This day has just been amazing! Definitely the best day so far:
It started out with the great happening of getting 11 1/2 hours of sleep. The first night for me since I got here that I didn’t wake up – at least not really. There was that guy from the mosque across the street singing his prayer out loud at 6am but that was alright – and already went to bed at midnight! After sleeping in, I just walked around town for a little while, trying to find some fruit for the bus ride tomorrow, which was actually not as easy as I would’ve thought. Apparently not too many stores sell fresh fruit because it goes bad so quickly – people here are more into pastries and fried food I guess. But since that was kinda boring I went back to my hostel and sat down with some people there. We started talking and in no time I got invited to a bike tour! What I didn’t know at that point was that I had just met some of the coolest and most amazing people ever. Molly and Monti are a couple from the uk and Vitalis a 33 year old guy from Germany that quit his job to travel the world cuz only working and having no free time was just not his vision of a fulfilled life. Monty (originally from India) and Molly (born in Myanmar, 34) met in London, have been together for 5 years now and decided to take a year off to travel and just came here a couple of days ago from India.
First we went to the Chinese cemetery on a hill where we had a great view over Melaka and just talked about our travels and I got some tips and recommendations for my next destinations. We also learned something really important that might safe our lives one day: if there are still many fruits on a tree it’s probably not good or even poisoned. Good thing that old Malayan guy told us before we got to crack that good looking green fruit from the tree ;) – we’d be screwed in the wilderness haha! After that we went riding around town and got to places where I would have never gone if I would’ve been by myself. We actually got to see how and where the Malayans live and talked to some locals. I can’t even describe the feeling of riding around on your bike with some cool people, in a foreign country, exploring places and getting to know people that probably not many others have seen. It’s pure happiness, let me tell you!
We ended up at a typical Indian place where Molly was desperate to eat one of the dishes she hadn’t had in a while: Kothu paratha which is a spicy rice, meet, vegetable mix thing that you eat with a special thin bread. We all got something different and then shared so that everyone could try everything and it was just super delicious ! Maybe I also liked it so much because it was served on a banana leaf and we ate everything with our hands ;)
After we finished we rode to the river and just kept talking about anything and everything. Those people are just so open minded, they’ve seen so many places and they’re still eager to see more. Vitalis (whose 11 month journey comes to an end soon) actually told me that for him the worst feeling in the world was to stop travelling. Let’s see how I feel about that in 3 months …
We ended our night at the common room in our hostel playing some guitar and sending birthday wishes to a friend of Molly (unfortunately the video won’t upload :/). Tomorrow we’re up for some breakfast together – some specialty Molly eats everyday (so it must be good) – before I catch my bus to Penang.
What a day! I can see now how people get caught up in this lifestyle ..
lenacatherine 