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1/3/2005, Malaysia trip day 8: Melaka - bicycle tour

The main event of the day was a bicycle tour through the countryside. This was a recommendation by Hussein, the owner of the guest house we were staying at. The pamphlet promised a leisurely ride through the countryside of Melaka. It promised something apart from the usual tourist route of Melaka, which is a historical city that attracts hoards of tourists. I had a good feeling about it.

Note that this was the end of the trip and I had lots of room on my camera's memory card and I felt I hadn't taken enough interesting pictures during the trip. So, I took much more pictures on this day than any other. It was a good day to do it, since the tour included lots of stuff I like to take pictures of.

Also note that as I was writing this, there were a few things I couldn't remember. When you see "???", that means I'm hoping Akemi or somebody will see it and give me the information so I can add the right information to this page later. But, if a picture is worth a thousand words, then it won't make much difference. I hope.

Our guide, Alias, picked us up at the hotel and took us out to breakfast at a local cafe. I forget the Malaysian name, but it was a traditional bread with a soup that you pour over the bread. We also had some coconut rice. His wife came and met us. We went back to their home and got the bicycles.

Our first stop was a rubber tree farm. He showed us how rubber is grown and harvested. He had a seemingly (and unfortunately) endless stream of sexual jokes about the rubber tree ranging from references to condoms to rubber bum massage balls to blow jobs (see the G-rated video below). He was a really nice and jovial guy, so it didn't bother Akemi at all, even though she understood more than I expected. Since it didn't bother her, it didn't bother me either. He was like that kid at school who relishes his burps and farts and makes sculptures with his buguers. A little gross, but nothing sinister.

Rubber trees. (photo by Akemi)

A little bucket attached to each tree collects the rubber.

You can pull the rubber off with your fingers. If it's hard, it's a little like a rubber band.

One of our guide's cleaner jokes.

He used the rubber tree seed to make this little toy. This is the G-rated movie referred to above. (1.17 MB)

We spent considerable time making these little rubber balls. No particular purpose, but it makes a nice souvenir, different from anything you could get in a souvenir shop. They do bounce nicely. (3.24 MB)

What were these again???

The guide owns about a dozen mountain bikes like this one.

Akemi and the bike, again.

What were these again??? Cashew tree, I believe.

Citronella grass.

Citronella grass and cashew tree.

Our guide showing us the citronella grass. It smells just like you'd expect, like an anti-mosquito candle.

Pineapple tree.

One of the countless nice houses we saw in Melaka.

Another beautiful house in Melaka.

Cocoa (chocolate) plant.

We had the opportunity to eat the cocoa fruit straight from the tree. You pull out the white sections and suck on them. I think they taste just a little like coconut. Maybe it's just that they're both tropical oils and they're both saturated fat. I don't know.

A cocoa fruit section up close. The inside is a dark red. Commercially, they roast it. They only use the stuff on the inside. When it is roasted, it turns brown and develops the flavor that we most often associate with chocolate.

Star fruit.

Melaka is chock full of wild animals running anywhere and everywhere. Cows roam walking freely in the highway. Cats eating trash in every neighborhood everywhere. Chickens in everybody's hard. Goats. Anything. And, geese.

What were these???

Another beautiful house.

What were these???

Star fruit.

Star fruit and pretty flower.

What were these??? The guide called them "monkey balls" with his usual crude sense of humor.

What were these??? (photo by Akemi)

Another nice house. (photo by Akemi)

What were these??? I believe these are papaya plants. We passed a huge farm that grows these.

We also had the honor of meeting our guide's two sons. We dropped by their school just briefly. I think he was doing an errand of some sort. He wasn't specifically trying to show us the school, but we found it rather interesting. I wanted to take a picture, but I was afraid I might offend somebody. Akemi was a little bolder. She took a couple photos. Since they are high resolution, I cropped out some interesting scenes from the ≈3 photos she took. That gave me the following pictures.

People at the school.

A sign showing the class hours. I like pictures of signs because they help identify a place and seem characteristic.

People at the school.

Akemi also took this picture of a building somewhere, but I can't remember what it is. (???)

The neat thing about this tour is that we just roamed around the countryside. No particular purpose, but he stopped and showed us interesting fruit trees or anything else he thought we'd like, whenever he thought of it. He says the tour is totally different everytime.

Alias, our terrific guide.

The second biggest industry in Malaysia is palm oil (second to petroleum). They're one of the biggest producers in the world. They have huge palm plantations everywhere. Besides Malaysians, they import a lot of cheap labor from neighboring Indonesia. The people pull the big palm kernels (word?) off of the palm trees and load them into trucks which take them to a plant that presses the oil out. He said they use every part of the tree for various purposes. There is very, very little waste, despite the fact that the kernel, the main purpose of the trees, is a small part of the matter of the tree.

This fellow is pulling down palm kernels.

On the far left of this picture, you can see his big stick reaching up into a palm tree. The stick has a tool on the end to help get the kernels free.

Riding through a palm plantation.

Akemi on her bike.

A big pile of palm kernels.

Palm kernels.

Akemi with palm kernels.

Akemi and me with palm kernels.

The three of us with the palm kernels.

Another try with the camera timer. I set the camera on the ground with a tiny tripod to take this.

What were these??? I think they are palm seeds.

What were these??? The guide says each seed has a unique face, just like people.

We also stopped by a rubber processing plant. It really stinks. Our guide says it's the smell of money. He says everything that makes money stinks. In his business, he says, sweaty people (from riding his bicycles) make him money. In the rubber industry, stinky rubber makes money.

A truck full of rubber coming in from a rubber tree farm.

In Malaysia, you see motorcycles everywhere. They are much more common in Malaysia than in Japan or the United States. Workers use them to carry rubber or fruit. You frequently see a whole family piled on a single motorcycle. I wanted to take more pictures, but it's a little hard since they're moving and it's hard to get any kind of explicit or implicit permission to take the picture. But, I managed to take a few.

This was near a palm plantation.

I think this is the same guy.

A father carrying two kids to or from school. If you count the legs, you can see there are three people on this motorcycle.

This one was hard to take. But, if you look closely, you can see there is a mother and four (not three) kids on this motorcycle.

A mother and daughter on a motorcycle.

Throughout the tour, I really enjoyed the beautiful houses. Here are some of the more beautiful ones I saw.

Another beautiful house.

Another nice house.

One of the unexpected highlights of this tour was a stop by a local convenience store for a snack (read: ice cream). It turns out our guide personally knew the owners of the place. We stayed an chatted a little. More significantly, he generously showed us his wedding photographs. It was a real honor and a treasured experience to see them. It was a view into the culture. First, there were two weddings, one for each side of the family. The bride's side had a traditional wedding with traditional dress. The groom's side had a western style wedding with a typical white wedding dress. For both weddings, they did an extensive photo shoot with the couple. The bride wore various dresses for both photo shoots. Akemi and I agreed she was stunningly beautiful. Akemi wanted a picture, but we agreed it just wasn't that kind of time and place and a picture of a photo wouldn't come through well anyway. There were a number of photos with the bride standing and the groom kneeling and kissing her hand. Not something I'd expect from devout Muslims, but then again I really don't understand their culture, so I don't know what to expect.

And, I had some delicious ice cream in the process. Actually, two. They were that good.

This is a real local specialty ice cream. I don't remember the flavor. (???)

Can you figure out the flavor from the picture? It was something unusual. (???)

This one is red beans (azuki) and coconut milk.

Yummy!

We were fortunate that our guide, Alias, explained a bit about Islam to us. He explained the five basic principles and the prayer rituals they obvserve, as well as a bit about the Quran (sp?). He was great.

At the end of the tour, we dropped by his house so he could get a quick shower and pray before taking us home.

He gave us a banana and a lime from his own trees in his yard.

Like the rest of Malaysia, there were chickens running all over the place.

They're rather pretty, I think.

More chickens.

There were also goats running wild.

Same goats, a little closer.

But, the coolest thing by far was his goofy kids. I felt like I was on a wildlife safari, taking pictures of his sons. They were like exotic wild animals hanging from trees and acting silly.

Alias's son.

Alias's son. (photo by Akemi)

After Alias had done his prayers and had a shower, he dropped us off so we could tend to the rest of the day's business. It's notable that the tour is supposed to be three hours, but he spent nearly 7 hours taking us around. It was a great experience and he was an awesome guide.

That night, we did some shopping. We started with the absolute necessity.

What were these flavors??? I'm pretty sure one of them was sweet corn flavor. Yeah, that's right. I think the other one was either were mango or coconut. (I tried both flavors in Melaka, but I don't remember which was in this picture.) The coconut was unexpectedly good. You see, it had swirls of coconut cream. It was a little oily, but really tasty! The mango was just as expected. I had tasted mango ice cream before in Japan. It's quite nice.

This, I believe (???), is a scoop of lychee-soursop-papaya and a scoop of pineapple-guava.

I think this photo gets the texture a little better.

Since Melaka is a major tourist town with some historical buildings important to Malaysia's past, we made an obligatory pass through that district. I thought that would be Akemi's big thrill, but actually, I think she enjoyed the bicycle tour much more, just as I did. All the pictures in this little group were taken by Akemi.

Melaka Christ Church

What was this??? In the historical neighborhood in Melaka.

I thought it was interesting that they have a whole police station and special vehicles and people devoted to tourist police matters. So, I took a few pictures. I hope I didn't arouse any suspicion, taking pictures of a police station. Well, it's the tourist police. I'm sure they've seen cameras before, for gosh sake.

Side of a tourist police car.

Tourist police station.

And, we went up on a hill to an big brick building with no roof. It holds the graves of some important people. Not being a history guy, I don't remember the significance very well, except that many of them were German merchants who lived in the area. I do remember seeing a tiny piece of very recent graffiti on a 400 year old grave stone. It was written in Malaysian. I guess I'm more interested in little social issues like that. Like, why do people have to write their name on important things. It's like dogs peeing on high places. I don't get it.

The place had a wonderful atmosphere. And, there was a guy with a guitar playing American hits for tourists. Strangely, I really enjoyed his music. He played that old song, "He's My Brother". It was nice.

Later on, Akemi was kind enough to let me go for more ice cream.

This one was gingerbread ice cream from Baskin Robbins. Delicious.

For dinner, we did our usual routine of walking around, trying to decide which place, among the places that looked tasty, would be the least likely to give us food poisoning. (We were told lately that our fears were mostly unfounded.) We ended up in an open air cafe where people were watching an important international soccer game. The wait staff spoke almost no English. If I recall, it took them a little while to remember the word "chicken". But, they were patient, and we ended up with some tasty food by simply pointing to food we wanted.

Our first course consisted of the traditional bread with a nan soup which we poured over the bread. The hot tea was delicious and exactly the same as all delicous hot tea we had in Malaysia. It is always a dark black tea with condensed milk poured in.

We also had a second course of some beef with rice.