Malaka

We got up and ready at 10am ready to head out to find breakfast. We found Mim in the local cafe and had a nice simple breakfast and planned our day. First stop was the ATM before finding a ship museum. It was an old Portugese ship that told us a bit about the history of Malaka and all the influences like the Portugese and Dutch. It was ok but not amazing. We saw John and Mary there. We went for a drink as it was very hot still.

We headed to a museum which had an exhibit about people of enduring beauty. Dan and Gary didn't come in as it was a lot of reading. Mags, Lynn and I went round and it was very interesting. I read so much it was information overload. It had bits about the long neck tribes but also stuff about the chinese feet binding, the massive earlobes and lips, as well as different markings like scarring and tattooing. It was very hot in the museum but we had a quick walk around the kite museum too and then went to meet the lads in a local restuarant.

There was a chinese dragon performace going on for New Year celebrations. It was very loud but I was pleased we'd finally got to see one as we kept missing them. When it was over we headed to try and find some rice chicken balls the taxi driver told us about. All the restuarants selling them had queues coming out of the doors so we knew they must be good. We ordered some things to share, including the balls, but had to wait ages while all the locals were served around us. The balls were nice but I didn't really like anything else. It was a good local experience though.

We headed back to the hotel for a siester before an action packed evening. We didn't have an action packed afternoon afterall. We did pre dinner drinks as always and George came to join us as he was at a loose end too. We were all feeling sad as the tour was coming to an end soon. We met for dinner at the hotel and went to a very local restuarant. It was a satay restuarant. We all sat round a big table with the satay sauce being warmed up in the middle of the table by a gas ring. We choose our skewers from the fridge. I just had chicken and sweetcorn. Dan was more adventurous and had things like crab, liver, mushrooms etc. We had to cook our things in the sauce, about 2 minutes each thing. It was a great way to cook and eat, extremely cheap and very good experience.

We went back to the same bar for more drinks and had such a laugh putting ice down people's tops. We were getting funny looks as ice was flying everywhere. There was a guy singing (or trying to) so we got up and danced for a bit. Mim was dared to get a local to dance and get the singers hat but he wouldn't give it to her as he was bald! We ran out of money because we didn't want too much Ringgit to have left over so we bought some snacks and went back to the room.

We set up an elaborate plan to make Marina believe that there was somethign funny going on with Lynn and Gary. When she came to give Lynn the key she asked some questions and said she'd start rumours but then we didn't hear anymore about it! We went to bed at about 1.30am which wasn't good as we had to be up early to get the bus.