Melacca: Lime Juice and Pig's Organ Porridge

Now that my computer is back and up and running I can try to catch up some on what we've been up to and where we've gone lately. A few weeks ago we loaded up the car and headed down to the Straits to visit the town of Melacca on the recommendation of one of Heinz's coworkers. A UNESCO world heritage site, it's a very interesting city, not very big but very ecclectic as over the centuries it has been subjected to the rule of the Dutch, the British, the Portugese, the Chinese and of course the Malay. (A further idiosyncracy of Malaysian life: many words/names are spelled numerous different ways depending on usage of the English name, the Malaysian name, the phonetic name; it's silly. We tried to count the number of different ways we saw Melacca spelled -Melaka, Malaca, Malaqa- but we lost count.) We didn't have very good weather and as travelling with 2 little ones can really be a challenge, we didn't get to see as much as we might have liked but we did have some interesting experiences. Our hotel, a recommendation from the same coworker, was beautiful and the service was excellent. Our room was really neat: a 2-story suite. The traditional houses of the city are built very narrow and very deep so they use lightwells and courtyards to bring light into the interior parts of the buildings. The courtyards in the hotel were beautifully landscaped with palm trees, plants, beautiful places to sit and lots of little ponds and pots full of koi fish. Conrad loved looking for all the fish. There was a "History Room" in the hotel with pictures and artifacts from both the restoration of the hotel and the history of the city. In it was a section dedicated to the second world war, outlining how Malaysia fell to Japanese troops. I know it was certainly no laughing matter at the time but the way in which the irony of it was presented struck us as toungue in cheek and we found it comical. I included pictures of it in our trip photos:

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We spent some time walking through the Jonker Street market. It was raining, crowded and very humid so we decided to stop into a nearby coffee house to get a drink. I decided to try something on the menu (there were not many choices for cold drinks) called "Lime juice". Sounds simple enough, right? It came in the bottle and was nice and cold but it was a dark purplish color, which I found strange for something made of lime, and upon reading the label I discovered it was "lime juice with licorice". Now we Tortorelli girls love our licorice, no family gathering is complete without a nice supply of Good and Plenties, but this strange combination was beyond even my licorice-loving abilities. It was very thick and had something like tea leaves floating in it and I couldn't get past the smell. Meanwhile my husband was loving his white coffee. The historic downtown area isn't very big but as it was raining we decided to do some sightseeing by trishaw. It's naturally not an uncommon mode of transport in that part of the country but it is so funny how they trick out their carriages with flowers, flashing lights and flags and music systems. One is gaudier than the next! But it was certainly a fun way to get around and a nice way to quickly see some of the sights on a rainy evening. The next day was dry so we headed out to the Eye of Malaysia so that Conrad could get his "Ferris wheel" ride. He was thrilled. We drove around a bit after that and ended up getting stuck in traffic, caught in a newer part of town with modern shopping malls and hotels. It seemed that everyone was out for shopping on a Sunday. We did find a "food court", the outdoor eateries where the locals set up their stalls. We had to park at the nearby mall and walk over which I thought was ironic. The stalls were set up with menu boards behind them and I panicked initially because the first ones that we saw were all in Chinese characters with pictures but I don't really trust the pictures. Eventually we did find a few with english translations, which included a vendor selling something called "Pigs' Organ Porridge" complete with a picture of a bowl of what looked to me like gruel with pigs' intestines on top. We settled for beef noodle bowls and as we sat there eating it occurred to me that it looked like all the visitors (western-looking people) were here sampling the local fare while all the locals were inside the air-conditioned mall probably eating at KFC and McDonald's!  

We didn't get to see the Fort or the Stadthuys, and we missed out on a few historic churches that I would have liked to have seen but all in all it was a nice trip and I would definitely recommend the city as a destination trip.