Melaka--Haunt of Pirates and Traders

 I shudder to think we nearly missed Melaka.  I had heard of the Straits of Malacca, plagued with pirates from the 1400s through today, and one of the world's great shipping routes. Much of the earth's sea cargo still passes through the Straits of Malacca en route from China to India, the Middle East, and Europe.  I didn't know there was a city of Melaka (Malacca) which was the major port along the Straits until Singapore emerged as a trading powerhouse in the mid-1800s.  The great colonial powers--Portugal, Holland, and England--fought over Melaka as the key to trade in Asia.  They occupied it in turn--Portugal during the 1500s, Holland during the 1700s, and England during the 1800s and 1900s.  On a whim, Dave and I visited Melaka on a day trip from Kuala Lumpur.

 Melaka is a time warp, with buildings from each of its historical eras.  The Church of St. Peter was built by the Portuguese just before the Dutch invaded Melaka.  When we stopped by, a Christian funeral service in session and they were singing an English hymn.

 The center of Melaka has relics from the Dutch and English eras--clock towers, customs houses, and forts.  We spent an hour at a wonderful museum in an old customs house, with displays of the various eras, from domination of Melaka by Muslim sultans to the takeover by the Portuguese, Dutch, and English.

 These highly decorated rickshaws are distinctive to Melaka.

This church was built by the Dutch, and is austere inside, as befits Calvinist tradition.

 Melaka is on the coast of the Malay Peninsula, just 238 kilometers from Singapore.

 On the hill were the ruins of an old Portuguese church, from which we could see ships sailing in the Straits of Malacca.  We could also see the shore of Sumatra, in Indonesia, across the Straits.

 We walked down the hill to the old Dutch fort, past a building with Muslim domes, and past the Dutch graveyard.

 An artist relaxed under an umbrella, in the sultry heat, as passersby examined his drawings of historical sites in Melaka.

 Our guide showed us the wall of the original fort, which had been uncovered in central Malacca.

 Everywhere we walked, there were glorious tropical flowers.

 We also passed a scale model of one of the Dutch ships.

 We walked along the quay where ships from all over the world used to dock.

 We passed the old fort, with cannons poking out its walls.

 We passed an machine with pulleys for lifting freight onto ships.  I thought of the many huge cranes that line the Seattle harbor, taking the job of these ancient pulleys.

 We walked through Old Melaka, noting shop buildings which date back to Dutch and Portuguese days.  Typically, the shop was on the ground floor and the owner's family lived on the top floor.

 Note the "Nyonya Food" sign below.  Nyonyas were "straits Chinese"--the early settlers along the Straits of Malacca who created their own culture for food, furniture, and clothing--a mix of Chinese and Malaysian.

 We stopped at a Chinese restaurant for lunch.  In its lobby, it had an old opium bed, with a photograph showing the bed in times when opium was supplied by the British.

One of the pleasures of traveling is to meet other interesting travelers.  Rich Manen and his wife now live in Australia, but he comes from an Anglo-Indian family.  His grandfather was a doctor in Moulmein, south of Yangon, Burma, who fled over the mountains to India behind the British Army in 1942 when the Japanese took over Burma.  Rich's uncle, who fought with the British, was captured by the Japanese and spent the war in notorious Changi prison camp in Singapore (which Dave and I visited).  One of Rich's grandmothers was Persian and he thinks he also has the blood of British soldiers in India--he is light for an Indian and he grew up eating roast beef.  Rich has been searching for his ancestors in British cemeteries in India, but I suggested he add Ancestry.com records and a DNA test to his cemetery visits.

 We loved this Chinese temple, one of the oldest in the Straits.  It was more highly decorated and more beautiful than any other Chinese temple I have visited.

 Pilgrims to the temple worshipped while we were there.

 The ashes of Chinese settlers are contained in these red boxes.

 We drove down to the seaside and watched more boats sailing through the Straits.

We also visited the only original Portuguese house that remains in Melaka.  There is a Portuguese area of town where restaurants still sell Portuguese pastries and seafood.  Some Portuguese stayed after the Dutch invasion, although the Dutch left when the English took over.  I only wish we had time to drive further up the coast to Penang, another old Malayan trading town with distinctive British colonial buildings.