Number Twelve Singapore Flyer
2 March 2013

As I mentioned in the last edition, we went up to Malacca (or Melaka) with our friends David and Susie. Kaye had gone on a brief fact-finding tour earlier, so knew a good area of town to stay, so we walked to the various sites.

Malacca has a much longer history of foreign settlement than Singapore. It started as a fishing village, but around 1390 a Sumatran prince arrived (having been chased out by the Javanese), who founded a sultanate. It is a good place for trade between east and west, since most ships traveled back and forth on the Straights of Malacca. It was also a good place to wait for the monsoon winds to shift to carry you home. As a port, it welcomed traders from many countries (the harbormaster once counted 58 languages being spoken). It did not impose heavy duties, and tried to protect the traders and their cargo, and link them up with people locally they could speak with. Since it could be a 5-month wait for the winds to reverse, many merchants from overseas (especially China) would have residences and a second family locally, giving rise to the Chinese-Malay Peranakan culture. (The marriages were nearly always a Chinese man and a local woman, as China barred women leaving the country.) Islam in southeast Asia had its first roots in Malacca, brought over from southern India. The Sultanate was Muslim from early on.

The Portuguese first showed up in 1509, with 5 ships. There was some trading initially, but they managed to irritate the locals, who burned two of the ships. Alfonso de Albuquerque arrived in 1511 with more ships, and managed to seize the city and fortify it. A sad part of the episode was that Albuquerque loaded up all the treasures he had looted in his ship Flora de la Mer, which then sank off the coast of Sumatra on the way home.

Malacca never regained its prominence as a trading center. The Malay rulers weren't happy about the Portuguese trying to monopolize trade through the Straights, and harassed shipping. However, the Portuguese managed to hold onto the city for 130 years, until the Dutch captured it in 1641. The Dutch influence is still quite evident today. In 1795 the British captured Malacca from the Dutch, but the Dutch returned in 1818. William Farquhar, a Lieutenant/Captain/Major in the East India Company was the senior British official during that period, and persuaded many merchants to relocate from Malacca to Singapore after its founding in 1819, which pretty much turned Malacca into a trading backwater (but also resulted in Malacca having large numbers of period buildings that weren't redeveloped). The British got Malacca back from the Dutch in 1824 as part of the Treaty of London. As with the rest of the peninsula, Malacca was under Japanese occupation for most of WWII. It became part of Malaysia when that country gained independence in 1957.

We took a very comfortable bus up from Singapore, which crossed to Malaysia at Tuas with minimal delay. (There was a longer wait on the way back.) There was a stop halfway where one could get all variety of Malaysian food and snacks. We got some thin cookies with whole small peanuts all over the tops, and I bought a snack best described as "coconut kibble". There was a hostess on the bus who gave us a tutorial on oil palms, the uses of palm and palm-kernel oil, and what becomes of the pressings, stems and over-age trees. She also explained at length what we couldn't bring back to Singapore (essentially CDs, DVDs and anything with a remote resemblance to a weapon).

We stayed at Hotel Puri, in the midst of old part of Malacca, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The core hotel building dates to 1822. It was later bought by Tan Kim Seng, who at that time was a very successful businessman in Singapore. His grandson redid the house in 1876. The altar from the house was moved to the family mansion in Singapore, and is now in the Peranakan Museum here in S'pore. The house stretches back 100 meters from the road, and has three atria, instead of the two you usually see in more modest abodes. While Kaye was checking us in, I was adopted by an Indian auntie who worked in some capacity at the hotel. She showed me the history room in back, with information about the building and the city, and which also had the original well for the building. She also made sure I was well stocked with maps and brochures.

Our rooms weren't quite ready, so we headed a few doors down for Nonya (Peranakan) food. Some of the more interesting dishes:

- kuih pie tee: This appetizer consists of little fried "top hat" shells with a filling grated Chinese turnip (= jicama, I think) and carrot, with fresh or dried shrimp.

- ayam buah keluak: "ayam" is Malay for chicken; buah keluak is a big black seed from the kempayang tree. The fresh seed is poisonous, but is rendered edible by boiling it then burying it in ash and banana leaves for 40 days. The oily black insides have an earthy, vaguely truffly flavor. Sometimes they scoop the insides of the nut out, mix it with meat and spices, and restuff the shell. In this case, I was given a little spoon to get at the insides, which I was instructed to mix with the rice and the chicken sauce (tamarind, shallots, garlic, lemon grass, turmeric, chili, candlenuts, galangal (blue ginger), shrimp paste).

- Chendol: A dessert of shaved ice, red beans, these green wormy things (made of green bean flour flavored with pandan), coconut milk and gula melaka (palm sugar, as a syrup in this case).

The hotel was also convenient to a newly opened Straights Chinese Jewellery Museum. They were very glad to see us -- I don't think they'd had many visitors in their first week. (My ticket was serial number 37.) The staff took pictures of us when we finished the tour. It's in a substantial Peranakan house (this part of the street was known as Millionaires Row). It's a private museum, set up by an antiques dealer who also owns a house museum in Penang. The jewelry is in galleries upstairs, and you need an usher with you to unlock the room. Lots of hair pins, amulets (big, worn by children), ankle rings (worn by younger women), belt buckles and kerosang (a series of 3 brooches, often connected by a chain, to hold a kebaya (overblouse) closed). Much of the jewelry is gold, except for silver and pearl pieces worn during mourning. One room also had a set of jewelry-making tools.

Further down towards the river is a house called 8 Heeren Street (the former name of the street our hotel was on). It is a Dutch shop house, dating from around 1790. This style of house was the precursor to the Chinese shop houses, at least in layout. It is long and narrow, a consequence of Dutch taxing property based on frontage. However, where the Chinese houses have ornate carvings and reliefs, the Dutch house had simple walls of plaster over brick. We got to hear about construction materials and the restoration process, which was supported in part by a special cultural preservation fund of the US ambassador and a grant from the Ford Motor Company. The house had its own well in the central courtyard, in which the occupants kept fish to indicate if the well had been poisoned. We were chatting with the curator about Kaye's Dutch roots in New Amsterdam. He pointed out that the Dutch had swapped Manhattan to the British for one of the Spice Islands in 1667. He thought the Dutch got the better deal, since they British only held on to New York for a bit more than a century, but the Dutch had the Spice Islands until 1949.

We went for a short river tour. The most interesting things to me were seeing the foundations of the Portuguese fort, and seeing the red stones from its walls being reused all along the river.

The former Dutch Stadthuys (city hall) from 1650 houses museums of history and ethnography, where I spent quite a while. I spent a long time on the histories and personages of the Sultanate. It seems various high posts besides the Sultan were hereditary as well. The Bendahara is likened to a Grand Vizier or Prime Minister (and also served as War Minister). The Temengung is like a Home Minister, and responsible for the police and army. The Lakasamana was the admiral of the navy, and in charge of protecting the trade route. The Penghulu Bendahari was the treasurer and secretary for the Sultan. There were four Shahbandars, or Harbormasters, each responsible for traders from different regions.

There was also a section of the museum devoted to coinage that had been used in the region. The most interesting part for me was the use of tin for money. (There are tin mines throughout Malaysia.) When the Chinese traders arrived, their copper coinage proved quite popular -- for making bowls and candlesticks. So they started using tin coins that stayed in circulation longer. The Portuguese also minted tin coins during their time in Malacca. There were also small tin ingots in the shape of animals: turtles, fish, beetles, elephants, crocodiles, roosters. They date to the time of the sultanate. There is some dispute whether their main purpose was currency, or if they might be toys, charms or weights.

At one point I ended up in the same gallery as a tour group. The language their guide was speaking seemed vaguely familiar. It turned out to be Dutch with Malaysian accent.

Upstairs was a gallery devoted to the Chinese admiral Zheng He (or Cheng Ho or Cheng Hoo). Zheng made seven voyages of discovery and diplomacy, during the first third of the 15th century. I hadn't heard about him before, but I should have. He sailed throughout Southeast Asia (including multiple visits to Malacca), but also to India, Africa and the Middle East. One of the goals was to find trade partners, at which he was successful. One consequence was a big boost in the porcelain industry. A couple interesting aspects that I had to look up later to figure out: (1) He is sometimes referred to as "The Eunuch with Many Descendants."It turns out he adopted a son of his eldest brother. (2) There are mosques named in his honor. He was raised in a Muslim household (in China).

The last stop for me on the trip was a reproduction of the Flora de la Mer and an accompanying maritime museum. I was a little disappointed that the interior of the ship was not a recreation, but rather additional display space for the museum. I did enjoy the various ship models in the regular museum part.