Two Maylaysian Cities

After a five hour bus ride we rolled into the city of Melaka around 11 pm.  We grabbed a ubber clean guest house about two blocks from the weekend night market which sold everything you could imagine on folding tables for as far as the eye can see.  We grabbed a table at a bar and got some cold beers, satay and fresh spring rolls. The bar atmosphere was complete with a guitar player singing Eric Clapton with the drunk patrons singing along.   After the bar closed we took a very bedazzled trishaw home.  Each trishaw is brightly colored cart with fake flowers shaped like a hear with lights and a boom box blasting American music.  A bike and a rider sits alongside the crazy contraption.

At the Buddhist Temple

We had picked up a traveling friend in Tioman named Sara who is an English girl teaching English in Indonesia.  The next morning we woke up and had breakfast with her before she departed back to Indo.   We then began exploring the city we visited the oldest Buddhist temple in Malaysia built in the 1700s and continued on to the Dutch and Portuguese square to see the still functioning Anglican church built in 1800 and marched up a hill to see the ruins of a Jesuit church from the 1500s.  After all that traipsing about we stopped by a massage parlor to experience foot reflexology.  We then joined the enormous line to eat the Maylay version of fondue, mystery food on a stick cooked in large vats of peanut sauce.  After trying some standbys of broccoli and chicken we delved into the mystery items which were all variations on a seafood theme.  After dinner we returned to the night market where I got a spiraled cut potato that was fried and salted. 

Cookin up some Satay

The next morning we grabbed a super luxury bus to head up to the island of Penang on the northwest side of Malaysia.  7 hours later we hopped on a ferry and arrived in the town of Georgetown.  That night we ate some street food of noodles, with wantons that are served with soup or without.  We tried both.  The operators of the food cart were really ancient and cooked up a storm the man boiled the noodles while the wife sliced the meat and added the spices.  There were tables on the sidewalks to eat at and watch as scooters rolled up to get takeaway and others came to eat. 

Grandma and Grandpa cooking it up (check out the dishwash set up in the lower right)

In the middle of the night Lindsey and Kate got up to watch the Euro cup and cheer on Spain's domination.  The next day we tried to grab tickets for a ferry to Medan Indonesia only to find out that the ferry had stopped running due to low cost airlines so we booked a plane ticket to Medan for July 3rd.  We continued to explore the city where Little India puts Devon street to shame.  We ducked inside a Veg Gujarat restaurant right as the rain began to pour.