So mee is noodles and nasi is rice and that is all you need to know, right? The rest is just whatever comes on top. Actually, in Melaka, you don’t need to know that – just sit down, look at the wall, and pronounce as best you can whatever words look appealing. Something will show up.

Without someone who’ll simply walk up and ask the obvious, often ridiculous, questions about etiquette and translation (where is James Yeates when you need him?), the best way to figure out eating out is to just find a seat and wait to see what happens.

In Melaka, we stayed on Raya 3 (a street name that sparked my knowledge of 1 to 10 in Bahasa!), away from Chinatown (but not lacking in noise at 5 am – thanks Cafe 1). Our hotel room might have been full of cockroaches and other peoples’ hair clogging all the drains, but our street was pretty cool. It had a real ‘country town’ vibe going on; even though 15 minutes walk would bring you to the sardine madness of Chinatown.

Coincidence or not, it was funny that down one side of the street were all the ‘touristy’ restaurants, and on the other were all the ‘local’ eateries. The former included the blazing red, white and blue of Casual American Dining, the karaoke-starting Cafe 1, and the super-cosmopolitan Ant Bar, where the same five-girl-vocal-pop-sensation group performed nightly from 9.30 (from the street, it seemed the only musical performance was coming from some old dude and a Yahama). On the other side of the road were the places with names you wouldn’t as easily see. We named these places: “We know you’re mean but your roti is the greatest”, “You wait long time”, and “Does a hotplate really cost that much”. What we lacked in creativity, they made up for in yumminess.

The first of these – the one between the other two – was amazing for the roti – we had to come back multiple times for this – as will you if you ever head to Melaka. The second, despite waiting at for almost 2 hours for food, won us over with its cook: this old dude whose kitchen was surrounding him on the street, and heaven forbid that anyone else try and help cook! The third won us over because it introduced me to taro. What’s the deal with taro anyway? It looks like a potato and tastes like beans.. They’re mad for it here. All in all, three places within walking distance that crapped all over the clean side of the street (though, I will say that come Sunday, when they were all closed, the Indian place across from the roti joint served a wicked Chicken Tikka).


Taro taro taro - what's the dealio?

Now to Penang, where all you hear about is food. Apparently, people get frustrated at tourism agencies plugging this place as a beach town. Well, according to my mad Ctrl+F skills in the LP and Wikitravel, there’re no recommended places to swim here at all. It is indeed all about the food. What said travel advisories lack in all their tellings, however, is an idea as to what one should do to get such great food (yes, get it, I’m not saying “find it”).

My answer – look like a goose. Dressed as a big white bird (much better than Plucka’s costume, I assure you), I did initially run into some trouble when sitting at one street stall serving chicken rice. Explaining that I was, in fact, a goose and not a chicken, they quickly stopped looking.

Just walk in, sit down, and look at what other people are doing. Soon enough you’ll realise (unless you actually have read this far, in which case I’m ruining it for you) that in Penang, the good stalls only sell one thing (efficiency in effect). Go to the laksa stall (if you’re ready for fishy explosion), or the chicken rice one, or the satay one, or the koay teow one (my favourite) and raise a finger (that’s “one please”), say terima kasih, and sit down. Don’t pay at the stall, wait til the food hits the table. Then enjoy.

As for drinks, the sellers of these are keen AS. Order up on Ice Kopi, Lime Juice or 100 Plus (SO many tubby kids drink this stuff, then use the isotonic brilliance to run marathons).

I might say at this point, they don’t usually use a number system or even ask where you’re sitting. In some of the bigger food areas, test how mad their skills are and sit nowhere near the stall you order from. I guarantee they’ll find you.

Finally, my confusion. I’m confused about why Penang needs that dude and his programmed keyboard? The melody doesn’t actually change and yet he just starts singing new lyrics... I’m also confused by the love for chicken rice. Is there something I’m missing?


Get the crap out of Melaka!

No, that’s not telling you to do so, it’s telling you what I’m about to write – although, after visiting some of Melaka’s “museums” you might want out (Yes, best to stay on the food trail when in this here town).

Kuala Lumpur have bus services to Melaka running from Bukit Jalil. Note, Bukit Jalil, not Puduraya. Note the date this is being written – 11 February 2011. The bus station reno began in April last year and was scheduled for four months. Hmm, funny how these things always happen. Never fear, head to Puduraya anyway and smoosh yourself into a shuttle (RM2, of course... nothing’s free). A ticket to Melaka from there could cost you anything, depending on how the ticket girl feels at the time. Then once in Melaka (that’s provided you do get on the bus you’ve been allocated to), the cab fare to town is RM20 – the fair price nowadays (the rip off price being RM30).

BUT WAIT! There’s a bus straight in and outta there to/from KLIA and LCCT! This means you can avoid KL if you hate the city, or.. just need to get to the airport. For most people, this information is meaningless; but in case you ever actually want to do this, this info is actually hard to find via Google.
Trust this: Go to Mahkota Medical Centre, head to the back of the building and you can actually get the bus straight outta town at 5am, 8am, 12.30pm or 2.30pm. Booking ahead is not always necessary, but can be done for us nervous types. It will cost RM22 (better than the total RM45 to get to the airport the other way). It will take longer than 2 hours (as the dude will tell you), but not much longer – say, less than 3. Then once at LCCT, fly to Penang :)

Paris (again)

The Gypsies of Paris are hilarious folk, though I’m sure they don’t try to be so intentionally. They’re annoying, we know that by reputation, but they’re also lazy and lacking in creativity. Given how many of these guys and girls there are around the place, you’d think they could muster up some half-decent ploys to trick tourists.

Come the beginning of 2011, Parisian Gypsies possess two stunts in their repertoire. To my knowledge, one of these is quite old; the other I’m not sure about.

# 1. The golden ring
This is the older one, I believe. You’ll be walking along and suddenly be approached by a Gypsy, who so happens to come across a gold ring on the ground. They’ll “pick it up” and look at it quizzically, then “spot” you and say something to the tune of, “here, you should have it.” The sucker who takes the ring will think they’ve scored as they walk away, until the Gypsy reappears to reap reward for finding the ring. This may only be a few euro, “for a coffee” or some such, but it’s money you certainly aint gonna keep unless you want to be accused of swindling on the street.

So what’s the problem? (“What’s the problem?” is become a classic phrase in some circles, you know) Well firstly, they don’t quite have the “discovery” down pat. They bend over, and flick the ring from out under their shoe, a bit like the coin from behind the ear trick. All well and good, except it is way too obvious. One Gypsy tried this on a patch of ground I was already staring at, then got confused when I laughed at her. Second, how many damn rings could there possible be on the streets of Paris? Break yourselves up a bit, Gypsies! Who are you kidding? A “spread out” group of the guys will have you witness the uncovering of treasure about 6 times in the space of 300 metres. When you laugh at this, they laugh; but they aint amused.

#2. The petition
You’ll see the Gypsies walking around with clip boards, and this means if you go anywhere near them, you’ll be asked to sign a petition for peace. We were told that, upon signing the petition, it is revealed to the signer that they have signed a contract to give money, and if they refuse then a group of their buddies are gonna approach you and give you a hard time. Do I believe this? No. For a start, the main place where this petition stuff happened was outside of Notre Dame, where military patrol with great big machine guns. There’d be no real confrontations as far as I believe.

They do request money after signing the thing, though. Perhaps it’s “a donation” for their cause. What is crap about the whole thing is that they get away with actually having “UNICEF” printed across the top of their page. Way to suck people in.

So sign it, don’t give any money, and throw a wave at one of your “military buddies”. See if they take you to court...

C’mon gypsies... you have two tricks! Can’t you have a staff meeting or something to come up with, say, a dozen ploys to have on rotation to actually make your trickery a bit more exciting for the rest of us? In the meantime, I wonder how much one of those “gold” rings will go for on ebay.

Paris

The City of Lights – named as such because some scribe was late to dinner one night. You see, Mr. Paris was standing by the River Seines, deciding what affectionate name he might give his fair ol’ town. His scribe was there fidgeting away, busting to leave because he had a hot date (it is Paris). “It will be known as...” (stupidly stereotypical French accent is appropriate here) “...The City, The City of–” All of a sudden he was cut off by the passing Seine River Boat Tour, completely decked out in flood lights, blinding the banks of Île de la Cité; causing Mr. P to exclaim: “ergh! Lights!”

In such the rush that he was in, Mr. P’s scribe wrote that down. Well, he couldn’t spell “ergh” so he left that word out at least. The rest is history.

What else have I learnt about the French then?

> You’re gonna get a ‘good morning’ out of them come breakfast. Now, I am a particularly grumpy bugger come the morning so there’s no surprises I find this odd; but, it’s gotta take some kind of sick French person to bother saying bonjour to every person in the room at breakfast time. No, I’m not talking about the staff, I’m talking about the patrons. They’re just so excited that it’s another day, another baguette.

> They’re obsessed with rollerblading. Clearly the French have never witnessed Ross Noble’s rants about rollerblading or perhaps they simply lack the skills of basic observation – but how ridiculous can they all look!?



> They’re craaazy about Police. I don’t think there is a more Police-flooded city in all of Europe. They’re literally everywhere. In cars, vans, BUSES, on foot, horseback and, you guessed it, on rollerblades. How can anyone take a police officer on roller blades seriously? They’d be chasing a crim, and all that Frenchie needs to do is run into the park. What’s Mr. Roller-speed gonna do then? There’s also the Parisian ritual of the 6 pm Police brigade. At roughly the same time every night, you’d be hard pressed to not see a great long brigade of vans and buses roaring through the city. Now either this is a drill, or Parisian crime is extremely predictable.

> The military guard all monuments, such as Notre Dame, with guns not much different in size to themselves. This is because the French are constantly fearful that Quasimodo might eat an American tourist and then Americans will be afraid to ever visit Paris again. Hmm.

> Academie de Francais is plain awesome. These dudes have such an amazing job deciding the French rules for language and the like. I’ll put in into perspective: when the ipod was released, the AF spent eight weeks deciding if ‘ipod’ was to be masculine or feminine. Eight weeks! Pretty sure it ends up being ‘l’ipod’ at either conclusion – can’t it just be cross gender? Still, brilliant work there and good use of French taxpayers money. Hey, it’d only otherwise be spent funding new rollerblading tracks.

> There is some contention over public urination. You don’t want to know about it? Sure, that’s why I left it til last. However, it seems surprising that in Bordeaux, public wees are all the rage (they love it!), yet in the capital it’s extremely frowned upon. Perspective? In Bordeaux, I saw a local man weeing very openly on the street (presumably he thought a van would hide him from the world... it didn’t), and a woman clambering into a bush in the middle of a roundabout to relieve herself. These are but a couple of the many people I saw each day using the streets as a toilet. Certainly not what you’d expect from the French. We read that in Paris, however, locals wouldn’t even pee in their friend’s bathroom when visiting for tea! I’m not entirely sure if I believe that, but there were certainly none of the Bordeaux shenanigans going on in the City of Light. As for free wees, never fear! Paris made all their public toilets free! (They’re the big spaceship looking things on the street that self clean and threaten to crush you if you don’t leave in time – inviting stuff!)

> French dog owners still need some lessons in common decency.