Kuantan & Melaka, Malaysia

Day 23

Mason’s holiday started and in the afternoon we took a bus to his home town Kuantan. Kuantan is located on the east coast of Malaysia. We arrived to Kuantan in the evening and first we went to eat. After eating we drop our stuff to Mason’s home and then went to hang out to the beach. It was Friday night so the beach was full of locals spending their weekend. We had ice cream and sneaked in to the hotel’s private beach.

Day 24

After waking up we catched a bus to the village of Sungai Lembing which is located near Kuantan. Mason’s grandmother and cousins live there and we went to see them. Grandmother had made a delicious meal for us and we spend the evening eating the delicious food and also delicious mango cake which we brought as a gift.

Day 25

In the morning we went to visit with Mason’s cousin to a local museum. The museum was about the history of the village which used to be one of the biggest mining centres in whole Southeast Asia. There was also market in the village and I had some delicious chicken rice there and some sweet Malay pies.

Mason’s cousin took us back to Kuantan and we had dinner with Mason’s family in a shopping centre. Later back home we had different meats with satay sauce for evening snack.

Day 26

After the quick visit in Kuantan Mason and I decided to make a daytrip to Melaka while Jon went back to Kuala Lumpur. So after breakfast Mason and I took a long bus trip from Kuantan to Melaka. On the way I had good opportunity to see how Malaysia looks like outside of the cities. Well, it looks like oil palm plantations. That’s it pretty much. I saw couple time monkey crossing a road.

We arrived to Melaka bus station in the afternoon, 2 hours later than what we thought. After little confusion how to get to the city centre from the bus station we found little minibus which took us cheaple straight to the town square. Melaka is an old colonial town and its town square is made by Dutch so it has very European feeling. Also British and Portuguese people had lot of influence in the area; British people painted the town square red, Dutch people originally made the houses white. After taking pictures of the square we went to find a place to eat in Chinatown. Mason’s friend had recommended a good restaurant and we found it easily (maybe, because later we found restaurant with same name so we are not sure which one was recommended). The food was good (it was laksa) and I had my first cendol and I’m now a fan of it.

After lunch we walked around Chinatown and visited in Cheng Hoong Teng temple which is the oldest Chinese temple in Malaysia. Also the mosque in Chinatown was interesting looking; I had never seen a minaret like that. We walked back to the town square and then started to walk up to Bukit St. Paul hill. On top of the hill are the ruins of St. Paul’s Church built by Portuguese. The graves inside of the church were mostly Dutch though. You could also view the harbour area from the hill and houses there reminded me a lot of Dutch cities. We then walked down from the hill and took pictures with Porta de Santiago, a gate which is the only thing remaining of the old Portuguese fortress of A Famosa. Then we had drinking break in a new shopping centre next to the hill and after that we took a bus to Melaka’s bus station. At the bus station we again had trouble to find a good company to take us back to Kuala Lumpur but we found good last minute deal. We arrived to Kuala Lumpur’s new bus terminal Bersepadu Selatan which was new experience for Mason too. Jon was already waiting for us in Mason’s apartment.