Finding Europen Influence in Malaysia

Yep. In the form of Portuguese people. And even though its taken me over 2 months to write about it, let me just make the excuse that I was collecting my thoughts.

About 2 months ago, I took a trip to the one town I'd been craving to go to for over half a year called Melaka - which is the Portuguese area of Malaysia just 2 hours away from KL (its also known as the town that everyone takes school trips to when they were in elementary school). It may sound a little strange to you that Malaysia has a Portuguese region... but many many many years ago when Malaysia was colonized by the British, some how, the Portuguese made it there too, leaving in their wake, a tradition of pork, churches, forts and beautiful architecture (Photos taken by the lovely Rajibul).

Something new to Melaka (I assume) is the addition of Minions. Yep - you read that right. This city/town is absolutely silly for Minions and the craze is contagious. By the end of the trip I came so unbelievably close bringing home a Minion shaped watch, a pair of slippers with Minions on them and an egg painted as a Minion.

This was a really wonderful (but short trip) where we made sure to try all the Melaka delicacies (read: Pork...) jk. They have these things called Chicken Rice Balls which are balls of rice that has been cooked in chicken stalk. If you are one of the privileged few that have been around my house while my Mom makes chicken rice, you'll have a general idea of what I'm talking about except the place that we went to had a line going around the block (which we had to wait in in the blazing heat). Maybe next time you come for chicken rice at my house I'll make you wait outside for 30 minutes first. It improves the taste of the food.

We visited Melaka's wonderful night market (which is approximately 15x better than china town in KL) and I truly wanted to buy all the useless crap manufactured in Asia but I sort of managed to restrain myself.

(as i reach into my bag to pull out money for a lantern.)

But the real reason that Melaka hit the spot for me was because, believe it or not, it's a town with a TON of cool coffee culture! Coming from Montreal, I live for coffee culture (despite the fact that I don't drink coffee). I am the first person to see a cute coffee shop and dive into its cute armchairs and remark at how eclectic and hipster it is. Melaka made my heart swoon with its mixture of cute, oldschool, hipster, run down and fancy coffee shops abound.

What I liked about this trip was that I realized that its nearly impossible to feel homesick these days when the culture of the place you left is present in little pockets in the new place you arrive in. Globalization eh.... it's really changing things and making it easier to feel comfortable no matter where in the world you decide to go. <3