We’re about to leave Malacca for Kuala Lumpur and Europe. It’s been a really good place to visit. The scale is about right for us, as it’s very easy to get around by foot (apart from the chronic lack of footpaths), and there’s been a huge amount to see and enjoy. The buildings are particularly nice. The Portuguese and Dutch influences have managed to hang on for another 400 years, and mixed with some Art Deco have led to a lot of attractive decorative buildings. Also, the stagnation of the place since the rubber boom of the 20s presumably meant that there was not a lot of change for many decades, by which time the government realised they had something special here, and put in heritage provisions.
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| Capitol Satay meal |
A couple of nights ago we went to Capitol Satay, an enormously popular restaurant doing a Malaysian version of a Chinese steamboat or a Swiss fondue. The table is circular and stainless steel, with a hole in the centre into which is placed a 4 litre pot of satay sauce, with a gas flame under it keeping it bubbling away. You collect a tray full of skewered goodies from a rack (charged at NZ35c per stick), take them back to your table and cook them in your bubbling satay. Periodically a waitress comes round and tops up your satay with sauce and ground peanuts. Very tasty and a lot of fun. There are crowds outside it each night queuing for a table to become free.
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| Typical "Restoran" |
The evenings are lovely here with the river to sit or wander beside, and the tropical warmth. One thing to be wary of is the massive influx of starlings that fill the trees with an absolute cacophony of sound each evening. We have taken full advantage of the food here. We would have 20 restorans within 200m of our guesthouse, Indian, Malay, Chinese and more. They mostly have pretty much the same fare, but always with variations on each other. One of our favourites was one serving Nyonya food, Nyonyas being the Straits Chinese (who are by now partly Malay by intermarriage). The food is Chinese-style, but with Indonesian/malay sauces instead of the more bland Chinese versions. We are a little apprehensive about European food prices as a full meal and a drink for two can be had for NZ$10 here. A plate of fried noodles and veges is as low as $1.50.
Still, we are ready to move on and get into the meat of our trip. We have a night in KL, a flight to Dubai, a free part-night there courtesy of Emirates, then the flight into Rome arriving mid-afternoon Wednesday local.
We’re about to leave Malacca for Kuala Lumpur and Europe. It’s been a really good place to visit. The scale is about right for us, as it’s very easy to get around by foot (apart from the chronic lack of footpaths), and there’s been a huge amount to see and enjoy. The buildings are particularly nice. The Portuguese and Dutch influences have managed to hang on for another 400 years, and mixed with some Art Deco have led to a lot of attractive decorative buildings. Also, the stagnation of the place since the rubber boom of the 20s presumably meant that there was not a lot of change for many decades, by which time the government realised they had something special here, and put in heritage provisions. 
