malacca, melacca, melaka....

the girls got necklaces with their names written on them. lili wanted hers off before i could take a picture of her in it!  oh, and the guy who made them told the girls that they looked like j.lo! this of course made ama's day...and he didn't even know they were half puerto rican! lol

we played with "pop rocks"...thinking of you, papi!

i love this little girl!

a taste of the town...

european fort in the middle of the city

blowing bubbles and climbing on a canon!

riding a "pony"

ama getting her picture taken!

loved him!

love it!

this fort made me feel like i was in latin america again...well, a latin america with asians wearing hijab! lol

we took a boat ride down the river

a tasty snack: waffels and chocolate!

ok, sorry for the photo overload! blogging lesson #1: learn to choose a few photos! for another photographic look of our day in malacca, you can always check out my instagram photos here!

the girls and i have spent the last few days in a quaint little seaside town in malaysia named malacca. or melacca and sometimes melaka! i'm not quite sure which is the proper spelling, i've seen it written all three ways! it's a short two and a half hour bus ride from KL, and a nice little getaway.

i first heard about malacca from a wonderful new friend, felicia, we met on our train ride from bangkok to kuala lumpur. felicia was mixed (her mom black and dad white) and from california; her father was from minneapolis and she's been traveling around asia since last january. be still my heart! she was going to spend a few days in KL in route to australia. really, you don't come across people like her everyday!  love you, girl! and another shout out is in order to our other new friend we met on the same journey, the lovely zara from the uk!

we started our day early because come midday, malacca is hot, hot, hot! thankfully the hostel we're staying at is right across the street from the attractions we visited! this helped save on both time and money!

first, i got hustled into paying 40RM (about $13USD) to take a short ride on a rickshaw- the colorful mode of transportation in malacca. basically, they're bikes with a seat attached to the side, decorated with fake flowers, stuffed animals, paint of all sorts of colors, and most of the time blaring hip-hop from its radio! let's just say that i'm on a SUPER TIGHT budget, and the driver got yelled at by me and the girls after finding out the length of our ride! well, we yelled at him and the girls tried to attack him using their bubble sticks as swords! the driver couldn't help but laugh, while gladly taking my 40RM. i guess you're only in malacca once, right? oh, and i forgot to mention that he originally wanted to charge me 50RM and i "talked him down" to 40!

since being in asia, my children have seen me yell at many a people over prices! the girls themselves have joined the bartering game- often, they'd scream at tuk-tuk drivers in thailand over prices they'd quote us! if a driver says 60 baht, ama will say, "no, 40 baht!" followed by lili pointing her finger and yelling, "yeah, 40 thai baht!" lili now refers to all currency as "thai baht"...

ok, back to malacca.

my anger subsided a bit after reaching the fort in the city- it gave me this nostalgic feeling of being in latin america. the girls ran around blowing bubbles and climbing on canons.  we then decided to climb up a ton of stairs to reach st. paul's hill, which lili thought was a castle! once we reached the top the girls ran around, got necklaces with their names on them (ama's is already broken) and got their pictures taken with and by many tourists! their curly hair makes them famous in asia!

we walked around the historic area of the city for awhile, then got lost in wandering in a market near by! we found some "pop rocks" (you know, those little balls that pop when you throw them on the ground) and i bought them for the girls as a way to feel like their papi was with them! jossue would randomly bring them home for the girls in the summer, and they'd love going outside to throw them with him!

somehow, my children sucker me into paying for really random things for them to do like riding fake ponies around the plaza. i say "no," but then i love to see their faces light up with enjoyment after giving in. and it's not like their asking for designer purses! then we had ice cream, rode a boat down the river and had waffles with chocolate.

overall, it was a another sweet day spent with two sweet (most of the time) little girls. it's not always easy traveling alone with them; i get crabby, they get crabby, but i would never trade this experience for anything in the world!

let's see where the wind blows us today...