Travel to Malaysia: Melaka Take Two

The pictures in the previous set were taken in 1995 or 1996; here's the view 15 years later, in 2011.

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An old postcard, from the British period, shows a Victorian clocktower, a church behind it, and the Stadthuys or Town Hall on the right. Think it's like that now?

The clocktower is still there, along with lots of visitors on a Sunday morning.

A Victorian fountain, missing from the postcard, has been added and still plays.

Christ Church, built in 1753, is little changed, apart from the added color of the garden and the tourists.

The interior is very simple.

Until the last line, you'd think that he enjoyed a long and venerable career.

DPT: why, there's nothing to it, but plenty of educated American parents don't bother. So much for education.

Here's the Stadthuys again.

The Dutch ruled here from 1641 to 1824. They were preceded by the Portuguese, who arrived in 1511, and were succeeded by the British, who held down the fort--pardon the pun--until 1957 (unless you count the brief period of Japanese rule).

Sometimes the British were masters of understatement; sometimes, not.

Dalhousie was one of the most energetic rulers of British India. He would have been just under forty at the time of this visit; he was dead before fifty.

Here's the Stadthuys seen from the side facing south, toward the church-topped hill.

The same building from the east end.

The bakery, with Dutch ovens.

One of the museum rooms shows Melaka's successive rulers: Malay, Portuguese, Dutch, British, and Japanese.

A model in the museum shows the fortress in the Dutch period. The precursor of the governor's office is on the right, just inside the fort.

A model of the British period shows the clocktower, church, governor's office, and no wall. The British, safe in Penang and Singapore, wanted no fortresses where some other power might take refuge, so Malacca's wall was removed.

In 1997, the old governor's house (which is plainly visible in the model shown in the previous image) was off-limits and marked by a fence with signs showing a policeman taking aim with a rifle. Now the same house is part of the museum.

The museum includes this poster of one of its Edwardian occupants.

On the summit the Portuguese built a church in 1521 and a larger structure--in ruin here--later that century. The Dutch took over in 1641 and used the same building as their main church in Malacca until Christ Church was completed a century later. Abandoned as a church, the building was used as a storehouse. It eventually lost its roof. Cuthbert Woodville Harrison, writing in An Illustrated Guide to the Federated Malay States, 1923, waxes romantic on the site: "An eerie place is this hill, known all over the Malay world as Kota Malacca; it sleeps and dreams now, the red roofs of the town below dozing in the sun, a hornet's nest hanging on the blank walls of its cathedral, the swallows screaming round the old high altar, the sun meeting no roof, beating down upon forgotten vaults, a lighthouse at the west end winking signals to ships which pass in the night but do not deign to speak Malacca in passing" (p. 113).

Dutch tombstones survive.

One reads: "Here lies buried Hendrik Schenkenbergh, in his life head merchant and the second person of the fortress city Malacca. Died 29 June 1671."

Just below the church there's a small English cemetery.

To the south, Melaka grows.

And grows; the view here is toward Sumatra.

You could easily overlook the one remaining bit of the Portuguese wall. (Yes, that's a Carrefour supermarket on the far side of the lawn.)

Here's the relic entrance, with its security-minded oblique passage. The seal overhead belongs to the VOC, the Dutch United East Company.

Close-up.

"The only remaining part of the ancient fortress of Malacca built by Alfonso D'Albuquerque and by him named Famosa. 1511. Near this stood the bastion of Santiago." The British caught themselves just in time and saved this bit of the old wall.

Times moves on: along the seaward side of the vanished wall, Dunlop built this office.

A more traditional building along the same alignment.

The alignment of the old wall lurks, ghostlike.

A building designed to catch the least breeze.

We've come almost full circle around the old fort. Land has been added here, and on part of it there is now a boutique hotel.

The river has been much improved, with tour boats cruising up and down. Pity the iguanas of once upon a time. They have been driven upstream and are no longer in sight.

Remind you of Singapore? Surprise, surprise. Lifeless, you say? Of course, but very tastefully so.

To think that only 15 years earlier these streets were next to deserted and the antique shops full of treasures yet to begin their meteoric ascent.