J's happiest moment of learning about our new home in Malaysia was discovering that they celebrate their independence from foreign rule on August 31--her birthday! That means she never has to worry about having to work on her birthday as long as we are here. For this first birthday holiday, we decided to celebrate by watching the Melaka Merdeka (the Bahasa Malaysia term for their independence day) Parade. The hotel breakfast was packed in the morning with a bunch of similarly dressed kids, which we later learned were marching in the parade. We walked towards town and found ourselves a shady alcove that was only inhabited by a couple of young boys. We thought that it was a shop entrance, but learned halfway through the parade that it was the front stoop of someone's home. The boys weren't quite sure what to think of us, but their mother or grandmother didn't seem to mind us--in fact, during the parade she came out with a couple of additional stools for us to sit on, while a man from the alcove next to us handed us a couple of plastic Malaysian flags. I think they were tickled to see a couple of foreigners helping celebrate their independence.

Here's some pictures of the parade. Click on the thumbnails for pithy titles and descriptions.

After the parade, we visited the Stadhuys museum in the old Dutch administrative building and the ruins of the church on the top of the hill, then we had lunch at a Bistro (laksmi curry for J, mushroom soup and appetizer for me). We walked Chinatown again, looking through the antique stores that were open, and J bought herself a locally made clay lamp that she had admired the night before. Here's a picture of the artist at work below.

We rested during the heat of the afternoon, then took a one-hour trishaw ride around the city. The trishaw bicyclist (tricyclist?) was 52-years-old, which surprisingly didn't make us feel bad about him carting us around, although J did exit the cart (she was on the outside) during one uphill run to make it a bit easier for him. His English was okay (obviously better than my Malay) and he was a fine tour guide, although we had stolen a bunch of his thunder by already walking most of his route in the day-and-a-half we had already spent in Melaka. Some pictures of our tour in thumbnail (click for larger, wittier versions).

We had him drop us off at the far end of Jonker's street, as it was still early for our dinner reservations. I spotted a used bookstore and popped in to discover it was filled (and I mean FILLED) with manga...but all in Chinese! We asked for some in Malay, and they were able to scrounge up a few battered copies for me, of which I bought four for RM10 ($3): a Doreamon volume, a Dragonball Z volume, and two that I'm not quite sure what they are.

For dinner, we visited a restaurant just off the canal recommended by the Lonely Planet book called Harper's. We arrived about 45 minutes early and sat at the bar and had a martini for me and a whisky sour for J. As the bartender used ice and water to cool the glasses beforehand, we admired his skill and the time he took with each drink. After the slapdash of most bars in the U.S., it was nice to be in a place where the bartender knew that he should take some time to get it right. The place wasn't full, admittedly, but we learned later that it was short-staffed as some employees had failed to come in (it was a holiday after all, and at wages like this, the temptation just to take the time off is probably much greater) and there wasn't much extra time to be had. He didn't slap the drinks in front of us within five minutes, but it wasn't like we didn't have the time to wait, either. Dinner turned out to be almost as nicely done, as we ordered a series of small plates and a bottle of wine. Well worth the price in both location and food.