Sunday turned out to be a bit of a disaster. We had booked to go on a full-day tour to the historic seaside town of Malacca to explore its colonial past - colonised by the Portugese, the Dutch and the English over a span of about four hundred years, up until Malaysia's recent independence. Unfortunately, and unknowingly, we didn't take into account that today (Monday) is the Labour day holiday in Malaysia, which means a long weekend and thousands upon thousands of people streaming out of Kuala Lumpur to Malacca (and other places). An eight-hour tour turned out to be an incomplete twelve-hour excursion, much of it spend in bumper-to-bumper traffic. We simply couldn't get to many of the places on the itinerary. Instead we were confined to seeing an old, run-down (and uninteresting) Buddhist temple, the ruins of the old St Paul's church with its statue of St Francis of Assissi (who died in Malacca, was interred there but exhumed nine months later and re-buried in Goa, India), a walk across a couple of bridges spanning the canals that were such an important part of trade in earlier centuries, and a walk through the crowded Jonker Walk street markets. We even came across a statue of Malaysia's Mister Universe 2008 - reminded us of Tom. On the way back we looked to be in danger of not getting to the airport in time for our flight to Frankfurt, however the driver who was allocated our transfer from the Traders Hotel to the airport used some initiative in collecting our suitcases and meeting the tour bus outside Kuala Lumpur.
So we made it on time and had a pleasant 12 hour flight to Frankfurt - managed to get a few hours sleep and had a breakfast on board of scrambled eggs and a 'frankfurt' - then a quick flight to Prague, where we are now ensconced in our very comfortable apartment right in the centre of the old town and walking distance to everything. Early night then start exploring this beautiful city in earnest tomorrow.
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