Melaka Melacca

Kath and I spent a couple nice days in Melaka--a port city a couple hours south of Kuala Lumpur. It has historically been a disputed colonial port due to its prime shipping location. The Portuguese were the first to capture the city, followed by the Dutch and the English (of course) over the past 500 years. There were lots of interesting museums and sights.
First, this is the only place in Malaysia I saw bicycle transportation--they're called Trishaws here and as you can see, the bicycle is off to the side rather than in the front. They decorate them in crazy, over-the-top plastic flowers and stuff and most all of them have a pumping music system that blasts dance music as they bike around. It's mostly just a tourist attraction and the "romance" of getting someone else to pedal me around has significantly decreased after living in Bangladesh, but they're still worth a nice photo:
We stayed in a really beautiful little oasis of a guesthouse/hostel. Here is the garden with the pet bunny that hopped around (his name was Mr. Playboy):
There were many series of ponds and walkways that were relaxing, beautiful and full of great fish! This is the pond full of fan-tail guppies with stone walkway that leads to the common area:And the koi pond--these were quite large specimens! The guesthouse is run by two brothers who were really chill, laid-back and friendly. The showers here were beautiful, too--like little jungle oasis with rock floors, open to the outside with tons of living plants/vines.
And a photo to prove that Kath can ~sort of~ relax sometimes! Here she is enjoying coffee in the lounge area/garden planning our day from the guidebook.

Like any large town in Malaysia, Melaka also had a Chinatown and a Little India. We had some great food in little india the first day we were there and we took a nice little walking tour of Chinatown one day.
Here's one of the 'stops' on the walking tour--a beautiful and famous building, but now I don't remember what it was.....
There were lots of buddhist temples along the walk. Here are some awesome carved dragons at one of them:
And some of the ubiquitous incense at the entrance:
Here's another view of a buddhist temple from afar to see the carved roof and eave details--click on the photos to enlarge them.
And yet ANOTHER different temple from the inside:
Here's the view from the previous temple looking out onto the street. I just really liked the way the door framed the roofs of the buildings across the way and the string of red globe lights.....
And a beautiful lantern and flower outside:
There was also some great public murals/art along the river in another part of the city:
And a fountain in the center of town that EVERYONE took their picture in front of, so we did as well:

Melaka was a very nice city--less hustle and bustle of KL or Singapore and friendly people, good food and cheap, awesome accommodation! Also, the BEST Nasi Lemak of the trip for 65 cents!