Malaysia - The Rough Guide to Southeast Asia on a Budget - page 463

cultural life flourished. he town grew
rich by trading spices from the Moluccas
in the Indonesian archipelago and textiles
from Gujarat in northwest India. A levy
on all imported goods made it one of the
wealthiest kingdoms in the world, and it
gradually expanded its territory to
include Singapore and most of east-coast
Sumatra. A series of takeovers, beginning
in 1511, by the Portuguese, Dutch and
British, has also substantially
characterized Malacca - the architecture,
street plans, churches and overall
atmosphere are of an eclectic East-meets-
West fusion.

and later moved to Goa in India.
Commemorative brass plaques for Dutch
and Portuguese dignitaries rest against the
church's inner walls. Down a winding
path is the sturdy Stadthuys , a collection
of buildings that dates from 1660 and
was used as a town hall during the Dutch
and British administrations. It has
typically Dutch interior staircases and
high windows, and now houses the
Museum of Ethnography (daily
9am-5.30pm; RM5), which displays
Malay and Chinese ceramics and
weaponry as well as a blow-by-blow
account of Malaccan history.
he pick of the somewhat lacklustre
museums around the hill is the Museum
of Enduring Beauty on the third floor of
Muzium Rakyat (People's Museum; daily
9am-5.30pm; RM3), on Jalan Kota,
which shows the many novel ways in
which people have sought to alter their
appearance, including head deformation,
dental mutilations, tattooing,
scarification and foot-binding.
he imposing dark timber palace of
Istana Ke Sultanan (Wed-Mon
9am-5.30pm; RM2) on Jalan Kota is
also worth a look - a reconstruction of
the original fifteenth-century palace, it's
complete with sharply sloping, multi-
layered roofs and re-creations of scenes
from Malay court life.
he Maritime Museum (Mon, Wed &
hurs 9am-5pm, Fri, Sat & Sun until
8.30pm; RM6), on the quayside to the
south of Stadthuys, is housed in a replica
of a Portuguese cargo ship that sank here
in the sixteenth century. Model ships and
oodles of written exhibits chart Malacca's
maritime history.
If you go north of Stadthuys up Jalan
Laksamana, skirting the busy junction
with Jalan Temenggong and taking Jalan
Bendahara directly ahead, you reach the
centre of Malacca's tumbledown Little
India , a rather desultory line of sari shops,
interspersed with a few eating houses.

6

WHAT TO SEE AND DO
Legacies of all phases of Malacca's past
remain in the city, constituting the main
tourist sights. Of these, the most
interesting are the ancestral homes of the
Baba-Nyonya community (see opposite).
he centre of Malacca is split in two by
the murky Sungai Malacca , the western
bank of which is occupied by Chinatown
and Kampung Morten , a small collection
of stilted houses. On the eastern side of
the river lies the colonial core with
Stadthuys (Town Square) at its centre - a
favourite gathering point for the
tricked-out trishaws. It's overlooked by
Bukit St Paul (St Paul's Hill), encircled
by Jalan Kota. Southeast of here is
Taman Malacca Raya , a modern area with
a good selection of budget hotels,
restaurants and bars. A relaxing
45-minute boat trip up Sungei Malacca
takes you to “ Little Amsterdam ”, the old
Dutch quarter of red-roofed godowns ,
which back directly onto the water. Boats
leave from the jetty behind the Maritime
Museum (every 30min, 10am-11pm;
40min; RM15); a night cruise on the
river is also recommended.

Around Bukit St Paul
At the eastern side of Bukit St Paul is
the Porta de Santiago - all that remains
of the large Portuguese fort A Famosa.
From here, steps lead to the roofless
St Paul's Church which was constructed in
1521 by the Portuguese, and visited by
the Jesuit missionary St Francis Xavier,
whose body was brought here for burial,

Chinatown
Malacca owed much of its nineteenth-
century economic recovery to its Chinese
community, many of whom settled in
what became known as Chinatown , across