Malacca (food first)

Leaving Singapore by bus, there were buildings all the way up to the water. On the Malaysia side of the bridge, there were no buildings at all; only trees growing out of the water. The 4 hour bus ride underscored our sense of truely being in a jungle country.

At the bus station in Malacca, a very friendly group of smiling teenagers with emo haircuts helped us figure out how to walk to our hostel. They seemed a little surprised we wanted to walk, but our map seemed to indicate that it was very close. After a 45 minute walk through the heat and humidity, most of which was along a road without sidewalks on the outscirts of town, we finally found our destination. Howard, the hostel owner laughed when he saw our map. It's 10 years old; exactly when the bus station moved outside of town. On the up side, we saw a quite large monitor lizard in the river.

The hostel owner, Howard, is also extremely friendly. When he found out we were from California he asked if we spoke Spanish, and has since said almost everything in both English and immediately afterwards in Spanish. On our second night, he drove us to a street market in a residential section of town. There were many temporary stands set up selling produce and prepared foods. Here's a shot of the market:

This vendor is making "carrot cake"--a Chinese stir fry made from raddish cake and egg. (You can see the large, flat white raddish cakes on the right side of his walk).

Another stall had many different kinds of steamed dumplings. You'll notice that the prices all say RM 1.00. 1 Ringgit is a little less than 30 cents.

On the first night, we enjoyed the fare at the Newton hawker center, where they had many of the same Malay dishes Khir showed us in Singapore:

Here, they are often not called Malay dishes, however. A cendol (a dessert with coconut and palm sugar) or laksa dish (spicy noodles) will be called "nyonya cendol" or "baba laksa", indicating that they are dishes of Chinese immegrents who assimilated into Malay culture. It's not really clear what the difference in naming is about.

We have also been enjoying many different kinds of treats. There are lots of shaved-ice desserts with fruit (strawberries, mango, etc.)

Jen has also discovered her addiction for Cendol, the dessert I mentioned earlier.


It's got coconut (usually coconut cream), palm sugar, and small noodle-like segments made from rice flour heavily infused with the flavor of pandan leaf. The ones we've had in Malacca also usually have shaved ice and sometimes beans.