Postcard from Melacca

Yesterday I arrived in Melacca, the famous trading port for hundreds of years. Melacca was first colonized by Arab traders, Chinese, Portuguese, Dutch and the English for 100-150 years each! Talk about a lot of colonizing. Today it is turning in to quite a tourist attraction. I walked around this morning and saw a couple of tourist attractions and tons of tourist markets selling those tourist trinkets that people buy and give to people who aren't sure what to do with them.

There is a replica of an old Portuguese Gallion from 1512 on display which is an example of "colonial plundering of Malaysia."

There were tons of museums everywhere. I think it might rival the smithsonion for number of museums in one place. I wasn't very interested in them so I only went to one which kept making me take my shoes off and put them in a plastic bag to carry around.

Also in Melacca was St. Paul's Church on the top of the main hill that used to be the Portuguese fort. It was later abandoned by the Dutch when their church was built on the bottom of the hill. St. Francis used to visit this church often and his body was interred here for 9 months after his death. That is his statue.

After a little sightseeing, I hopped a bus to Kuala Lumpur.