Malacca is the ultimate tourist state and of course a UNESCO heritage site.

From Dutch Square in the centre of town you can pick up a trishaw. Yes they do all look like this!

 

Peranakan Culture

Malacca is the  centre of  Peranakan culture. The mainly Chinese settlers who came to Malacca as miners or traders married local women and so a unique blend of Chinese and local cultures came about. The men were called Babas and the women Nyonyas.

 The Baba and Nyonya Heritage Museum is a great place to spend an afternoon finding out about these people and their customs

 

 

Looking at The Sights

This is a great place to just wander around but it is very overcrowded and a proper tourist trap. A must see sight is the A Famosa Fort built in 1511 by the leader of the Portuguese invasion.

All that remains is the gate.

 

 

 After walking through the crowds in town its nice to walk slowly along the river. You can do a cruise but the queues were so long we decided to just wander around a little.

Gyro Tower

After all that walking we ended up at the Menara Taming Sari. A 110 metre high gyro tower named after the Taming Sari Keris,

a mythical symmetrical  dagger belonging to the legendary Malay warrior Hang Tuah.

Reassuringly, and a hopefully useless fact, is that it can withstand an earthquake of up to ten on the Richter scale.

Eighty people sit in a glass cabin as it slowly revolves and rises giving you views Malacca. The fist time we’ve actually revolved while going up  a tower!

We sat with mostly locals looking through the provided binoculars at the sights of Malacca.

Then after all that hard work sightseeing back to Jonker Street for local food.