Our Trip to Melaka

Today Lyndon decided we would go for a drive to Melaka (or Melacca for us English speaking folks!). It's about 140 odd kms away and took us around 2 and a half hours to get there (getting home was another story!!).

So by the time we got organised and in the car it was nearly 11am (!) and Maddison was asleep before we even got out of the carpark LOL.

We got Aaron some "Donalds chippies" and he was happy as a piglet in mud. Here he is munching away and telling us (repeatedly) about "plane high in the sky, LOOK Mummy, Daddy, plane high in the sky!!" (Had to keep telling him to eat so we didn't have to hear that all the time LOL.)

Maddison completely out to it.
Lyndon enjoying a coffee.
A lovely photo of us (showing my double chins!)

Can't remember if this sign thingy megiggy was before or after the toll gate into Melaka. It looked really awesome at night when we were coming back. You can't really tell, but to each side of the bridge bit over the road there were 3 different sort of towers and they were all lit up. We were getting along at a good clip then so didn't get a photo (the good clip didn't last long though!).

Coming into the city the bougainvilleas were just beautiful and so many different colours.

Snapped this pic out the car window of all these rickshaws all decked out in their plastic flowers. Some even had "boom boxes" under the seats hehehee
Found a cheap "hotel" to stay in if we ever go there to stay! (NOT) it was in an "interesting" area and the kitchen and dining area you can just see a part of on the bottom level where the motorbike is parked! Don't think you'd see this in New Zealand somehow!
Look at my brave boys :-) Aaron wasn't that keen to start with but then he was touching it and chatting the whole time. (Of course I have heaps of photos and just love all his expressions!) And if you are observant you'll note he's got a different set of clothes on! This is actually this 3rd pair of pants. We stopped at a mall for lunch and discovered he was wet (had pull ups on, but not sure if his bottle leaked in the car!) so bought some shorts there. Then when we got out of the car here he was wet again!!! So had to buy him a complete set of clothes ... now he has the typical tourist tee & matching shorts from Melaka! :-)

We hired 2 rickshaws to give us a tour of the historical spots. This is Lyndon & Aaron's vehicle!
And their driver.
We stopped off to check out this ship - it's actually the Maritime museum. The tour was supposed to be an hour, but it was rather hot, so we could see why they took us to all these places and "encouraged" us to go and visit and look around while they rested in the shade!! We scurried around that ship like you wouldn't believe, hopped back into the rickshaws to find Lyndon's driver had disappeared. My driver said he'd gone to the toilet so he wandered off to find him, 10 minutes later they both came back!!!!

Here's the rickshaw that Maddison & I travelled in ... didn't get a photo of our driver, he was an old fella and didn't have much puff. (Lyndon said though that he had the easier job, because his driver did lots of huffing and puffing peddling up the hills LOL) hehehee
Climbed up to check out this fort "A Famosa" I had very shaky knees by the time I got to the top, we were carrying the kids and it was stinking hot, think I was past the "glowing" stage by then! Was a nice cool breeze up there though thankfully.

Inside had lots of these sorts of plaques.

This was at the top of the entry to the fort at the bottom of the hill (didn't manage to get a photo of the whole thing unfortunately) :-(
According to Lyndon's driver Melaka was named after a tree called Melaka and this is the Melaka tree. It's actually a bit like the New Zealand Kowhai tree leaf.
And saw this coming home ... Melaka's "Hollywood" sign maybe??? Had a neat waterfall behind the sign. (Photo taken at dusk so hard to see waterfall)

So that's the short sweet version of our day today. The long part was getting home!! Bumper to bumper traffic pretty much all the way until the last 30 kms. Probably spent an hour stop, start, stop, start! Not sure what the hold up was as we didn't see any accidents. We were talking about the traffic coming home and Lyndon said, well Kuala Lumpur has nearly double the population of New Zealand, so just imagine all of New Zealand travelling from Melaka to KL tonight! hehehehe that was about it too! (KL population around 7 million, whole of Malayisa around 27 million!)

And just for the record ... half a day I can take just over a 100 photos! I don't think I will EVER catch up with my scrapping. Sigh!