Michael Batson

One of the wonders of travel is that you go somewhere you’ve never been before anywhere in the world, know not a soul, arrive tired, hungry and with nowhere to sleep, and within a relatively short space of time be settled in like you’ve been there all your life.

I can’t replicate the appreciation of that doing anything else.

Early morning in Singapore and I walked across one of Singapore’s many housing estates from the metro to the Golden Mile Complex. From here the “Super VIP” buses leave to points north. In many countries you’d be vulnerable to being cut to pieces but in Singapore anyone can venture out relatively unmolested. I arrived drenched in sweat.

It takes four-and-a-half hours by bus from Singapore to Melaka (Malacca). The bus was comfortable with seats three abreast and left on time through the rush-hour along tree-lined highways. There were traffic jams, yes Singapore has those too. Singapore once had a plan to plant one million trees and doubtless achieved it.

The road passed massed container cranes and huge industrial complexes with names like Sony, Panasonic, Halliburton and Coca-Cola, symbols of the island state’s formidable economy. At the bottom of the HSBC tower the poster said “The world belongs to those who can appreciate its potential” whatever that means, and was accompanied by an amazing statistic that today there are five times more people in China learning English, than there are people in England.

At Tuas Checkpoint everyone alights for customs through a huge hall with no queues. Buses then meet you on the other side and in minutes you’re back underway. The causeway to Johore no longer exists, instead there’s a bridge which at the apex is high enough for large vessels to pass underneath.

During WWII the British had destroyed the causeway to prevent the Japanese from crossing, which they did anyway. While Singapore, a very small country has huge customs facilities, Malaysia, a much larger country has much smaller facilities. People queued out the door. The main delay was the Biometric Foreigner Procedure, or fingerprinting, and designed to foil would be illegal immigrants, the idea being that while some can forge documents, it’s supposedly much harder to fake fingerprints.

All bags were then x-rayed under by two stoutly-built Malaysian women customs officers resplendent with headscarves, reclining on chairs and deep in conversation with each other.

The highway to Melaka is lined with palm plantations. The roadside is cut with concrete drainage channels built for the wet season deluge. The bus played the DVD ‘The Expendables’ a gratuitously violent film with a grotesque-looking Sly Stallone, despite their being several children on board. After 20 minutes we stopped for gas at a Shell station, not at Petronas the national Malaysian oil company.

The man seated behind me was settling a concreting contract by phone in sentences which seemed to be a variety of languages but mainly in English.

By the roadside there were billboards with Lionel Messi advertising Adidas, and Herbalife, official sponsor of Barcelona FC, together with a photo of the entire team.

At the small bus office in Melaka, the man counting tickets pointed me in the direction of the Ming Hotel. Walking the traffic jammed streets of Melaka is not fun in the hot sun and I was happy to settle for somewhere close by.

“Have room but now cleaning, come back at two,” said the clerk. I went off in search of an ATM and lunch.

At a roadside restaurant open under a corrugated iron roof an Indian man(though probably Tamil) with a moustache that reminded me of the Bengal Lancers filled my plate with rice and motioned me to a variety of hot dishes, “Help yourself.” Patronage was mixed, office types, a table of nurses from the nearby hospital sat eating in white uniforms so bright they seemed to reflect the sun. Whatever it was they seemed slightly amused by me.

“Where are you from?” asked the restaurant man, “Ah, kangaroo.”

I replied that was associated with Australia. He held his hand parallel to the table and then lowered it indicating something smaller. I said “Kiwi” and he nodded, origins had been established, contact made.

He asked if I wanted a beer so I said Tiger, but instead he returned with the locally-brewed Danish variety. The food was delicious as was all the food I had in Melaka, and I refused his offer of more. All up the meal cost about two dollars and the beer more. The hotel room was half the price and twice the size of the broom closet I’d walked the streets of Singapore for. After careful research on the Internet I’d come up blank in Singapore. After no homework on Melaka, I was comfortable in minutes. Go figure.

“Who’s that?” I viewed the portraits in the foyer of the Ming, though I had a feeling royalty was the answer. A man in a gold jacket holding a sceptre and bedecked with medals was next to a beautiful woman also in gold with matching headscarf, and with skin so pale she’d obviously not spent much time toiling out in the tropical sun. His title ran to three lines in block letters, while hers to just two.

“That’s the King of Malaysia and his wife,” said the clerk. “Useless” he added.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“They’re useless. They don’t do anything. They don’t help anyone. Useless.”

I tried to contain a grin. Despite being a member of the Commonwealth Malaysia, like a handful of other states, retains its own head-of-state.

Later the Chinese-owner asked what part of Anzac I came from, she used that term, and informed me proudly that she had been there though I'm unsure which part she referred to.

Melaka is a UNESCO World Heritage city with a rich history. At its peak during the 15th and 16th centuries, the Melaka River would see 2000 trading vessels with crews speaking over 80 languages and dialects. Melaka is the narrowest point of the straits that now bear its name, a meeting point for the changing monsoon winds, while offering protection form the typhoons of Sumatra.

The old town is a wonderful array of colonial buildings many covered in a rustic render with white shutters and steep-pitched tiled roofs, and are quite a sight.

The Kota Melaka, the Fort of Malacca, which overlooked the port was originally built by the Malay Sultanate. In 1511, the fort was captured and destroyed by the Portuguese. They replaced the fort beginning the next year completing the work in 1588. All up it covered 1.4 kilometres and was equipped with eight defensive bulwarks modelled on other Portuguese forts in Africa and Asia.

In 1641 Melaka was captured by the Dutch and the fort reinforced in 1660 and again in 1678 by building another bulwark. Melaka declined during British rule between 1795 and 1818. The fort was destroyed in 1808 and shortly after the British moved business to Penang. Today only the Porta de Santiago remains together with some of its cannon.  The reminders of European presence with the two mightiest gifts of god and the gun displayed for all to see.

The city is full of museums. Two maritime museums, the first a full-scale replica of a Dutch vessel used by the VOC – the United East India Company (the Verenigde Oost-indische Compagnie), the Dutch company that possessed an almost governmental licence to operate in the Southern Hemisphere, and which was established in 1602.  

There’s also a customs and Royal Malaysian Navy museum, history and ethnography, architecture, people’s kite museum, one for stamps, a cultural museum, the Governor’s Museum on the hill complete with ceremonial Jaguar car, the Malay and Islamic World Museum, and a host of others and none priced at much more than a couple of dollars.

I wouldn’t go swimming in the Melaka River. Not because of the pollution, which is probably bad, but because of the wildlife you may encounter. Having had a hearty Indian breakfast and very sweet coffee, I was sitting by the river when I heard a splash. Looking mid-stream there was a large lizard swimming across river. It had a head like an anaconda, and at first I thought is was a snake until I spied its paws tucked up on its back. The tail manoeuvred gracefully from side-to-side. When it emerged from the water under the walkway its full size became apparent. The tail was a good metre long and the body half as big again.

I pointed it out to a Chinese man passing and he muttered the name, which I failed to catch. He explained that the came out every morning. As he walked off he advised against scuba diving with them and laughed.

Dinner was in an Indian curry house. The food was served on a freshly cut banana leaf and eating was done without the aid of utensils. I watched the patrons sweep the food up with graceful well practised motions but when I tried all that happened was most of it wound up around my mouth, and then of course I realised that I was using both hands whereas everyone only used their right. The left of course is reserved performing ablutions, so I quickly desisted before anyone noticed my error.

Despite its charm Melaka is blighted by that phenomenon of modern living, traffic congestion. As the vehicles pour into streets once designed for pedestrians and horse-drawn carts in ever-increasing numbers the speed is ironically reduced to that of their predecessors centuries ago. To attempt to alleviate this problem the authorities have instituted a series of one-way systems however, with limited success.

Also shattering the serenity are the cyclo riders. Ostensibly for the tourist trade these tricycle wonders are adorned with plastic flowers, some so dense and plentiful its hard to see either the rider or passengers and equipped with broom-boxes belting out songs in English and Malay at ear-splitting decibels.

History, culture, food and friendly people, you can do much worse than travel to Melaka.