Over the 3 week break my family and I visited Melaka a port on the west coast of Malaysia. This was not the first time that I had been to Melaka, during 5th grade we traveled there for an over night field trip. We were staying at the Hotel Puri which was located three blocks from Jonker street. It seemed that in every house or museum we visited including our hotel there was always a sky roof or a clearing in the middle of the living room. This happened to be because of Chinese feng shui. According to Feng Shui a house must have both wind and water so all these houses had indoor courtyards open to the sky.

The whole area was divided into 2 different parts: the old heritage town and the new city we went to both. Our transportation was either a rickshaw a traditional bicycle or our own feet. The roads were too busy for us to drive. My family and I walked all the way to an old church located on top of a very high hill. Churches were built on hills to be closer to god. The church was built in 1700. It was grey and black with tomb stones inside it, torn apart almost. While we walked down from the church we entered the dutch grave yard that had more than 3o graves which were bigger than a king size bed. The graves were cracked and covered in moss. 45 years was considered old in that time so lots of people died in their twenty's. The next day my family and I visited the Portuguese ship/ museum. The ship was huge . Who knew that when a ship was at sea three quarters of the ship was under water? Inside the ship there was an iron chest, granite cannon balls, and guns and cannons from the 1800. The ship was divided into three floors the deck and the crews headquarters. This ship would go to different ports trading spices and cargo.

The journey back to the hotel was long and hot. Every part of melaka was different in some areas all you could see was Chinese characters on old houses ( Melaka's china town) other parts you could see wind mills and dutch houses. We passed the smelly lake. The odor was so strong you could smell it 50 meters away. The lake was a murky green occasionally we would see a boat tour on the lake. As we passed our hotel we stopped for fire wood pizza. As each pizza arrived I could smell the strong aroma of the herbs. Almost all resturants were inside houses. Houses in Melaka were huge. Looking from the front of the house everything seemed so small. As we walked back to our hotel to check out I knew this was trip that I wasn't going to forget.