Melaka by night

 Melaka is pretty by night. Red Chinese lanterns festoon the streets and people sit at outdoor cafes along the riverside. But strangely, almost everything else is shut at a quarter to nine in the evening. Even stranger, next day almost everything was shut at nine in the morning, except for the Chinese shops and restaurants.

At an outdoor Chinese cafe I met a delightful family from Singapore. They spoke to their baby in English and a Chinese dialect. He will learn Mandarin, another Chinese dialect, English and Malay. This is normal in the Chinese community. The father, who is an importer of fine foods and wines from France, agreed with me that French wine is far superior to Australian. Yes he went on trips to France to source his produce. He even imports tomatoes from France. "They are so much tastier than the ones we grow here" he said. He flies his food in twice weekly, carefully packed in ice. Singapore has to import practically all its food.

We were served by a Chinese waitress with a lot of attitude and a fearsome scowl. I couldn't understand what she said (in Chinese) when I sent back the tea she brought me, in a mug with teabag and milk! but it sounded marvelously rude. From time to time she brought round a tray with little plates of all sorts of different things: white and green miniature steamed dumplings and all sorts of other things made from sticky rice powder, meat, vegetables, red bean paste and tofu in every conceivable combination. The pretty arrangements of the dishes contrasted with her formidable scowl. The family from Singapore strapped their baby onto the chair with a marvelous cloth invention, which they told me was made in the UK!

I eventually managed to get a pot of Chinese tea without sugar or milk (or teabags). I thought the waitress was going to throw it at me! It was delicious. I drank the whole pot and refilled it with hot water twice, while the Singaporean family ordered dish after dish and the granny forcefed the baby his baby food with a spoon. No messing with these Chinese grannies. The father gave me his card and asked me to get in touch when I went to Singapore - if I went to Singapore.

Later in the day I watched a funeral procession in the street. At the front of the procession people carried big Chinese lanterns (not lit because it was the day), followed by a brass band playing Auld Lang Syne, followed by a hearse covered in flowers - not on the top of the hearse, but on the sides - followed by mourners wearing white hoods and either blue or green trowsers, followed by mourners in cars. At a certain point they stowed lanterns and instruments in a van and the whole procession got into a bus, apart from a few who couldn't fit in, who hitched rides in the cars.

 This is a mosque, believe it or not! It's the Kampong Kling Mosque, built in 1748, in the Sumatran style. Melaka is very near to Sumatra and in the 14th century the Hindu prince Parameswara, from Sumatra, set up his headquarters in Melaka, bringing Sumatran people, art, architecture and customs to the port, which became an important trading centre for merchants travelling between India, China and Siam.

In the 15th century traders from India brought Islam to Melaka and from here it was disseminated throughout the Indonesian archipelago. The Melaka sultans ruled over the greatest empire in Malysia's history.

Then in 1509 the Portuguese arrived. In 1511 they attacked the port, built a fort and forced the sultan to flee to Johor. Portuguese missionaries tried to convert the Muslims to Christianity. It backfired on them. Indian and Arabian merchants stopped trading with Melaka, preferring to take their wares to Muslim Java and Muslim countries all round the area attacked the Portuguese constantly, until in 1641 the Dutch threw them out and Melaka once more became a centre for peninsular trade. Although the Dutch built churches, they wisely left the Muslims in peace. This mosque was built while Melaka was a Dutch colony.

The minaret of the Kampong Kling Mosque looks like a pagoda. The Mosque has English and Portuguese glazed tiles, Corinthian columns in the prayer hall, a wooden pulpit with Hindu and Chinese style carvings and Moorish cast iron lamp posts. A chandelier was added in Victorian times.