Melaka

We're in the historic town of Melaka at the moment, which is famous for being a town ruled by the Portuguese, Dutch and most recently British as it was a key trading port on the Straits of Melaka, where the trade in spices was a huge earner for the colonizing powers.

There's loads of old architecture here and a lot of museums. Yesterday we went around the Museum of Independence and, more interestingly, a museum which explored the ways in which different cultures have an obssession with beauty which causes them to endure pain in pursuit of it. As well as this there are loads of interesting antique shops selling the most random things, including rusty old hinges amongst other things.

Last night we also ate at Capitol Satay, which always has a HUGE queue outside. It was definately worth the wait though as we chose a huge tray of loads of different meat, tofu, vegetables, seafood and bread, as well as two MASSIVE king prawns. In the middle of the table was a massive vat of bubbling Satay, which was continually topped up with more peanuts and ground chillies, and we cooked our skewered food in it.

And best of all...it only cost the equivalent of 2 pounds each! Bargain!

Today we're going to explore an old Baba Nonya (the name given to the chinese who settled here) house and tomorrow we head down to singapore, where we spend one night before flying to Darwin and it'll be goodbye to South East Asia!!!!