Malacca - design, colour, history, food

Griffin and I have just made a short trip to Malacca (Melaka), in West Malaysia. It is a place with a long, interesting history that includes Malays, Chinese, Indians, Portuguese, Dutch and, inevitably (somehow) British influences.

Perhaps it is the intermixing of all these cultures that has lead to such interesting decorative elements in Melaka - starting with the handmade beaded slippers that are made for Nyonya weddings (both the bride and the groom might wear them), as well as for other special occasions. In the photo, you can just glimpse the graph paper on which the design has been drawn. It is attached to the cloth and then each bead is hand sewn over it. Very beautiful work and with lots of wonderful designs.

Then there are the tiles found outside a lot of the old houses in the centre of Melaka. The ones for walking on are, of course, plainer and more utilitarian-looking than the ones that run along the bottom of the front wall of the house in various lovely colours and patterns.

If you stand back and look up, you are likely to see some very interesting ornamentation around the windows as well. Something like Melaka rococo? Such a fantastic combination of elements from both the west and the east.

Notice the vertical bar on the open window used to move the louvres up and down to regulate light and the breeze.

Not all the older houses in Melaka are well preserved but those that are provide a feast for the eyes. The usual house front is very narrow - about 21 feet - but this is made up for with the length of the house which can be up to 200 feet! The skyline created by the roofs of the houses was reminiscent of Hanoi in Vietnam. Wonder what created this kind of building? Taxes on the width of the house perhaps?

These particular houses are along the Melaka River that runs through the centre of the old town and creates its own special atmosphere, with people loitering on the bridges and lights glimmering in the water at night.

Melaka is also justly famous for its food, including the Nyonya cakes (the Nyonya people being a Malay-Chinese mix) and the rice porridge. This is eaten for lunch, rather than breakfast, and the basic rice soup is sharpened up with the addition of lots of extras, including small salted fish, eggs, pickles, fried onion, boiled chicken - in whatever combination you like! There's a huge cuisine in Melaka that we only just touched on. You could spend ages working your way through all the delicacies on offer. There seems to be an endless variety of cakes alone!

In the collage, you can see the varied opportunities there are in Melaka for photo-taking. It's a very picturesque place and the museum there gives a very full overview of Melaka's most interesting history.

If you have any comments or questions, please get in touch with us: ron@astsabah.com and jude@astsabah.com. We'd love to hear from you!

After launching the website!

Last week was certainly an interesting one as we launched the AST: Sabah website. Thanks to many of you for sending in such positive comments and helpful suggestions. Someone said that they had found a missing fullstop and capital letter but we probably weren't interested in things like that. Not at all! I'm still trying to find them. If you know where they are, please let me know at: jude@astsabah.com.

One comment / concern that came up was that there are no costings for the tours on the website. You can, of course, get a quote by sending me a note, asking for them and, believe me, our rates are competitive. But I know how you feel: what's the point of even considering taking a tour when you have no idea how much it is going to cost? We're talking about what to do about this - so stay posted!

These orchid photos were taken at the Sabah Agriculture Park in Tenom. It's a wonderful place and has (among lots and lots of other things) two orchid gardens: one for the hybrid orchids that we know so well - lots of large blooms on a stem, incredible colours - and the other for native orchids. These are very different and can be so tiny and delicate that you can hardly see them. It's much more difficult to photograph orchids than I thought it would be, though! Any tips gratefully received.
If you have any comments you would like to have posted, please send them to me: jude@astsabah.com.

And if you have any questions about Sabah, just ask me. Same address!