A day in Malacca

I want to check out the town of Malaca which is south of Kuala Lumpur because the history of the place. It was once the center of trade in the whole Malay peninsula including Indonesia and it had been conquered by several different people including the Indians the Dutch the Portuguese and the English.

You can see lots of Old Dutch architecture here related to the East India Company as well as Portuguese churches and all in quite a compact walkable area. I was thankful I had picked up a SIM card in Malaysia airport on arrival as it proved to be very handy to use TripAdvisor to decide on where to go in the limited time that I had. The SIM card was 1 gigabytes of data for 3 Days on cost around 5 euro in total including the SIM so it was a great deal.

The only problem was I didn't realize how far 600 meters was and this proved to be a problem when I decided to walk to the mosque which is on an island a well away from the main Center but it sounded like it was an interesting thing to take in. The thing is I had to catch a flight to Jakarta later this evening and I wanted time to explore Malica before I have to leave. I thought to myself it's only six hundred meter so should be quite easy to get to and I decided to go for it.

At one thing I found it at Malaysia and this is true for Kuala Lumpur and Malica is that cars take the priority under a hardly any pedestrian pavement anywhere so when I decide to head to the mosque it was actually during rush hour and also just went all the schools were closing. So I have to walk among all the cars and kids and I thought I'm almost there. Still no sight of the mosque so I decide to still keep going on a little bit further. After what must have been 1 hour I finally reached the mosque and everyone in the area is very surprised that I actually walked all the way because it's on an island that you have to go across the causeway. Other come this Friday sided to actually stick around the mall for a little bit and take a photo one of the things I have to do which was quite fun was put on a thobe. The mosque itself is very pretty because it's right on the coast line so it was definitely worth a visit although the problem came later when I have to get back to leave the hotel in time to catch my flight.

Prior to heading back though, I made sure to sample some of the local Chinese specialities including rice balls with a full roast chicken! So delicious I had to order a 2nd portion!

I hadn't accounted for the time to get the taxi from the hotel to the bus so when I tried to get the bus from Malacca back to KL to catch my flight I actually missed the bus. Doh!

Then I also haven't accounted for the traffic delay getting back to KL. By the time I arrived at KL train station and onward on to KL Airport I had long missed my flight to Jakarta that was leaving that evening.

Nothing for it I had to book another flight to Jakarta on the next flight was leaving in the morning. This meant I had to sleep in the airport. Two good things came out of this though the flight to Jakarta only cost 30 Euros ( which is probably what I would have spent on a hotel in Jakarta including taxi etc), and Kuala Lumpur Airport is quite good for sleeping in. I even managed to get a free shower by going to the fourth floor airport offices and found free shower facilities in the staff toilets there. I was directed to these by an Etihad staff member when I tried to claim something back for the missed flight (fat chance!). I doubt many people know about this so feel free to spread the word!

So rather than heading to Jakarta this evening I was going to have to take a flight in the morning to catch my lunchtime flight on to Yogyakarta. Plus I didn't have to deal with Jakarta traffic so not all bad.

I wrapped myself up in a fleece and jacket put on earplugs and eye mask and found a bench to sleep on. Peter out.