arrived here convinced I'd be most ripe passenger, but no longer! I'll explain later... First of all - yesterday: I decided to zip over to Malaysia for a quick trip to Melaka. (Rumor has it it was featured on the Amazing Race. Anyone care to confirm or deny?) It's a pretty easy bus ride, and hey! Malaysia! So, I boarded the bus for what one guide book touted as a 2.5 hr ride. Everyone else said 3.5. They're all a bunch of liars. Picture the Chinatown bus, but with immigration/ passport control. And 4.5 hours. (Even worse? The James Patterson book I grabbed was one I'd already read. Attn paperback book publishers and blurb-writers - how about you put something bout the plot on the book so those of us who don't pay attn to crap thriller titles can tell whether we've read it or not. Rude. On the other hand, the Malaysian countryside is lovely.)
So, I arrived a bit hot and frazzled. Again, I only planned for a day trip. First order of business was to check other bus companies and see their return times. Bought my ticket back and hopped the local but into town. While on the bus, this old man asked where I was from. Canada! I exclaimed (you know, just in case I was doing something embarrassing to id me once again as a non-local.) Turns out this guy used to be a tour guide. He asked whether I wanted him to show him around town - on foot. Being about 5 inches taller and a a few decades younger, I figured why not? Off we went to see the sites. Here's what Wikipedia has to say: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malacca and their website: /Full%20Day%20Melaka%20Tour\u003cWBR\>.html\u003c/a\>As my guide informed me, 1511 - that's the date you need to know. Why? That's when the Portuguese captured it. Then we did another round up of religious institutions. All cool, all old. None of which I'm giving the proper deference. My favorite part was Harmony St which had a
line of churches, temples and mosques all leading to the Chinese one which is the oldest. So, my tour guide, who I'll call Ben - one of eleven, five kids, seven grandkids. 62 yrs old, but I had him pegged in the 70s. His English was pretty much perfect. Why? He was shipped off to Catholic school - but he'll always be a Muslim at heart. Anyway, we finished the tour and he had me back at the bus station with time to spare. Here's the embarrassing part - I totally expected him to ask for money or something like that and was trying to figure out how you price a tour w/ a certified guide? Well, turns out you don't have to b/c he did it just to welcome a visitor and share the history of his town. Whoo. (Even though I kept offering to buy him a beverage - which he declined - I wish I could say that this was the point when I handed him some money anyway, but I was stunned and wandered onto my bus.)One of the oddest things thus far about my trip is that it's by far the shortest of anyone's I've encountered. Five months? Ten years? Who are you kidding? That's a mighty big backpack!
Anyway, today my first order of bidness was checking in for my flight so I could dump my bag. Then it was off to Pulau Ubin where the hiking/ biking was supposed to be great and would make up for spending the previous day on a bus. Again, lying liars in the tour books said it takes about 10 mins. Wrong! More like 45. Anyway, it was pretty spectacular. You can see Johru
which is the tip of Malaysia. One piece of advice - if you rent a bike there (which you should), splurge and get the $5 or $6 bike instead of the $3. You'll probably spend less time fixing your chain and certainly arrive at the airport covered in a lot less grease. (although - consider the profit margin! Figure each bike gets flipped three or four times a day...seven days a week and yeah, I'll shove that chain on as many times as need be. Can't escape the Scottish genes, I guess.) So, I arrived at the airport all nasty, sweaty, dirty and with grease streaks all over. (From the looks on everyone's faces, particularly from those at the Biz/ First class counters who kept trying to show me the Econ lines, my guess is that my face matched my dirty black nails. Awesome.) But here's where it gets MORE awesome. Showers in the lounge! Whoo hoo! So, now I'm a sparkling clean and just about to head down to the gate to board my plane to Ho Chi Minh. (Sadly Mom - I didn't eat any seaslugs here in Singapore. Or a durian. Couldn't find anywhere that sold 'em. Next time! And I'm definitely making time some day to get to Kuala Lampur.)
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