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Other entries in Melaka

Melaka- Portuguese, Dutch, English, everything.

Melaka, its had an intresting past in the last few hundred years with its European neighbours. First the Portugese battered their way through back in the 1500s trying to expand their empire. The locals tried to take it back a couple of times but failed. Then the Dutch came in, battered the Portugesse defenses, and the locals and ruled from about the 1600s, after that, the British came in. The British in this area definitely had a different plan. They signed treaties and trade aggrements with the local Sultans of the area and with the help of the locals, osted the Dutch from their fortifications, and started imposing their legal systems on the area, as well as bringing in the trading boats and kick starting the economy of the area.

After the Japanese invasion and surrender around the time of the 2nd WW, the British handed back the area to the remaining Sultans, and Malaysia gained independence in 1957 and became a country. Singapore, a state of Malaysia, broke off a few years later to become a country of its own.

There are a lot of musuems dotted about the old center of Melaka. I went for a walk around the Naval and Marine museums and because the Independence mueseum was free, had a look around there as well. It was full of lots of memrobelia from now and then. The Naval Marine had a disused ship in the grounds of the museum on stilts.

They were having a river festival in Melaka and had sight seeing boats running up an down the river for the week that I was there. I flagged one down and jumped aboard. It took you through the old Chinese parts of the city and into the newer business districts. When I went for a walk along the harbour it said 'No Swimming, Crocodiles.' I didn't see any, but did see plenty of Monitor Lizards, in the water, on the banks of the river and one that was looking up at me from a drain cover in the street. Some were only a meter long, the biggest must have been 2.5m long, big enough when you come face to face with one.

The old center of Melaka was built around a small hill. On top was built a church, and around the base of the hill, was a fortified wall. I walked up to the top on my last day to watch the sun set over the city, listening to the calls to prayer for the local Mosque and watching bats catch big flying insects on the wing, just as the sun dissapered over the horizon.

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