Chinese New Year’s Eve is upon us! We began our day in the usual fashion – sleeping in, but this time it was ridiculously late due to the amazingly comfortable beds in our hostel. After a few episodes of The Nanny (yes, they play re-runs of the The Nanny in Malaysia too) it was off to Oh May Ling’s mother’s house for lunch (1.5 hours later than we were initially told… hence the not doing anything this morning waiting to be picked up!). I must say, the food was possibly some of the nicest we have eaten here, but again there is just WAY TOO MUCH of it. It was great to be involved in a traditional Chinese New Year family lunch, so thanks to May Ling for inviting us! However, after forcing myself to try every kind of biscuit put in front of me (after having eaten the main course) it was time to be on our way.
Our attempts at taking in some Melakan heritage failed as the Baby Nyonya Museum was closed for Chinese New Year, but we managed to go inside a beautiful Chinese Temple, which is the oldest in South East Asia. Pretty cool.
Next up was a delightful (yet often painful) 60min full body massage for 60RM. We were hoping for a relaxing massage after being sick and on the go for quite some time… we should have known this was not what we would get from an Asian massage. OOOOOWWWWWWWWW!! I am so bruised. But on the upside… I no longer have a pain in my back I’ve had for the last 2 weeks (I now have several pains – but hopefully they will be gone tomorrow). I was very well behaved when she massaged my legs – I only laughed once or twice, but it tickled like crazy!
Nap time in the afternoon (or mini-sleeps really, 3ish hours is not really a nap) and then off at 9pm to celebrate Chinese New Year’s Eve. We had dinner at Geographer Cafe and decided our bellies could not handle any more strange food, so we decided to be very boring and order Western food. This turned out okay for me, Jess on the other hand (after ordering Pasta Napolitano) received what seemed like pasta with tomato sauce. Yummo… My pesto pasta was quite alright, a bit different but definitely edible. Ice cream and mocktails were very much enjoyed however.
Back to the hostel briefly to use the bathroom… we are avoiding the holes in the ground at all costs, and so far, doing a marvellous job at it :)
Midnight was proceeded by some terrible karaoke singers on the stage, some quite interesting traditional dancing and of course, Lion Dancing - what we had been waiting to see…It was not so much dancing as waking up to the stage and standing there, but there were Lion dancing costumes all the same. Midnight was rung in with a gong and some streamers, followed by fireworks, a fairly usual way to celebrate. Melaka is beautiful at night, and tonight was certainly no exception. On the way back to the hostel the Chinese Temple had what we assume were meant to be giant incense sticks burning out the front – they were cool.
I must sleep now as May Ling dashed our hopes of sleeping in again tomorrow morning. Our fault really for saying we had a lazy day planned (which we had been planning all week). She insisted on taking us to some students’ houses in the morning so we can taste some (more) Malaysian cookies.
Happy New Year!
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