Malaysia 2022/23 - #7 - 🤔 Maybe This Wasn’t Such A Good Idea

My thoughts as we are making our way down a street packed with festive holiday enjoyment seekers moving toward the Portuguese Settlement of Melaka - one of the few places in this Muslim country where there is a significant Christmas celebration going taking place. This has followed a very long Grab ride. Long not because of the distance but because of the volume of vehicles trying to get to the same area we are going. I am thinking, "How the heck am I going to get a Grab to pick us up on our way back in all this traffic? How are they even going to get down to us?" But more on this later.

Last night we had been looking down from our apartment to an area of town that had a bunch of lights. There were small scale fireworks going off. There seemed to be a lot of action. I thought it was the Jonker Street Market. However, when I check on Maps I realized the Market was in the opposite direction from where we were looking. Further research identified it as the Portuguese Settlement.

Briefly, for Celebrity Historians and others of a historical inclination, Melaka history goes like this:

• 1400 (or so) defeated Hindu prince from Sumatra flees to Malaysian Peninsula and sets up shop in a small village with a good anchorage - Melaka. Over the next 20 years there is conversion to Islam, and befriending of Ming Dynasty China. This catapults Melaka into a major trading port controlling the Straits between the Malay Peninsula and Sumatra - to this day one of the choke points of trade between East and West. Melaka becomes a powerful empire controlling most of the Peninsula. 
• Early 1500's the Portuguese arrive and do what they did best. Lusting after the trade they conquer other successful people, kill bunches of them, impose Catholicism, and create an intolerant attitude which sends the traders of all other non-Christian nations to anywhere but Melaka. But they hold on to this settlement tenaciously with many Portuguese inter-marrying and creating a unique combination culture.
• Mid 1600's, enter the Dutch. They do what they do best which is beat the shit out of other people and take over their settlements. The Dutch are more tolerant religiously but equally foolish in trading with very strict rules and duties on trade. Plus they have a big investment in Batavia on Sumatra and want the trade to go there. Melaka is sinking into a backwater.
• Early 1800's, the British are moving in, first to keep Napoleonic France from potentially getting control and later to support its own Imperial expansion. They too favor a different location, Georgetown on Penang Island. It is almost completely destroyed and its people being forced to move from their ancient homewhen saved by a young English diplomat, Stanford Raffles who recognized Melaka has a better strategic location than Penang. Raffles goes on to found Singapore
  
• Melaka continues its decline until the end of the 20th century when tourism shows up. Now Melaka is a totally bustling and prosperous community.

So were does the Portuguese settlement come into this. The race that had developed from the Malay/Portuguese intermarriage had maintained itself though being very small and often persecuted. The site of the current Settlement, was set aside as a refuge and the mixed race population from around Malaysia began to come, creating their own community. As devote Catholics, they grew their own Christmas celebration traditions. One of which is massive feasting. Melaka is known for a cuisine based on this mixed heritage. The Settlement has a bunch of restaurants there specializing in this. I was assuming that all the lights we saw from the apartment were a street market like Jonker Street. I figured we'd either go there and grab a nice meal. Or we'd eat street food at the market. 

As we are driving down, snarled in traffic, our Grab driver disabuses my idea of getting a seat at the restaurants. It's Christmas Eve dude. These places are booked solid in advance. This is when the realization of just setting off for a super popular place, on a major holiday, in a foreign country begins to seem like not such a great idea.

Before leaving we check out our target destination. Looks pretty calm

But when we get there

Not a Street Market - A whole district of Christmas decorated houses

I welcome you...

...to the...

And Selemat Hari Kristmas to you!

Nope. Not going to get into any restaurants tonight

We were able to find a few bites to eat including a hot dog! How Malaysian is that?

We took a walk down some side streets of the district

There was many families have their Christmas Eve gatherings

By this time, we were both starting to get really tired and Wife's foot (which has still not healed completely since Sicily!) was starting to bug her. I deduced our best bet for getting Grab back to the apartment was to go all the way to the main street we had turned in from. It took the longest time to actually get a driver accept our request and longer for him to get to us. Thankfully, there was this plastic chair outside a restaurant (we tried and couldn't get into) where I could have Wife sit down. Finally we made it back to the apartment. I whipped up some instant noodles for us to eat. We ate and had our drinks on the patio overlooking the Settlement looking at where we'd been.

I couldn't make it to Midnight. Wife did and said there was a grand finale.

This morning the Settlement was a ghost town

In the end, I think both Wife and I were pretty pleased at our ability to navigate a completely new environment on a major holiday.