am bee-hind.  Oh well, here are some Melaka Memories of which all of you can now be a part.

Kristy, Vicki and I had all of our bags packed before Kristy got out of school on Friday.  We were very excited to get on the road and head out of town.  When we arrived in Melaka, we drove straight to our hotel, Hotel Equatorial Melaka.  

After we checked in, we decided to go out and find a place to eat.  We couldn't decide, so we let TripAdvisor decide for us.  The number one restaurant in Melaka was Pak Putra, and for good reason!  It was delicious.

This was some of the best food we have ever had

Jaxson loved his fresh apple juice

Here is a picture of the tandoori chicken with naan bread

This was a dessert we tried.  It was okay.  It was almost like sopapilla at the Mexican restaurants, but not nearly as good.

We started to walk back to the hotel, but then we got tired so we took a cab back to the hotel.  Before we got into a taxi, we saw that they were having some Merdeka Day celebrations around the city.  People were burning trash in the street and lighting the giant incense you see below.

Here is a picture of the huge incense pillars they were burning

We got back to the hotel and it was time for Jaxson to go "night-night".  We set up his pack-n-play and laid him down.  We decided to go downstairs for a bit as he tried to sleep.  He sleeps better when there is no one in the room.  We have a great app on the iphones where we can set the one phone up as a baby monitor and it will call the other phone if it detects loud noises.  We locked the door, set the baby monitor app up and headed downstairs to the lobby bar for some pool, darts and drinks.

Kristy is pretty good, but not as good as she used to be when she had her very own pool table at home.

We played darts and Vicki proved to us that she was once part of a dart league and kicked our butts.


The next morning, Jaxson woke up early, but no one else was ready to wake up.  I took him downstairs to get some (expensive) breakfast while we waited for the ladies to wake up.  After breakfast, Jaxson and I put on our bathing suits and went to the pool.  Today was Merdeka Day so there was some celebrating going on.  I took a video of some marching bands in the celebration that we could see from the pool balcony.


After another little bit, the girls were ready to get up, so we headed out the door to go see some of the Meleka sights.

This is a part of an old fort called A'Famosa.

Jaxson really liked the cannon they had nearby.  I taught him how to make cannon noises with his mouth.  Pek-eeoooowww!  Boom!  Boom!

These are the local transport.  They decorate their bikes with flowers and other ornaments and they have really loud speakers hooked up to car batteries on the back.

We met up with Araceli and her husband Jorge on the way by chance.  They are ISKL teachers as well and they were also vacationing in Melaka.

This is part of the original Portuguese wall when the city was a colony of Portugal 

This is an old hydraulic wheel.  I'm not sure what it used to power, but it's cool looking.

We started to get hungry, so we crossed the river to find food.  You can see where we went to eat just over my left shoulder.  It's the brown place on the water there.  It is called Harpers.

Our view from our table


    
We tried to keep Jaxson entertained because he was hungry too

We had some of the best food while in Melaka and this was no exception.

Mushroom soup, mashed potatoes and greens

  
Pasta with white sauce and chicken (left) and some sauteed chicken with bread (right)

Jaxson enjoyed the noodles

After lunch we headed down a street called the Jonker Walk (more pictures of that later)

Vicki and Jaxson tried some kind of frozen treat in an egg mold


After a long walk and a lot of shop browsing, Kristy and Vicki found this neat soap shop


 
On our way back we happened upon the Baboon House, a fun artsy place with good food.

I had a strawberry smoothie.  Just what I needed after a long hot walk.




We headed back to the hotel for a nap.  After our nap, we woke up and headed out to the pool.  It was such a nice pool with multiple levels.




Later that night, we decided to head back out to Jonker Walk to get a bite to eat.  We had heard so much about something called "chicken rice balls" so we wanted to try some.


We walked by an old church before we found Jonker Walk.



We tried to find a good place for chicken rice balls, but it was harder than we thought it would be.  We finally found a place called "Famous Chicken Rice Ball", so we figured it must be good.  We found out in a little bit that it was not the original chicken rice balls that were famous.  These were okay, but the chicken seemed as if it was out all day.  I didn't even eat the chicken, so you know it wasn't good.

Jaxson enjoyed the rice ball portion of chicken rice balls

After "dinner" we headed back out to see more of the city.

Jaxson and I got tired, so I walked him back to the hotel while Kristy and Vicki jumped on a bike with this guy to see Little Italy.

There was nothing to see...

...so they headed back to the hotel.

On my way back to the hotel, I saw this guy with his giant iguana.  He got mad when a chinese guy patted the iguana on the head.


The next morning, we all woke up and had a small breakfast in the hotel lobby.  They made a great cappuccino and hot tea with milk.


After breakfast, we headed back upstairs to get packed up and ready to go.  This was beach day.  Melaka isn't known for it's beaches so we had to drive a little ways in order to see and kind of beach.  We drove about 20 minutes away where there was supposed to be a fishing village.  The fishing village consisted of a bunch of guys on the beach fishing with some tents nearby.  Not exactly what we had in mind.  We drove a little farther down the road and finally found a beach where we could get out and take in some sun and sand.

It wasn't the prettiest beach, but it was a really nice day


There were older boats on the shore which made for some good pictures

Jaxson getting ready to go play

Family picture by the "christmas tree" which was stuck in the sand

G-ma and Jaxson


Daddy and Jaxson playing

This boy loves to play

We all started to get hungry, and we saw a seafood place on TripAdvisor that looked good.  Well, the seafood place was closed, so we had to go back to Melaka.  Vicki and I really wanted to go back to Pak Putra, but that was closed too.  We ended up at a restaurant at the Casa Del Rio hotel in Melaka.  

My Cheeseburger was delicious

Kristy's pizza with cherries, chicken, artichoke and basil was awesome

Vicki's chicken rice clay pot was....not so good

We had a great time in Melaka, but it was bitter-sweet because we had to say goodbye to Vicki the day we left.  We drove her straight back to the airport on our way home.  We loved having her as our guest in Malaysia and I'm sure we'll all be back in Melaka one day soon.  We have to go get some more of that Tandoori chicken at Pak Putra anyways!

~Until next time~

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