SUNDAY TRAVEL
DANIEL KANE / SPECIAL TO THE STAR-BULLETIN
The Kampung Kling Mosque in Melaka's Chinatown, with its uniquely shaped minaret, is a testament to Sumatran influences.
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Melaka still trading on a rich cultural heritage
By Daniel Kane
Special to the Star-Bulletin
Sitting on West Malaysia's southwest coast, about midway between Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, Melaka is quite aptly dubbed Malaysia's most historical city -- Penang and Kuala Lumpur notwithstanding.
At first glance, there would seem little to hint at such grandeur today. Most travelers to Malaysia tend to give sleepy Melaka the slip, or vice versa. This is easy enough to do as the country's primary highway passes Melaka by well to the northeast. For that matter, even a century or so ago when British Malaysia began to build the country's railway, planners concluded coastal Melaka simply didn't merit a branch line off the main Penang-Kuala Lumpur-Singapore trunk. After all, with British Penang and Singapore, who needed Melaka?
To this day, train enthusiasts like me have to debark at Tampin and settle for a 20-kilometer bus ride into today's backwater. But a low profile has its advantages. Melaka's rich cultural heritage has been preserved. Indeed, the most serious destruction seems to have been done by Dutch attackers in 1641! Today, Melaka is still home to the oldest Chinese temple, Protestant and Catholic churches, and two of the oldest mosques and Hindu temples in Malaysia.
Despite such official snubbing I would wager that the name "Melaka" stirs yet some distant chord in most adults. Perhaps it is the remnant of a distant history lesson, or the passing down of some tenuous collective memory, that conjures up with the word "Melaka" intimations of past greatness. If such are your impulses, you would not be mistaken. Just more than 500 years ago, Melaka was at the height of its powers, one of the world's most prosperous and cosmopolitan centers, back when Europe was only beginning to emerge from its shell.
If character is destiny, so too is location. Dominating the straits between Sumatra and the Malay peninsula, and thus between the Indian Ocean and South China Sea, and sitting along the shifting monsoon tradewinds, Melaka was well situated to become one of the busiest ports in Asia and a crossroads of trade between Arabia, East Africa, India and Ceylon, and East and Southeast Asia.
DANIEL KANE / SPECIAL TO THE STAR-BULLETIN
A worshipper is at Melaka's Chen Hoon Teng Temple in the "Abode of Green Clouds." Dedicated to Kuan Yin and dating to 1646, it is the oldest Chinese temple in Malaysia and perhaps the oldest Chinese temple in the world outside of China.
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By 1500 so great was the fame and power of this city ruled by the Islamic sultans of Melaka that the earliest European maps of Southeast Asia simply termed the Malay peninsula "Malacca," a name and spelling that still lends itself to the straits off Melaka's coast and to the alternate spelling of the city as well. Though the development of Singapore and the demise of the sail have long since put an end to Melaka's glory days, the city is still wealthy in culture and history. However you get there, it will not disappoint.
By most accounts, Melaka's namesake is the Melaka (or Myrobalans) tree, a native Malay species bearing large, juicy and sour-tasting fruit. Legend has it that the city's founder, a Hindu prince from Sumatra named Parameswara, while passing through the area around 1400, following his forced exile for political machinations, took shade under just such a tree. There he was startled to witness one of his hunting dogs kicked clear into a stream by an aggressive white mouse deer. Taking this as a propitious omen of the weak overcoming the powerful, Parameswara established a settlement there, naming his new town for the tree under which he had stood.
Within a few generations, and with the official adoption of Islam, Melaka became a magnet for Arab and other traders. Melaka's fortunes were built on trade, and though its rulers were strict Moslems, the city thrived in an atmosphere of cosmopolitanism and tolerance for ethnic and cultural outsiders, such as the Hindu and Chinese settlers that soon found a home in this rich city on the Straits.
Testament to its origins, a somewhat awkward statue of a white mouse deer graces Melaka's heart: the small plaza in front of the Dutch built Stadthuys (Town Hall). A sculpture of Parameswara's unfortunate dog is nowhere to be seen, though surely the dog was as instrumental as the mouse deer in the city's birth. In any case, besides providing a picture-taking moment, with the red austerity of the Dutch architecture and the playful movement of the colorful trishaws -- bicycle-cum-rickshaws -- the plaza is also the ideal place to absorb Melaka's cultural richness.
Standing on the steps of the conveniently located tourist office, I gaze across at the stately Christ Church, the oldest Protestant church in Malaysia and built by the Dutch in 1753 during their tenure over Melaka. Next to it, in matching red, is the solid looking Stadthuys, until quite recently the administrative center of the city.
DANIEL KANE / SPECIAL TO THE STAR-BULLETIN
The fruit market in Melaka shows its many colors.
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Behind that slopes Bukit St. Paul (St. Paul's Hill) crowned by the moldering remnants of St. Paul's Church, originally built by the Portuguese during their control over Melaka in the late 16th century and later renovated by the Dutch. The Basque Jesuit St. Francis Xavier sojourned there for periods en route to and from missionary work in Japan. He died in Melaka in 1545, before he could reach China, and his body was briefly interred in the church's crypt before being transferred to the Portuguese stronghold of Goa in India.
Behind me, across the small bridge spanning the Melaka River, sits the modest bustle of Chinatown, while along the Melaka River's bank spread the stands for selling "cendol," a popular local drink of crushed ice, coconut milk, palm sugar, glutinous rice, and a sort of green gelatin called "cendol." Finally, just down the riverfront looms a full-scale reproduction of a Portuguese ship of exploration -- a caravel -- that first brought Portuguese traders, priests and conquerors around Africa and on to Melaka's promising coast.
This is also where one should begin exploring all Melaka has to offer. The Melaka tourist office just off the plaza is the logical place to start, supplying the requisite maps as well as suggestions for a walking itinerary. Historical Melaka is the ideal size -- neither small enough to bore nor large enough to overwhelm. I choose to begin on St. Paul's Hill, making a symbolic entrance through the only surviving remnant of what was formerly the city's massive fort -- the Porta de Santiago. If only the stones of that gate could speak! As it is, their pockmarked faces reveal much about the armed struggles fought between Portuguese, Malay and Dutch over control of Melaka (the English had it handed to them).
The fort, with its formidable main gate, was built by the Portuguese to secure their jealous hold on Melaka from both the remnant power of the sultan of Melaka intent on regaining it and the increasingly predatory Dutch. As it turned out, the Dutch in alliance with Malays from nearby Johor (the area around modern Singapore) eventually seized Melaka in 1641 and destroyed much of the Portuguese fort in the process. To put a symbolic stamp on their new conquest, the Dutch prominently carved the initials of the Dutch East India Co. -- under whose direction Dutch troops had seized the city -- on the Porta de Santiago.
Atop St. Paul's Hill the St. Paul's Church is the picture of melancholy. Built by the Portuguese, it was used by the Dutch until the building of Christ Church down the hill. When the English took over, they decided to use it to store gunpowder. Over the last century or so, it has fallen into disrepair; its roof and portions of its walls are gone. With its remaining tombstones, most from the Dutch or English period, it seems for all the world like a maudlin scene from a Wordsworth poem. Still, from its modest heights one catches the sea breeze that seems to miss the city down below and a good panorama of historic Melaka and the Straits of Malacca.
DANIEL KANE / SPECIAL TO THE STAR-BULLETIN
The interior of Chinatown's Cafe 1511 was once the home of a wealthy Straits-born Chinese, or Peranakan, cafe.
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MELAKA'S VERY GRANDEUR proved its downfall. It soon became the coveted jewel of a burgeoning Portuguese maritime empire emanating from Lisbon. Intent upon finding a direct route to India and the spice trade, and thus cutting out the largely Venetian middlemen, Portuguese ships first sought out India, only to realize that the spices came not from there, but further afield, from Southeast Asia and what is now Malaysia and Indonesia. Melaka dominated this trade, and it soon became clear to the Portuguese that, in the words of one historian, he who controlled Melaka had his hands on the throat of Venice.
Little surprise then that under the command of Afonso de Albuquerque, the Portuguese Viceroy of India, Portuguese troops with their superior firepower overwhelmed and captured Melaka in 1509. It was to be theirs for little more than a century. It was also to prove a bitter disappointment, as under Portuguese Catholic overlordship Arab and Islamic trade dried up significantly.
All this and more is to be learned in one of the finest museums I encountered in Malaysia, Melaka's Museum of History and Ethnography, spread over two extensive floors of the city's Dutch-built Stadthuys in Melaka's main square. Its displays in Malay, Chinese and English provide a thorough introduction to Melaka's colorful past, from its foundation to the modern period, a history that witnessed its control by Islamic Malay, Portugal, the Dutch Netherlands, England, Japan and modern Malaysia, not to mention the influential contributions of Chinese and Hindu settlers. I find it all too easy to spend an entire afternoon roaming its halls, cooled by the soft winds that flow through open shutters.
In the afternoon I wander through Melaka's downtown, peering into the city's many antique shops and also discovering what was to me a unique phenomenon: what the locals call a liquor shop but which is not quite a liquor store and not quite a bar, but something in between. Open only during the day, the store's shelves are stocked with every local brand of alcohol (and a few imported labels), which patrons purchase and drink on the premises.
DANIEL KANE / SPECIAL TO THE STAR-BULLETIN
All Malaysians know Melaka for its most famous dish, chicken rice balls, a variation on the chicken-rice that is a staple noontime fare throughout the country.
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Resisting the urge to attempt the liquor shop experience, I continue on from the central plaza down the street Jalan Bunga Raya to Melaka's local market along the river. Here, the various ethnicities of Melaka rub shoulders: Chinese, Malay, Hindu. Some of the most popular street food stalls in Malaysia are run by Moslem Indians, shops affectionately termed "mama dong," which stay open late into the night serving up local noodles with lamb, delicious curries, barbecued lamb and chicken satay, and of course the "roti canai," a fried bread that has the thickness of a crepe with which you wipe up hot curry sauce and eat with your hands.
But perhaps the most impressionable food to me was Malaysia's bewildering variety of fruit, many of which are blended and served up as cold drinks on the street. Of course, if it's in season, no trip would be complete without a splurge on some durian, that foul-smelling but rich-tasting fruit whose odor makes it verboten on trains, buses and in most hotels. Melaka is known for its local durian "dodol," a sort of sweet cake made from the fruit, coconut milk and a type of palm sugar called "gula."
The impersonally named Café 1511 is anything but that. Taking a break from the heat of a Melaka afternoon, I sip the house specialty, limeade with a li hing mui plum for kick. Ensconced in the cluttered coziness of the narrow cafe, surrounded by such quotidian objects as an antique bicycle, piles of old magazines and even an ice crushing machine, I feel as if I'm sitting in someone's living room or perhaps garage. In a sense I am.
The cafe was at one time the private home of a Peranakan -- or Straits-born Chinese. I am in the center of Melaka's Chinatown, a meandering network of streets so narrow that traffic is only one way. It's hugged on both sides by shoulder-to-shoulder private homes, shops and temples. Many of the former private residences of wealthy Chinese have been converted into small inns of varying comfort level, and antique shops abound. Despite this touristy feel, the area is still very much the cultural and business heart of Melaka's Chinese community, and perhaps the most vibrant and entrancing Chinese community in Malaysia.
DANIEL KANE / SPECIAL TO THE STAR-BULLETIN
A life-size model of the Portuguese ship Flor de la Mar houses a maritime museum showcasing in particular the Portuguese links with Melaka.
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MELAKA WAS the first destination of Chinese seeking a better life for themselves in Nanyang, literally the Southern Sea but more figuratively Southeast Asia. Long before Singapore, Kuala Lumpur or even Bangkok figured in the imaginations of adventuresome, enterprising or simply desperate Chinese, there was Melaka. The Chinese first arrived here on the heels of the 15th-century maritime voyages of Adm. Cheng Ho, the most famed of Chinese admirals, who made seven voyages to Melaka between 1404 and 1433 and whose statue dominates a courtyard in the city's museum. By 1436, historical accounts already relate the presence of a thriving Chinese community in the city. In fact, the city's oldest existent well was dug in 1459 for the Chinese princess Hang Li Po by her husband, the sultan of Melaka, so that she might have a private place to bathe.
Melaka's Chinatown is simply a fun place to roam. I do so with an authentic Baba -- the term for a Straits-born Chinese man (the term for a woman is Nyonya). We begin by having the de rigueur Melaka meal: chicken and rice balls. Though chicken and rice (or simply chicken-rice), served up with sliced cucumber and chili sauce, is a staple Malaysian lunchtime meal, in Melaka they insist on doing things a bit differently. The rice is rendered into a series of sticky rice balls. I find it easier to stab them with my chopstick or simply pick them up and toss them into my mouth.
The ideal place to begin a visit to Melaka's Chinatown is the privately run Baba-Nyonya Heritage Museum. For eight ringgit (about $2) one gets an intimate look at the unique style of a wealthier Straits Chinese home. The building was formerly a home to three generations of local Chinese before being established as a museum by the most recent descendants. Still, the home retains all of its original furnishings -- including an unopened bottle of 1846 brandy.
The typical Peranakan house was two stories and contained a central courtyard, often with a small fountain, to let in the rain and sun.
DANIEL KANE / SPECIAL TO THE STAR-BULLETIN
In Melaka's Portuguese settlement, a lonely pier at ebb tide stands, but just barely, as testament to Melaka's historical link with the sea.
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Though narrow, the houses go back deep from the street, and the open central foyer gives them a spacious and airy feel, far from the impression one gets from their austere, flat fronts. Peranakan homes were imminently practical. An iron gate at the top of the staircase locked off the top-floor living space from the downstairs ("to keep out thieves and also husband when he come home late," our guide explained). More impressive is the innovative small round floor opening in the master bedroom, plugged by a removable piece of wood. When opened, one could peer down on the front door and the visitor in front of it. Again, our guide explained, "When you have late visitor, you can open up hole and see who is. If you like that person you go down, if you no like you empty this on them (pointing to the room's chamber pot)."
Try as I might, I could discern no trace of humor in her eyes.
Chinatown is somewhat of a misnomer for Melaka. There are certainly other influences as well. Parameswara was the first Malay to be converted to Islam, a faith that eventually spread throughout western Malaysia, which to this day is predominantly Moslem. Melaka is studded with Islamic mosques, but perhaps the most notable is the Kampung Kling Mosque, one of the oldest Mosques in Malaysia and situated in Chinatown's heart.
Exhibiting its unique Sumatrese influence, the mosque's minaret is shaped like a pagoda with a pyramidal roof, reflecting the east-west amalgamation that characterizes both historical and modern Melaka. Just down the road is the Sri Poyyatha Vinayagar Moorthi Temple, one of the country's oldest, whose exterior is as colorful as its name. The Dutch granted the land for the Hindu temple after having wrested Melaka from the Portuguese following a prolonged 1641 siege. Like later British policy in Singapore, it was the Dutch hope to foster accord between the various ethnicities of Melaka by bringing them together in a common space through land grants, and in the process to win their compliance with Dutch rule. Outside the temple a young Hindu girl was selling what appeared to me to be pikake leis. They were in fact "pu saram," braided jasmine buds used in Hindu prayers.
My friend insists we visit Chinatown's Cheng Hoon Teng Temple -- the "Abode of the Green Cloud." Dedicated primarily to Kuan Yin, the goddess of mercy, the temple was assembled by Melaka's Chinese community with materials imported from China. Built in 1646, it is the oldest Chinese temple in Malaysia. Far from being a museum piece, Cheng Hoon Teng is a living temple, and though the Chinese no longer come to give thanks for a safe passage from China, it is still a place where locals congregate to worship and seek the succor, and hopefully good bodings, of Kuan Yin.
I was to be no exception. I knelt down beside my friend, mimicking his motions as I shook the bamboo shaker full of Chien Tung sticks before the emotionless gaze of Kuan Yin. Apparently you are supposed to ask only one question until the first stick is shaken loose. With that one stick you then retrieve your answer in the form of a slip of paper corresponding to the stick that was fated loose. From the expression on the temple worker's face,I knew my friend's fortune was propitious. In response to my stick I was greeted with a mixed look of pity and humor. My request to Kuan Yin, however, was simply to get home safely. And like my visit to Melaka, in that I was not disappointed.
Daniel Kane is a freelance writer who divides his time between Korea and Hawaii.
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If you go ...
The easiest way to reach Melaka from Singapore or Kuala Lumpur is by express bus. Numerous buses leave daily from both locations for Melaka. If you insist -- as I did -- on traveling by train, there is a daily train in each direction; however, you will have to get on or off in the small town of Tampin, about 20 kilometers northeast of Melaka. Buses run nearly every hour until 11 p.m. between Melaka and Tampin, and the drive takes about 40 minutes to an hour.
Lodging
Melaka is full of hotels from the basic to the typical five-star extravaganza. A guide to the hotels of Melaka is available at the tourist office just off Melaka's central square near the Stadthuys. But for the most rewarding experience in Melaka, it's best to head to Chinatown and spend a night or three in one of the numerous Peranakan homes converted into small inns. Chinatown also happens to be within easy walking distance to the city's major historical and cultural attractions.
Prices vary from a modest $15 to about $40 per night, often including a complimentary breakfast. For the undeniable feel of a typical Peranakan home, Hotel Puri in the heart of Chinatown is hard to beat. The hotel's designers were faithful to the feel of the traditional home. The front lobby is a quiet sitting room with literature on Melaka, and its central courtyard has been tastefully converted into a softly lighted cafe and cocktail bar. Call 6-06-282-5588, e-mail puri@pc.jaring.my or go online at www.hotelpuri.com.
Also recommended are the Heeren Inn (call 6-06-288-3600) and Heeren House (call 6-06-281-4241, e-mail herenhse@tm.net.my or visit www.melaka.net/heerenhouse), also located in the heart of Chinatown, closer to Melaka River.
Not in Chinatown but centrally located is Aldy Hotel. With its broadband Internet access, cable television and rooftop Jacuzzi, it might appeal to the modern-minded. Another advantage is its wide range of room prices, from the budget to the multiroom suite. Call 6-06-283-3232, e-mail info@aldyhotel.com.my or go online at www.aldyhotel.com.my.
Festivals
Melaka's multicultural mix is reflected in its array of annual festivals. Unique in Malaysia is Melaka's lasting Portuguese heritage. Indeed, many Melakans of Portuguese ancestry will insist they are not Malaysian, but Portuguese, despite the passing of five centuries! In the middle of the last century, land was set aside in Melaka's southern end to accommodate the numerous Melakans of Portuguese ancestry who established their own schools and churches. A small Portuguese Square was recently built to serve as the cultural center of the Portuguese community. Here you can savor Portuguese-Malay cooking, and during the annual San Pedro's Festival, held every June, it is the place to watch -- or join -- the local dances and savor the unique local Portuguese-Malay cuisine.
Melaka also holds its annual Dragon Boat Festival in June. Though no comparison to nearby Singapore's, it is worth taking a look as dragon boats compete in speed and endurance races along the Straits of Melaka.
And, of course, for a month during the Chinese New Year, Melaka's Chinatown becomes a sea of red lights with attendant lion dances, cultural performances, calligraphy exhibitions and outdoor dining.
Though not a festival per se, Melaka puts on an outdoor sound-and-light show every night showcasing its history and culture. The show takes place in the municipal stadium just outside the remnants of the Portuguese-built Porta de Santiago near St. Paul's Hill. Show times vary so it's best to check with the tourist office.