The Albatross
Tuesday 14 May 2024
Culture day today, by dang it’s been a while. Our first stop was Red Square, where the Dutch set up headquarters after kick the Portuguese out in 1641. They hung around for a long time, finally ceding the port to the British in 1825, as Jakarta (Batavia) was a great deal more viable.
The GPS took us through many narrow streets zig zagging with the other vehicles and motorbikes. Driving here really is a hoot.
Red Square is just a small area, with all the buildings painted red and covered in Chinese tour groups. Lots of tour groups. That and bicycle powered rickshaws all with a novelty theme. All in all, a wonderful chaotic mess.
The next highlight is to stroll Jonker Walk, just across from the square. It’s the historic Chinatown region. And it still is with tour groups proudly following behind their guide with his flag on a stick. There was one group that wasn’t, the guide was off at his own pace chatting with a rather attractive young lady, whilst his group ran amok amongst the shops. Bravo to all. Anyway, it was an old street with pretty old buildings in it. The sun which had largely been behind cloud came out and started roasting us, so we thought we’d head out to sort out the sim card.
Back across town to the shop we found yesterday, however no luck. The bloke couldn’t get my passport to register either, so we had to go to the big central command office, which turned out to be right near red square. We’ve seen a good chunk of Melaka now, much of it many times. After a wait we were finally data loaded again and hit the turbo button towards home. After picking up some stuff for dinner we made it back for a rather late lunch just as the rain started coming down. Time to catch up on the blogs, wash some underpants and book the next few days.
I think we are finally getting into the Malaysia way of doing things, it’s many years since we were last here.