Day 6: Putrajaya and Naughty Ninos

Decorative frieze at the Cheng Hoon Teng temple

Why are we in Melaka? It is not a very large city and not well-known for being smart or intelligent; no major companies have their headquarters in Melaka, and no world-famous universities have made it their home. The answer is actually quite banal: we're here purely as tourists, and just because the city is nicely in between Singapore and Kuala Lumpur.

Melaka has an important place in history, and has had its share of colonial rulers. The first known ruler was an Indian pirate on the run from the Chinese; then the Portugese conquered the city and built a fortress, making it a major stop-over for the spice trade; then the Dutch kicked out the Portugese; and finally the Dutch traded it to the English in exchange for Batavia and another city, the identity of which I have forgotten. Finally, Malay joined with neighbouring states to form the federation of Malaysia and became independent from England. All this, wrapped in some charming legends and anecdotes, was what Jack had already told us yesterday during the last hour of the long bus ride. This morning we went to witness what was left of that heritage.

Dutch quarter; at the back the Stadthuys

This involved a trek through the city starting at the Dutch quarter, recognisable by the brick red-painted low buildings. The Stadthuys was newly furnished as a local museum, with diverse sections on weaponry (quite a good display of original weapons, the kris being prominent among them) and schooling during the various historical periods (items on display mostly from the English period, including a cane and other "teaching implements" as the accompanying text described them). There was also a fairly detailed account of an attempt to reconstruct the founding date of the city, with copies of historical Dutch documents from the mid-17th century making clear that already at that time, the dating of then recent events was problematic. It seems that we know more of Rome in the first century BC than of the "colonies" in the 17th century AD; a confirmation of the fact that any record-keeping the Dutch did was for trading purposes only; they couldn't care less when it came to actually taking responsibility for the country and its people.

Hendrik van Eeckel - koopman

Next stop: the St. Paul's on top of a hill. Already deroofed by the Dutch when they built a new church, it was now not much more than ruins under the hot sun. There were some old Dutch gravestones to liven things up.

Downhill again towards the only gate remaining of the Portugese/Dutch fortress. I appreciate that this represents what passes for ancient history here, but really there was not much to be seen. The history is kind of funny: before the Melaka/Batavia deal, the Dutch lent the city to the English for safekeeping to avoid the French to lay their hands on it: this was during the napoleonic wars when all Dutch forces were needed back home. The English did keep it safe and returned the city to Dutch hands, but they did not keep the keep: they removed the castle from the equation, as it were. After which, apparently, Melaka - castle equals Batavia.

None of us were especially sad to get back into the airconditioned bus and proceed with our Malaysian journey towards Kuala Lumpur, or KL as everyone has agreed to call it. Another few hours ride, with less traffic this time. I am not sure who of the participants had a very clear idea of our exact plans for the afternoon and evening; I certainly did not. Much of the journey, including the bus ride and accompanying guide, has been arranged by the travel agency hired by the OC to take care of such matters, and so Jack was more or less in charge for the weekend.

Know thine food

After a good two hours we were unloaded without too much comment into a parking lot next to what appeared to be botanic gardens by a lake, with a restaurant straddling the water in which we were to have lunch. A very similar affair to the one yesterday, though the food, which yesterday was Chinese, this time was more reminiscent of Indonesia (to me) and so probably was Malaysian. The procedure for serving it was the same though: three large round tables with turntables in the middle, upon which plate after plate of goodies were placed, the first ones being scraped empty quite quickly, later ones going more slowly. The pièce the résistance was a large fish very clearly recognisable as such, which most likely came directly from the tanks in front of the restaurant.

Unexplained monument

Afterwards we wandered a bit through the lovely, empty, only partially shaded and even there quite tropical gardens, before reentering the bus once more. It then transpired that the area we were in is part of Putrajaya, about which there is also a story to tell. While the bus is continuing to the large Putrajayan mosque, I will tell it.

Putrajaya is an artificial city built by the Malaysian government to house the Malaysian government. I think of it like a kind of go-back-to-start-and-try-again type of deal; what in Software Engineering is called a greenfield approach. Basically, the philosophy is: if you have messed up something so completely that there seems to be no way to correct it, you just abandon what you have and start all over again. Translated to the situation at hand, this means that the government realised that KL had become unmanageable, so they just decided to start over with Putrajaya. Which now contains all the ministries and associated services. The all-knowing internet has it that the project cost 8 billion US$ (not that big a deal, relocating Bonn to Berlin was budgeted at 80 billion DM) and that Putrajaya now houses 100.000 inhabitants. Well., I can only say that there is room for more: the place definitely feels very empty. The interesting thing is, of course, that the whole city is planned, and quite well on the face of it: it all looks very beautiful. Wikipedia also calls it an "intelligent city"; since this is precisely the theme of the study tour, I'm sure we will find out why in the days to come.

Beautiful bridge, empty street

We made a brief fotostop in the middle of one of the bridges leading to the heart of Putrajaya (which is located on a peninsula). Wide enough for six lanes of traffic, it was nevertheless completely and unnaturally bare of traffic. Next stop was the aforementioned mosque, erected out of pink stone - I think it was marble. At the price of donning a robe and shedding our shoes we could take a peek inside. The robes were to cover our indecently bare legs. For Sander and Wybren, our over-2-meter-longs, this achieved little since the robe reached exactly to the underside of their shorts; so they were sentenced to a sarong instead. With that image registered in our brains and our fotocameras, we got some time to wander around again, before reconvening at the bus.

KL proper was another 90 minutes of bus ride. The hotel was located, rooms distributed and occupied, showers turned on. All refeshed and rested, an hour later we made out way on foot over the busy streets to our restaurant for the evening: Naughty Nuris.

Spare ribs on fire at Naughty Nuris

Dancing to the Max

Given that name, I have to admit I probably would not initially think of a restaurant, but a restaurant it was nonetheless. The naughty thing about it is probably that they celebrate pork, which is certainly not a type of meat you will encounter a lot in an islamic country. And I mean the word "celebrate" quite literally: it is a very boisterous place specialising in spare ribs, which they serve in truly enormous portions for prices that are equally enormous, at least to Malaysian standards. The ribs are prepared over a large open fire, behind glass to avoid burning the whole place down. All this is complemented with copious amounts of beer, not just the ubiquitous Tiger but in this case also pint-sized Hoegaardens. The fun properly started when they found out we had a birthday celebration on our hands: not strictly true since Max graduated to his 24th on Saturday, but hey, who minds an opportunity to party? Gong beats and line dancing ensued, the Inter-Active club song was aired, it was truly great fun. Even though I'm sure it is all pretty much routine to the waiters and waitresses, they went with the flow of our raucous party-animals and even found some Dutch songs on their playlist.

Mudslide!

After that, no-one felt like the evening should be over just yet. Jaap Vermeij found a beer bar on the internet, and on we went; most by way of the hotel to change, Luís and myself, who had no further plans than the few beers, directly to the bar, at 15 minutes walking distance. After half an hour or so they all reappeared, and we enjoyed more beers and some cocktails until closing time - I think it was 1 o'clock. One more stroll to the hotel meant the end of the day for us supervisors, while the rest taxied and ubered away into the night.