Melacca

The second stop on our South East Asian adventure was at a small, quiet, laid-back city called Melacca. Melacca is interesting because it was ruled by the Portuguese and the Dutch at different times in history, so a lot of the architecture has a European feel to it.
We only stayed in Melacca for about 24 hours, but it was nice break from the noisy, fast-paced, big city atmosphere of Singapore. We spent most of the day on Friday (after wandering around for a while looking for a place to stay) walking around Chinatown and up and down a small river lined with little houses that looked like it belonged in Europe somewhere. We had an awesome Malaysian lunch consisting of laksa (seafood, buttery noodle soup) and stingray (my new favorite sea food!) at a little café, ate some Malaysian pineapple tarts, and walked through a number of Buddhist temples. In the evening we had a couple beers outside at a small restaurant along the river and ate dinner at an Indian restaurant. I’ve never eaten Indian food before and I’ve discovered one of my new favorite things: roti. Most of the other food is a little too spicy for me, but I’ve already had roti a few more times on this trip because it’s sooo good.
Friday morning we explored a few more things in the city, including an old Portuguese fort and a museum. For lunch we ate another famous Malay dish called chicken and rice balls, which of course was amazing. I’m pretty sure I’m going to come home from this trip weighing 200 lbs. It’s a really nice change from Korea, eating all of this new and unique food, because Koreans eat pretty much the same thing at every meal. It’s also been really nice to be able to speak to people in English and to see people of many different cultures.

Kuala Lumpur

After spending 24 hours in laid-back Melacca, we took a bus to Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia. We had intended to stay in KL for 5 days, but after 3 days realized we had seen pretty much everything we had wanted to see. Some of the more notable things to see in KL are the Jamie Mosque, Merdeka Square, Petaling Street and of course, the Petronas Towers. After a couple of days of the typical sightseeing adventures and feeling exhausted from walking around for hours on end (I’m kind of a baby when it comes to that much walking) we decided that we had seen enough of KL and it was time to move on to the second phase of our vacation: the beaches. But before we traveled to the beach, I really wanted to go to the Kuala Gandah Elephant Sanctuary that I had found out about online before our trip. According to the things I had read, the sanctuary was home to elephants that had either been orphaned or had been attacked by people or another animal. At the sanctuary you were supposed to able to feed, ride and bathe with the elephants. The sanctuary was one of the things on the trip that I REALLY wanted to do, but I knew getting there was going to be a little difficult since it was 2 hours outside of KL. Seth and I decided to make it into an adventure by renting a car and driving ourselves out to the sanctuary. We had a lot of trouble finding a place that rented cars, but at around 9 o’clock on the morning of our trip, we were able to find one. We picked up our car and Seth drove the two hours out to the sanctuary. For the first time in our trip, everything went exactly as it was supposed to and we had no trouble getting there (side note: people in Malaysia drive on the opposite side of the road which made the trip that much more interesting). We arrived at the sanctuary, had a quick lunch, watched a 30 minute video about elephant relocation that didn’t explain much about the actually sanctuary itself, and went with a bunch of other tourists to see the elephants. The whole experience with the elephants was really amazing. It was more touristy that I had hoped it would be, but we were still able to feed baby elephants peanuts, feed the old elephants (one was 72 years old!) fruit by actually putting our hands in their mouths, take a quick ride on and elephant, and swim with 2 babies and an old elephant. The swimming activity was by far the best part. They led the elephants into a nearby river. Seth, the other tourists and I all lined up on a dock where we took turns climbing onto the big elephant. After we climbed onto him he would take a few steps out into the river and then fall over sideways with everyone on his back. After you fell of the big elephant, you swam over to where the baby elephants were rolling around and playing in the water. There you could touch them and wash them with a brush, and just watch them roll around ungraciously in the river.
We then drove the 2 hours back home and quickly got ready to go out to dinner. We had made a reservation for that night at a place called the Sky Bar for after-dinner drinks. We had an awesome hand-made pizza dinner overlooking a park and then made our way to the Sky Bar. The appeal of the Sky Bar is not only its swanky interior that consists of cushioned lounges surrounding a pool, but the perfect view of the Petronas towers from each cushioned cubby. The Petronas towers are by far the most beautiful modern buildings I have ever seen, especially at night. They almost don’t look real. The Sky Bar was also really beautiful and was the perfect ending to our time in KL.