Nice People of Malaysia | Taking Our Time

8/9 – While we wandered around town yesterday, we came upon Christ Church, an historic building built by the Dutch, with an active Anglican congregation.

They hold services for the English, Chinese, Malay and Indian (Tamil) populations that live here.

We decided to attend the English service a at 8:30. The church isn’t fancy inside.

We were greeted by several parishioners and a priest on our way in. The priest asked about our home parish, and gave us a heads-up on how they do Communion (they intinct – dip the host into the wine). Although there were lots of hymns I recognized in the English/Malay hymnal, the selections for this Sunday were all new tunes for me. Just like at home, we had to juggle the hymnal, the prayer book and the week’s bulletin. The teens gave us a rousing praise service on guitar and drums, with Amazing Grace sung to a different tune. The homily was given by the bishop. Then Amazing Grace again, the time to the familiar tune, but with a verse I was unfamiliar with, from the original 1779 version: “The earth will soon dissolve like snow, the sun forbear to shine, but God who called me here below, will be forever mine.” In good Anglican fashion, we were invited to the coffee hour after the service. Nice people of Malaysia!

There is also an RC church here:

And the ruins of St Paul’s on the hill, which was built by the Portugese in the 1500s, repurposed as a Protestant church and then a fort by the Dutch:

A little girl trying on the angel’s wings from a burial stone:

After the Dutch, Malaya (as it was known) was taken over by the British, then by the Japanese during WWII, then the British again, before gaining freedom and becoming Malaysia. So much history here!

On our way to church, we passed a long queue of folks standing in front of a restaurant that wasn’t even open yet. We had seen the same long queue yesterday. We stopped and asked what the attraction was, and we were told that this place served the best chicken with rice balls in town – a “must have” for visitors to Melaka.

Well, here you go – chicken with rice balls! This dish is sold all over town, so I asked what makes this restaurant so special. The answer: other Chinese posted on social media that this is the best place, so this is where the Chinese will queue up to go. It’s a Chinese thing…

We walked down to the river, where boat rides are given:

There’s an old water wheel here:

…and a reconstruction of a Portugese galleon.

There are reminders of WWII here:

…and old trains and fire trucks:

What a fun weekend! If you get a chance to come here, we recommend the oyster omelet, and a Malay dish called Nyonya Laksa (below), after you’ve had the chicken rice balls, of course!

7/27 – Time to leave the island of Penang, the same way we arrived.

We took an early morning ferry from Georgetown back to Butterworth Station on the Malay peninsula mainland.

There, we waited for our Very Nice bus, which would take us for the six hour ride to the capital city of Kuala Lumpur, or, as the locals call it, KL.

The bus really lived up to its name, with BarcaLounger seats, and a driver who called out every hour to see if anyone needed a rest stop. Very Nice!

As we approached the tall buildings of this modern city, I turned on my phone to check the GPS. There are several bus terminals in KL, and we were not sure which one this bus would take us to. I was heartened to see that we were progressing nicely toward the bus terminal that was nearest to our hotel. Closer, closer…. Oh no! The bus kept rolling along, even though we could see our hotel out the window! Now we were getting farther away, and, wouldn’t you know, it was starting to rain. By the time the bus stopped, we were 10 miles away, with no idea how to get back to KL Sentral.

Two university students saw us hunched over my phone looking for a metro or bus to get us back across town, and they asked how they could help. Nice People of Malaysia! They walked us over to the metro station, helped us buy tickets from the machine, and showed us on the metro map how many stations and where to change trains. Although we thanked them profusely, I neglected to get a photo. They were beautiful people. In a half hour, we were back at KL Sentral, walking the two blocks to our hotel. We have a rooftop pool!

7/28 – Last year when we were in Istanbul, we shared breakfast with two brothers on holiday from KL. The younger brother Rool, who had the better English, invited us to look him up when we got to KL. Today, we did just that!

Rool picked us up and drove us to an authentic Malay buffet for lunch. Here we are with Rool and his six year old daughter Alicia.

So many delicious choices! We really love Malay food. I even had some fermented durian (the orange stuff on the right).

After lunch, Rool took us on a tour of KL. Here are the famous Petronus Twin Towers, which were the tallest buildings in the world for several years (not anymore). There is a walkway that connects the towers at the 42nd floor, which telescopes to compensate for the swaying of the buildings in the wind.